I Scored .5 On This Quiz

10 Things Americans Waste Money On:

Things I do in italics:

1. Credit card interest (I pay them off monthly.)
    
2. Deal websites (Meh, never interested in them.)
    
3. Appetizers (Not often, anyway, but sometimes I’m hungry enough to eat the free bread, the appetizer, and the entree.)
    
4. ATM fees (Not often, anyway. Once a year when I’m away from my bank? And not recently, since I’ve forgotten my PIN.)
    
5. Overdraft fees (I have overdraft protection and pretty good cash flow these days.)
    
6. Speedy shipping (Faster than Amazon Prime? Who needs it? Also, I buy most of my music with AutoRip, which is instant.)
    
7. Designer baby clothes (No babies currently, and pretty much relied on Walmart and garage sales when I did.)
    
8. Unused gym memberships (An underused YMCA membership currently, but I’m nursing a strained adductor just like Grandpa.)
    
9. Premium cable packages (Here’s where the .5 comes in. I pay $10 a month for a sports package so I can see ball games. No movie channels or other tiers though.)
    
10. Daily coffee trips (Although I used to be guilty of daily coffee runs when I worked in downtown St. Louis, I work from home now, and the coffee trip is to the counter. I do spend a lot on K-cups, though. And Gevalia premium coffees.)

If this quiz were 10 Things Brian J. Wastes Money On, it would be:

1. A large garden that doesn’t yield more than it costs and that doesn’t really count much as a hobby because I don’t spend as much time as I’d like working in it.
2. Instant music purchases that get lost in the existing library and get listened to once or twice or when I remember them.
3. Buying new books when I have stacks of books to read. Also, buying (albeit cheaply) stacks of books when I have stacks of books to read.
4. Adopting and pampering pretty much any stray cats that come along. Although it’s not as bad as that, we have acquired four in the last year and have taken them to the vet multiple times.
5. New hats. I’ve spent $130 on Panama hats over the last year. I spent $40 on a fedora the year before. I am out of control.
6. Subscriptions to periodicals that come faster than I can read them.
7. Too frequent visits to Ziggie’s for breakfast.
8. Supplies for hobbies I might take up one day, but don’t. Although this was more of a problem in years past, I still sometimes pick up supplies for a hobby right at the time I end up putting the hobby down for a while.
9. A refined wine palatte. As the cash flow has improved, my taste in wines has gone from five dollar wines to ten dollar wines and beyond. I could curtail the wine ration and go back to the Yellow Tail now that the hideous 2012 vintage has passed from the retail scene.
10. Expensive coffees with Chock Full O’Nuts. I go through cost-cutting phases where I cut the coffee budget to the core. This is often followed by a ‘Hey, we’re doing okay, why don’t I get better coffee?’ period. We’re in the better coffee period now.

So how do you do on wasting money like most Americans or like Brian J.?