7 Things That Are Always a Waste of Time and Money

Unless you’re a trust fund baby, you probably have a relationship with time and money that’s…uneasy at times. And sure, you’ve probably seen articles on how to hustle extra cash, work side gigs, or negotiate your pay, but that usually doesn’t exactly compute for a stay-at-home dad. I can’t exactly strap my kids in for a day of Uber driving, or explain to my infant about the importance of stifling the crying for an hour and a half so I can squeeze in a conference call.

Thus, the name of the game as a stay-at-home dad is more about managing what’s already at hand. And just like you can’t outrun a bad diet when it comes to your physical health, you can’t outearn poor spending habits when it comes to your financial health — and you can’t magically prevent waste of time by buying a fancy color coded calendar.

With that in mind, here are things you should always consider a waste of time and money:

Stroking your vanity or keeping up with others.

Robert Quillen defined this concept as Americanism as far back as 1928:

“Using money you haven’t earned to buy things you don’t need to impress people you don’t like.”

This often gets tangled up with a concept of “fairness” in our minds. ‘My parents had this when they were my age — why shouldn’t I? That guy makes about what I do — how come he gets to drive around in that car?’

In both cases there are a lot of unseen factors at play — one of which is often indebtedness that the flash is designed to obscure. A local financial advisor spoke to my class when I was in high school, and said something that’s stuck with me ever since. Paraphrasing:

Wealthy people don’t look like you think they do. You see someone in designer clothes driving around in a brand new import SUV and think they must be loaded. Yep — loaded to the gills with debt. Don’t pay attention to the glitter. If you sat in the lobby of my office you’d be shocked at the number of million dollar clients I have who drive up in farm trucks and ten year old sedans and walk in wearing bib overalls or a plain t-shirt and jeans. You’ll probably have to choose in life whether you’re more interested in people thinking you have money, or actually having money.

Discount others’ perceptions, because you’ll never know the doors having access to resources will open for you.

This brings us to the story of The Tomato.

I drove a bright red 1990 Chevy Cavalier for twelve years, starting in my junior year in college. I grew fond of its homely looks and gas sipping ways and began fondly referring to it as The Tomato. It was nothing much to look at, but I didn’t buy it to look at it, I bought it to transport my body across distances too great to feasibly traverse by walking. Nobody else got the memo, though. I got chuckled at weekly, it seemed.

“Why don’t you just buy a new car already?”

I always scratched my head at this framing. As though it was a foregone conclusion that I had to purchase a new vehicle under some type of duress, and I was just stubbornly putting off the inevitable. I didn’t buy a new car because a car’s purpose was getting me from one place to another, and The Tomato never failed to do so.

I bought that thing for $1,500 cash in 2003, having spotted it on the lot as a trade-in right as they were prepping it to send off to auction. I had peers who bought three new cars within the twelve years I drove my beloved Tomato. Compared to them, I saved tens of thousands of dollars, plus all the blown interest on car payments.

Then I had a chance to move to Canada to pursue a budding relationship with an old friend who was beautiful and successful and unexpectedly single. I was spinning my wheels in a go-nowhere job, but since I hadn’t thrown a suitcase worth of cash into the finance department at the car dealership (among other choices, but let’s stick to The Tomato), I had the savings to leverage.

So after a bit of deliberation, I took a chance. I sold most everything that wouldn’t fit into three suitcases, donated and junked the rest, and moved to her town sight unseen. I had enough liquid cash Canadian customs officers were satisfied I wouldn’t need to work for the duration of the six month visa I requested, and stamped me through.

My immigration attorney said having the amount of cash on hand I did was the single biggest factor in my securing permanent residency so quickly when other clients of his were languishing in limbo for years.

My friend is now my wife.

We just had our second child and moved to a great house in our dream town last year.

Trust me, you’ll someday thank yourself for ignoring others’ opinions.

Financing your inattention.

There is a pie slice of the economy that is focused solely on taxing inattention. Don’t believe me?

What is an ATM fee if not a tax on those too inattentive to ensure they have adequate cash on hand?

What is a late fee if not a tax on those too inattentive to keep their due dates straight?

What is an overdraft fee if not a tax on someone too inattentive to keep tabs on their checking account?

