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10 ways to lose your money

10 ways to lose your money without gambling, giving it away, or even really spending it.

Keep special note when I say ‘even really spending it’ — Really spending it means you go to a store to deliberately spend money. Although losing money generally requires some spending. So let’s talk about some of the ways you can lose your money.

1) The first obvious way is to actually lose it. Forgot where your wallet was, or dropped some bills in the space between the door and the floor of your car. However you won’t ever purposely lose money.

2) The next way is to break larger bills into smaller ones. Nothing eats at money faster than breaking a large bill. It’s like ice; you break it up into small pieces it melts quicker. So your money would melt quickly too.

3) When you go grocery shopping, buy items that is not on your list and that are not on sale. These are usually fattening items that are really tasty, but usually kind of expensive (at least for what they are, for instance you could spend 5 dollars on a 2lb brick of cheese, or you could buy that artisan cheese for double the price and half the size). Items not on your list mean you didn’t budget for them (assuming you budgeted at all), and so can end up costing you more money by the end of your shopping trip.

4) Don’t follow a budget. That’s an easy one; I mean just spending willy-nilly means that you ultimately will spend more than you should. If you’re using credits cards this could eventually lead to bankruptcy, which could be considered the ‘Monday’ way as if it’s too large your lawyer will get you to pay much less. Of course this is usually after the credit card company has soaked you dry for interest, in which case you don’t actually pay less, but going into bankruptcy does lead into a stopping point.

5) Don’t balance your check book. If you don’t know how much money you have in the bank, you can lose the money by overdrawing your account. Especially if you have a fee associated with overdrawing or a fee when your bank account contains less than a certain amount of money.

6) Along with the credit card suggestion above is interest. If you use a credit card with a high enough interest then your late payments will simply bleed you dry of money. So use a credit card with a high amount of interest and make those payments late. You’ll soon be losing a lot of money that way.

7) Subscriptions. That’s right, let’s start with magazine subscriptions. While it does entail some spending, subscriptions is the kind of spending that doesn’t really feel like you’re spending it and more like you’re losing it. Especially magazines you don’t even read. Like that issue of ‘Cat Fancy’ you don’t read but only got because your Ex-Wife was into cats. Especially subscriptions that were for someone else but for one reason or another you’re still getting.

8) 900 numbers. Yep, joke lines, or something a little naughtier (that we won’t go into). They’re a big source of losing money. Especially if you have a teenage daughter and who likes to call the number of her favorite pop-star and I don’t mean personal home numbers. Actually I don’t know that people actually call those anymore, but you never know. However you’ll be bleeding money.

9) Cable TV and Internet. I actually group fiber optic service, and satellite, under the heading of cable TV as well. TV specifically. Let’s face it, some of us don’t watch TV all that much, but we buy cable just so we can catch that show that’s not on broadcast, or some movies or something. This usually costs a lot of money. Also internet, although internet is of more use nowadays, it can be losing money if you’re not using the speed you’re paying for. Why not go all out for all the pay channels and HD channels, and then go to a video kiosk or the library for your movies, or go all out at the speediest internet you can buy.

10) Finally have a family. I’m not against families, but the one thing they do well is take up money. In fact have a family and you’re guaranteed to lose money on at least one if not all the ways I’ve enumerated above. Especially if you have daughters. Mobile phones are killer in a family full of women.

So if you want to lose money without gambling or giving it away, or even really spending it (but actually spending a little bit), then use the tips I’ve shown you and you’re well on your way.

Until ‘Monday’

by admin

10 Awesome Internet Time Sinks

When it comes to sucking up time, there’s nothing better than the internet. You can use it to do something productive, or in our case here on ‘Monday’ we like to use it to waste loads of time. Here are just a few places we like to go when we want to use up all of our free time, and by free time I mean all the time, since we here at ‘Monday’ tend to do as little work as possible.

I now present to you the 10 Awesome Internet Time Sinks:

Time Sink #1: Google. Yep you heard that right, Google, the vast World Wide Web search engine. Pick any subject you like and instantly you’ll have millions of links to your subject of choice. Want to know the mating habits of sperm whales? Whether that new ab-roller is worth paying 40 bucks for? What about how to build Minas Tirith out of match sticks? It’s all right at your finger tips. Like the old yellow pages ad used to say, “Let your fingers do the walking” or rather “Let your mouse do the clicking”.

