Friday, December 15, 2017

Dumbest Ways I've Spent Money


Ms. DebtFree here with some honest confessions.  We have individual Mint accounts to track our spending and tonight I decided to use this fun feature to trend my spending for the last 12 months by merchant.  Yeah, it's bad enough that I had to look at my per-store spending!

For fun I thought I'd break it down into the top categories that embarrass me the most.  Now these are not necessarily my top spending categories, simply because of groceries and loan payments.  However, I'm long overdue for some spending shaming and what better way than to share with you folks the dumbest ways I've spent my money over the last 12 months (December 2016-November 2017).  FYI, these are arranged in order of total, not in order of stupidity!

1. Food/Snacks At Work

Keeping in mind that I didn't start work until August 7, 2017, this number is even more ridiculous.  Grand total: $339.29

2. Coffee Shops

Oh honey, this one is BAD!  Starbucks alone was $250.49.  Yeah there may have been a gift card or two in there for other people, but understand I get a lot of coffee gift cards at Christmas and my birthday.  This number is only what I spent on my debit card.  Other coffee shops totaled about $404.15 and this does not include all coffees, only the purchases I know for sure.  
Grand total: $654.64

3. Breweries, Taprooms, & Bars

Well, shoot!  I hope this makes some of you feel better about yourselves because there might be a little bit of food in there but probably not much!  
Grand total: $981.26

4. Amazon

I don't even want to get into the stupid shit I bought on Amazon since last December.  There's a little bit of food and gifts for others in there, but good grief this number is painful.  The only thing I remember buying for sure that I needed were my scrubs and nursing supplies.
Grand total: $1,115.86

5. Clothes & Makeup

Oh ick, this one is the worst!  I can't break it all the way apart at this point because I don't save receipts (and now we see why) but this includes clothing purchases for me, Mr. DebtFree, and gifts for family, as well as most of my makeup.  
Grand total: $1,219.54

There y'all have it: I wasted approximately $4,310.59 over the last 12 months!  This includes the last few months where Mr. DebtFree and I have been tracking our spending closely and trying to minimize excess purchases.  This number becomes even more shocking when you consider that it is only from my debit card and that Mr. DebtFree has his own totals in these categories.  Well, probably not the makeup one but you get my point!

Goal from here on out: don't ever have another 12 month spending trend that looks like this.

Thanks for reading and I truly hope this makes many of you feel better about your own spending and inspires you to look at where you waste money!

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