Money comes and goes, and when you consider the fact that more than half, or 58%, of all Americans are now living paycheck to paycheck, saving becomes as important as ever. This usually starts with cutting down on unnecessary spending.

To find out what people can do without, Redditor u/gejiw94601 made a post on r/AskReddit earlier this month, asking everyone, "What's the biggest waste of money?" Since then, it has received over 2.6k comments, prompting a discussion on our budgeting, spending habits, and everything inbetween. Here are some of the most popular answers to their question.

#1

Donating to rich twitch streamers. I’ll probably never understand why people do it.

Image credits: dring157

#2

Weddings.

Crazy expensive day. Guaranteed at least one relative will kick up a stink. Massive pressure to be The Happiest Day of Your Life. Everything doubles in cost if you say its for a wedding (dress, suit, cake, venue)

Just do the quick registry office paperwork, have a surpise party and run away for a long honeymoon with the money you saved.

Image credits: PinchAssault52

#3

Cigarettes. $13+ for a pack of cancer

Image credits: Myzx

#4

those that are donated to house of worships, for pastors to buy private jets & catholic priest to play dress up

Image credits: hhempstead

#5

Giving your money to the Catholic Church. You’ve got to be f*****g kidding me.

Image credits: Differentdog

#6

Buying ridiculously expensive clothes to flex.

Image credits: PinkLemon4

#7

Gambling for sure

Image credits: snazyfragz

#8

War...what is it good for.......?

Image credits: Bladerunner2028

#9

Donating to politicians

Image credits: __Arty__

#10

Twitter verification

Image credits: Ev_anaga

#11

Cod points or any other online game currency bs. Yeah its cool at first but meh after you realize you spent $20 for basically nothing.

Image credits: ididtrybutijustcant

#12

Unnecessary plastic surgery

Image credits: No-Independence-6842

#13

Celebrity meet and greets.

I have a friend who is not very well off financially, and is complaining about money to me once a week. Yet she always seems to have money to pay for a celebrity meet and greet at least twice a year. Some of them are only a couple hundred dollars, but some can get really expensive, really fast. For what? A picture next to a famous person? They neither know you, nor do they care about you.

Image credits: PuddlesRex

#14

Any dating apps subscription - like find out who liked you now for only a billion dollars!

Image credits: tonyhawk101

#15

Playing the lottery.

Image credits: Jon__Snuh

#16

Fireworks, i love them, but it's like 50$ per second for the good ones.

Image credits: endisnigh-ish

#17

Astrology.

#18

Diamond rings.

Image credits: stoned2life

#19

Gold Food, or more accurately food that are covered in something called gold leaf. In my eyes, food are worth buying if they provide a great amount of nutrition for considerably good prices. After all, you probably avoid paying 50 million dollars just to buy a few molecules that are useless to your health and needs

And then there's gold leaf food, sure the food looks fancy but at the cost of ludicrous amount of money! And with the gold having no usable nutrients at all, it just not worth it to buy such expensive food for relatively small amount of nutrients

For instance, Industry Kitchen(hopefully that's the name of the place) at NYC serves a pizza with a gold leaf covering for a whopping price of $2000. While at my home country which is Indonesia, Domino's serves an American Classic Cheeseburger Pizza(idk that's a thing) which is the most expensive pizza I could find on the website costs around $7 which is just baffling to me

Image credits: ScopeRicrit

#20

Starbucks - bahhhh

#21

Buying pro-grade stuff you don't need is wasted money. My dad once told me to not spend excessive money on tools at first. Buy them for dirt cheap, learn which tools you really need, and when they break, replace them with quality ones.

Image credits: HarlequinSyndrom

#22

NFT artwork

Image credits: mila_OF

#23

Cryptocurrency.

Image credits: ImAnAgentOfChaos1322

#24

Third-party delivery i.e. DoorDash/Uber Eats/GrubHub

The fees + tips are exorbantly high, and a normally affordable fast food meal becomes the price of a sit-down restaurant meal or more.



This is from first hand experience lol

Image credits: aylubb

#25

The required classes most colleges make you take the first year. I was forced to take Finite math. I never use it. It doesn’t make any sense to have general required courses when you already know what you want to study. And if they actually care the classes would be about living like an adult-especially since usually it is the first time young adults are on their own.

#26

Credit Card interest

Image credits: DweeblesX

#27

Coronations and monarchies in general.

Image credits: Fife_Flyer

#28

Gift wrapping paper, ribbons etc

#29

So called beauty products, makeup, expensive clothes and purses, most things marketed towards women.

#30

Pod style coffee makers

#31

Overdraft fees. Like, the bank should know better than anybody that I have no money. So what are you trying to take?

#32

Lawn care companies. Paying someone money to make your yard toxic to children, birds, dogs and other animals because you want your grass to look like green wall to wall carpet…meanwhile, all your yard does is burn fossil fuels (mower) and deplete the soil. Make it make sense.

#33

Alcohol

Image credits: KatCaul33

#34

Insurance!

Image credits: Upstairs-Scholar-275

#35

Buying cheap [stuff] you have to replace.

Image credits: coinkeeper8

#36

Tipping.

#37

Rent.

Image credits: Some_Stoic_Man

#38

iPhones.

#39

Bottled water.

Image credits: Mhyra91

#40

Settlements to pay victims of police brutality and civil rights violations added to the paid vacations given to the the police while they pretend to investigate eachother and allow eachother to continue to work and brutalized innocent people, and violate people's civil rights. Police budgets continue to be increased and so do lawsuit Settlements paid by that taxpayers over and over again because the police face no repercussions.

#41

Industrial-scale tourism.

I can't fathom paying a small fortune to get stuffed into a giant aluminum tube with 300+ (rude) strangers for hours on end only to be harassed and groped by airport security at my destination.

I'm not even talking about visiting some landmark with a battalion's worth of people jostling to take selfies.

They say people should buy experiences, not things. Well I'd rather have a roof over my head in my old age than fond memories of bad wine from a tourist trap vineyard.

Thanks but no thanks. I'll just wait for the invention of VR tours.

#42

Brand new cars

#43

Shoes. I don’t understand why people spend so much money on them.

#44

organic and "clean" products. a big freaking marketing joke. Paying for a feeling basically

Image credits: nancellal