Time Sink #2: Wikipedia. The all seeing all knowing, well at least until they find out that someone deliberately edited houses in ancient Greece to display frat-boy humor. Well nobody is perfect, and certainly not the editors at Wikipedia. Wikipedia is a sort of user edited encyclopedia. Since it is user edited it could very well be outright lies, however for the most part if you are looking for something specific it’s always a good place to start, and usually if the editors are honest enough they’ll link the specific info so you can read up more about the topic. One word of warning here though, at times you could be at risk for becoming productive because some of it is the truth. Wikipedia is one of those things that when you look up a topic, there’s usually tons more links to other topics in Wikipedia. I mean that think is a link-fest. You could spend forever searching there.

Time Sink #3: Youtube. Youtube is a video hosting site. You can make any video you care to upload (as long as it’s legal and doesn’t infringe on copyrights). It’s got a vast wealth of user created videos. My favorites are independent game developers’ game videos. I could just sit and watch people’s games forever. Want to see some music videos, or some cool special effects thing someone made in After Effects or a long play of your favorite console game, even old cartoons and instructional videos. This is the place to spend most of your time; I mean you could just spend hours and hours just clicking on different videos to watch.

Time Sink #4: Internet Archive. It’s an archive for old text files, computer programs, radio shows, old movies, public domain audio and even old websites. Is your favorite website gone? Then you can go to www.archive.org and look up and see if they have an old copy somewhere. Want to find some old public domain movies? The archive is the place to get them. If it’s old and legally obtainable it’s usually on the internet archive.

Time Sink #5: Stumbleupon. This is a bit different; it’s a ‘random’ website generator. Usually based on your interests. You sign up download a toolbar, and hit stumble whenever you want to go to a random website that has to do with some of the interests you marked down on your profile. If you like the site, you give it thumbs up by clicking the thumb pointing up. If you don’t like it you give it thumbs down by clicking the thumb point, you guessed it, down. There are a host of things you can do, you can be friends with people and see their interests, and you can favorite your favorite sites. The more a site is given thumbs up the more that site is put in front of people. This is a GREAT time waster.

Time Sink #6: Facebook. Facebook is a social networking site. Essentially you sign up add people as friends and then you can tell them what you’re doing via a status you update. You can also put photos to share with your friends, links, and best of all there are games. Since people compete with each other these are big time sinks for some people. Personally I don’t really use facebook all that much, but since people share lots of stuff on there and the games being social (many not in real-time but turn based so you can play with your Facebook friends), it’s considered an internet time sink. (I knew someone who played Mafia wars which is a mafia based game where you make hits on other gangsters and stuff, who when he went on vacation would have others play his game so he wouldn’t lose rank or stuff.)

Time Sink #7: Twitter. Another social networking site. Only this is more about status lines (like what you’re doing at the moment). It can be like a giant chat room even if it’s not strictly real-time (It is if you stay on it, however most people don’t necessarily do that, but some do and it makes it a time sink). People share links and photos there too. Basically you get other people to follow you which means when you say something the more followers you have the more hear you (sounds logical doesn’t it). It can be a great way to advertise your website or anything really provided people haven’t stopped following you.

Time Sink #8: Digg. This is what is known as a social book marking site. Basically you put up interesting links and get people to bookmark it through the Digg website (and/or toolbar). I don’t really know a lot about it because I don’t really use it. However I’ve heard great things about it (well not really but I mean I hear a lot of people use it and since it links to other articles it can be a time sink if one wants to use it as such).

Time Sink #9: Reddit. Another social book marking site. I don’t really know much about this either since I’ve only looked at it a few times, but every so often I get a link of a discussion on there. I know there are people that spend tons of time on it.

Time Sink #10: Online Comics. Personally I don’t read online comics but I have read a few in the past, let’s say Penny Arcade or Buttersafe. But on a day to day basis I don’t. Partly because it’s a time sink, and I’ve felt I’ve wasted my time. Of course that is the ‘Monday’ way, so I probably should do more of it.

Well there you have it 10 awesome internet time sinks.

Until ‘Monday’