18 Dumb Items You Spend Way Too Much On (3 of 4)

Gym Memberships

One of the most opaque and inconsistent prices are gym memberships. In many cases, you sign up during promotions that promise you’ll get charged $10 each month. However while you’re getting that discount, you’re getting charged a sign up fee and an annual membership fee that’ll come into effect in a few months from now.

The kicker to all of this is that while that price gets inflated after a while, many people aren’t even using them. According to statisticbrain.com, 67 percent of Americans who join a gym hardly ever use them.

In the end, most who use these memberships are spending about $60 every month and are tossing out a good chunk of it with nothing to show for it.

External Storage

For those of us who have small storage space in our apartments, one solution is getting an external storage unit. The only catch is that years or decades later, that monthly cost of storage can start piling up.

Similar to many other of these monthly fees, we can forget about this cost. We switch to new apartments and continue to use the same storage provider, which can make it inconvenient for us, since it can cause us to travel greater distances to that location whenever you need to drop stuff off.

If you find yourself using these, it’s good to keep them short term, but do consider looking for a bigger apartment or finding an alternative storage facility.

Shipping

Shipping is one of those costs that come out of nowhere. If you’re planning in advance, then it’s going to be reasonable, but in the event that you order something last minute, you may find yourself paying way more just for shipping. This is the case across the board. Even big companies like Amazon and eBay will charge inflated shipping fees if you need stuff in a hurry.

Bottled Water

We should never be paying a single cent for bottled water and yet here we are. Because water is such a necessary thing in our lives, we can find it literally everywhere. There are public water fountains, sinks in every public place we go to and more.

There should be no reason at all for us to be paying for bottled water, since it’s no different from the water from other sources. Do yourself a favour and buy a metal bottle that has temperature-control and refill it whenever you can.

Gifts

While there is nothing wrong with paying for stuff for a friend, family member or for our partner, we often get wrapped up in trying to impress that person that we can go overboard with it. What turns out to be is us getting a moderately priced gift, which ends up with us paying for something that costs a few hundred dollars.

The thing is, people don’t always need that. Sure, people may appreciate the fact you got something nice, but it always goes back to the thought. Not only that, but you also want to be integrating your own knowledge into the matter.

For example, for those not familiar with wine, they often find themselves using price as a determinant for quality. That’s not always the case, as you can tell from mattresses, but that also applies to wine too.