What do you waste money on?

[Rollerskaterabbit]

This year I'm trying to identify what I waste money on and try and stop it!

For me the biggest wasters are shop bought coffees and pre packaged foods!

Juggling - yes, yes, how did you know?

No satsumas in our house.

MrsBethel

I waste money on meals out and kids clothes (they have too many). I am cutting down the amount I buy them this year!

My DH wasted money on a library fine recently: he was late returning the book "How to Live Frugally". I kid you not. It was over a tenner.

Prof - that's made me laugh.

Ooh, I actually love a nice Christmas satsuma - such a Christmassy smell I always think - but you've got to have some posh choc as well, and a tonne of XMas tat to fill the bloody thing up
I'm a nightmare with library fines too Prof

Last year DH wasted about £200 per month by not taking packed lunches to work, and buying expensive coffees every day. Unbelievable how it mounts up. I have finally managed to persuade him to take packed lunches to work by showing him how many years we could knock off our mortgage if we directed the £200 to overpaying every month.
As for me, I am pretty frugal, don't drink, smoke or buy coffees. But my diesel bill to commute to work is around £400 per month. I don't earn enough to justify this expenditure, so really need to focus on getting a job closer to home.

I have to agree with a lot of people above, I spend a lot of money on coffees. I've cut back A LOT though after realising I was spending £200 a month on Starbucks! Now I have the occasional Starbucks (Venti, Soy Caramel quadruple shot latte) and I mainly drink tea now, it's a lot cheaper and I still enjoy it.

Other things are our dogs - not a waste though but two small chihuahuas cost £150 every month, add the car and hundreds on fuel a month. It's quite amazing really. If I didn't have my car I would save a fortune, but where we live in West Sussex it's unavoidable.

My weakness is magic potions and lotions. It's impossible for me to leave a branch of Boots without some serum or BB cream.

I think someone upthread suggested the thing to do is to buy cheaper ones Melanie, such as in Aldi or wherever - and to accept that they're all the same really (apart from the ultra cheap ones which can sometimes lack a certain something?)
I recently bought two lovely (very reasonable) shampoo's from Tesco's - one mandarin and papaya, the other coconut and lychee. They both smell great - I love the mandarin one in my bath, and dd's hair smelt fab last night and she told me it was the coconut and lychee

Irisha

How did you work that out (about how many years you would save by overpaying £200 a mth on your mortgage). I would like to do the same but not sure how to make an accurate calculation!

Cheers

Prof Plum your DH takes the prize with that library fine, still chuckling now!

I think my biggest unnecessary expenses are:
(a) allowing DH on ebay. He's forever buying stuff. My postman hates me teases me about the number of parcels we get.
(b) allowing DH to make things that we could have bought. This leads to much more ebaying as he suddenly realises that he now needs some new power tool or gadget or whatever.
(c) getting over-excited in craft shops and buying beautiful yarns, ribbons or fabric because it's lovely and "will be really useful".

Something I've seen others buy which I thought a massive waste was "ice cubes".

Don't most people have a freezer where they can make their own?

I tend to make a few 'flat' (ie allow time for bubbles to disperse) cider ice cubes to go in with my cider in the summer :)

Bumpsadaisie - try this calculator

Things off ebay, that seem a bargain until I bid frantically and spend more than I would like for a thing that I've no idea what it will be like til it turns up in the post and enevitably doesn't fit

Bumpsadaisie, I used the same one that riblet has linked to, very illuminating and motivating!