How to get the biggest bangs for your bucks
At the risk of winning the Mr. Obvious trophy, the first rule of living better is: “Don’t waste your money.”
And no, I’m not talking about living in a shack in the woods eating road-kill, I’m talking about not giving your money to multi-billion dollar corporations in exchange for nothing.
Being in debt means that you work all week, get paid and a huge corporation takes a 1/3 right off the top. How bad does that suck?
You worked all week and someone just took a big part of it for nothing! Well . . . not actually nothing. They took it because they let you buy something when you really couldn’t afford it.
In exchange for enabling your lack of self control, they’re going to bleed you. Forever.
Business’ goal is to take as much of your money as possible, while giving you the least in return. Your goal is to give up as little of your money as possible, while getting the most in return.
Here are a few to get you started. The first one is the most important:
- Interest:Never pay credit card interest. Or finance charges. Or “fees”. Ever.
- Rewards: Once you stop paying interest, you can get free money from the bank.
- Food: Shop at the Farmer’s Market and learn to cook! For $5 you can have a tasteless burger at McDonalds. For $5 I can have Linguine with meatballs and maranara sauce, a nice salad, some crusty bread and a good beer.
- Shaving: The $5 razor blade is a scam. Your pocket is being picked every week and you don’t even realize it. The best razor in the world has one blade and it costs $0.50