I understand that life happens sometimes – I’ve gotten dinged with all three of these at least once over time. But for some people these charges become a regular fixture of their cash flow (I was going to say “budget,” but they probably wouldn’t be paying these things if they actually had one). Don’t pay someone else money for the privilege of being oblivious. Plan ahead and make sure you’re not being taxed for not having foresight – because these things are all a waste of time and added stress in addition to the coin.

Acquiring things you don’t use.

Think about the clutter around you. I know you don’t want to, but oblige me. How much of your living room, your closet, your garage consists of stuff that you didn’t actually need, but you bought anyway because it was on sale, or to have ‘just in case,’ or because you got swayed by an advertisement or a sales pitch? And what about the waste of time in messing with it all?

The clutter isn’t just physical, though. How many services are you shelling out for that you don’t use — the dormant gym membership that you keep around just because you don’t want to admit you’re not using it, the app and website subscriptions you forgot you have because you never look at your statements? They’re all sapping your resources five and ten and twenty dollars, and minutes, at a time — only to be forgotten at the back of your cupboards and internet browsing history.

Clean house.

Only when you know what’s lying about can you figure out what needs to stay and what needs to go. That sense of control you’ll gain in the process is priceless. You wouldn’t let someone sit in your house and keep bumming off of you without providing you any value — why let them do it remotely? Why let anything be a pure waste of time and money without providing any return whatsoever?

The best, or worst, version of anything.

Being a consumer is often a delicate balance. Do I get the “nourishing” shampoo or the “deep cleaning” one? Should I get two appetizers or an entree? Do I have to buy a greeting card when I’m perfectly capable of writing my own schlocky poem on construction paper?

Going to either end of the spectrum when you’re considering your options is, usually, a fool’s errand. Most of us are aware of the extreme examples of this; the last car you bought was probably neither a rusted out 1986 Ford Escort nor a Bugatti Veyron. Yet when the purchases are a little more middling, some of us can get our priorities mixed up.

Take shoes, for instance. I used to sell shoes at Wal-Mart to put myself through college. Scratch that — I picked up after ridiculous people and their ridiculouser kids in the general vicinity of a shoe department inside a Wal-Mart.

Do you know what the entire shoe business model is predicated on at big box stores?

Repeat business.

I saw the same people come back over and over and over to buy new iterations of the same imported junk shoes that were somehow simultaneously stiff and flimsy. All it took was a hard stop to cleave upper from outsole. All it took was a stroll through morning dew to loosen the stitching. And there was a reason I wouldn’t let you wear the shoes out of the store — because then you’d figure out those new sneakers of yours would probably even squeak on shag carpet.

So while nobody’s going to huff at you for buying throwaway shower sandals to use at the gym, don’t buy bargain basement shoes you’re going to be in every day. But neither should you buy designer brand shoes for the sake of simply saying you’re in them. Because I’ve got news for you.

Nobody cares.

Oh, you may get a gawker for some gaudy bauble you buy. But how much value are you willing to place on some mope stopping you for four seconds in the Starbucks line? This principle holds for most anything.

Don’t get a mattress from the clearance heap at Mattress-O-Rama unless you’re keen to practice self-acupuncture in your sleep. But despite the floor salesperson’s assertions, you probably won’t sleep much better on a $10,000 mattress than you would on a $1,000 one.

Don’t get a watch from the spinner rack at Dollar General. But also, don’t get one from the case at Tiffany’s.

And nobody expects you to wear cast off blood drive t-shirts from a grubby thrift store, but would it hurt you to peruse an upscale secondhand clothing store and consider letting nice clothes depreciate by 50-90% on somebody else’s dime, rather than raiding the mall or a retailer’s website again?

Look for the point beyond which you’re no longer paying for materials and workmanship, and you’re expected to start paying for prestige and branding. And then refuse to do so. Because, and this bears repeating:

Nobody cares.

Cratered relationships can be a titanic waste of time.

Every relationship has a lifespan…though sometimes, thankfully, that number eclipses our own lifespan. But if you’re in a relationship that you know is going to fail, pull yourself out of it now, and save yourself the waste of time.

I know. I get it.

I’ve been there.

I’ve stared down the barrel of that gun and flinched. It was just too much to take on, too big a conversation to have. And so I let the waste of time perpetuate itself. More money, more resource, more stress, all into relationships I knew were tanking. And surprise, they failed anyway. And all that money, all that time I could have spent healing and regrouping, was wasted.

If only I’d had the fortitude to take a step back and reckon with myself, to admit the true state of things — oh, the resources I’d still have at my disposal.

If you have a relationship on life support — and it’s not worth heroic effort to save — pull the plug now. Have the talk now. If you have kids together, don’t keep a sham household for their sake – your kids are smarter than you give them credit for. Show them how two adults can get on with dissolving a relationship while working together, rather than making your kids watch you simmer with resentment I promise you won’t be able to hide.

It will not get any easier. Wounds can heal. But if a relationship in your life is festering, gangrenous, cut it off. That goes for friendships, too. If someone is dragging you down and hindering you in getting where you want to go in life, you’ve got a decision to make about how to interact with them going forward.

Think about it this way: If your financial advisor showed you an investment opportunity that not only featured a zero percent return, but a total loss of your principal, would you invest?

Of course not. You’d probably demand a drug test of them.

So why would you sink another minute, another dollar, into a patently failed relationship?

Unstructured media consumption.

One of the best decisions I made in our old home was taking our television out of the living room and putting it in a spare bedroom turned den. Initially it was for the sake of my toddler, whom we never allowed screentime, but who was creepily enraptured by even simple screensavers she saw in passing.

But my wife and I found great benefit for ourselves from it. No more did we mindlessly watch television for its own sake. We had a selection of things we watched, and when we had time after our daughter went to bed, we took snacks and drinks to the den and deliberately watched those things. And our having cancelled cable five years prior cut down on the channel surfing considerably.

It’s a seller’s market in the attention marketplace. You’ve got scant little to give in comparison to the exabytes of data available to you. Just like you don’t walk into stores in a mall and blindly spend money, don’t bounce around channels and blithely open yourself to a waste of time. Improve yourself. Now, sure, that may mean watching something that relaxes or amuses you — both of which are improvements. Just do it mindfully.

Buying things that cost you even more time or money.

Reaching to buy lives or powerups in that “free” game on your phone? Stop. It’s a waste of time. You’re literally paying someone else to sap your attention for no material benefit. You’re giving them money for the privilege of giving them more time and attention — the most precious commodities you own.

Shopping for any kind of high dollar plaything for adults while you’ve got even ten cents’ worth of consumer debt? Stop. The only common denominator between the two people I’ve personally known who declared bankruptcy was a boat in their driveways unsurprisingly devoid of sponsor logos. They obviously didn’t get the Bust Out Another Thousand memo. Buying a depreciating liability with no earning utility while you already have debt is asking for trouble.

“But I deserve it!” you retort. My response is simple:

Why?!?

Why do you deserve an ATV, a boat, a Rolex, a country club membership? Because you think you work hard? Congratulations, Dr. Industriousness, but that doesn’t make you unique.

Go plead your case to my grandfather’s headstone. He grew up on my family’s farm in the ’40s and hoed weeds out of their watermelon patch until his hands blistered when he was in grade school. He ran a trap line on his way to school, walking up the hill and checking traps as he went to harvest pelts to sell for extra money well before he was a teenager. Then he left home and became a machinist, milling parts for aircraft before taking the farm over and running cattle for 55 years. Let me know what he has to say about your supposed deservedness.

What he’d probably do, given the chance, is forward you to one of his coworkers at the factory he worked at in the ’50s. His family was in such deep poverty he took potato peelings to work for lunch so his wife and kids could have the potatoes. Grandpa would have been curious to hear that conversation. What would you say he “deserved” in life?

Most of our concept of “deserving” finds root in advertising campaigns in which you see the extended Jones family on vacation, or driving a new car, or wearing some gaudy bauble or another. The ad executives want to establish a juxtaposition in your mind between your life as it is and the life they claim could be if only you’d buy their junk. Reject the notion. Waste of money, waste of time. Live within your means — happiness is better when it’s homemade, so quit trying to buy it.

Like using a screwdriver as a chisel or a knife as a pry bar, time and money are tools easily destroyed by misuse. Be a master craftsman in building the life you want — use them well.

You’ve only got so much of either of them to spend.

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This post was previously published on The Unbothered Father.

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