 You messed up! All right? You can make fun of Roblox! Okay, you can make fun of my crap, but don't make fun of Minimalism. What's happening? It's Shane here, so recently the economy took a dive and because of that, money has been really tight for a lot of people. Economic growth has fallen at a rate of 2.5% the first quarter of the year and over 25% in the second quarter. Luckily, what hasn't slowed is the fact that nearly all of my viewers never forget to smash the like button for the evil YouTube algorithm. Okay, for real though, we're technically not in a recession right now, but a lot of people have some arguments about that. I mean, technically the economy did go down because we made it go down on purpose in order to protect ourselves from the current thing that's happening right now. But I guess this is sort of like the difference between being in a normal coma versus a medically induced coma. Either way, you're still in a coma. But anyways, in this video, I'm going to recommend seven things that you should stop wasting your money on right now. Now, these are seven things that are really easy to save on and almost anybody can do it because almost everyone has these expenses and you won't have to become a monk or, you know, sell all of your possessions or anything crazy like that. And make sure to stick around until the end because I'm going to show you that it's not just about saving your money, it also has a lot to do with opportunity cost. So number seven on the list is going to be technology upgrades. Now, I know it can be tough to ignore the hype every time Apple comes out with a slick new phone, but the truth is today's devices are so good that they can function for years without having any issues at all. And in the majority of cases, it doesn't make sense for you to get an upgrade unless your phone is completely broken. Even then, taking your phone to a repair shop will likely save you hundreds of dollars a year in the long run. Most people get a new phone almost every year when in reality they could easily make their phone last three or four years and it would still be fine. The newest iPhone, for instance, costs up to $1,500. And by choosing not to upgrade every year, you can save yourself about $1,000 a year. And honestly, this is just talking about phones. If we were to bring in tablets and computers and all the other types of technologies, it would be a lot more than this. But let's go ahead and just call this $1,000 a year. Then you can take that $1,000 and either invest it or do other productive things with it. Number six on the list is going to be clothing and other types of apparel. Now, according to recent reports, the average American spends over $1,800 a year on clothing. Now, I get it. Fashion is really important to a lot of people and I'm not saying that you should never spend money on it. But let's get real here. It's ridiculous how many different seasons there are. Now, I'm not going to pretend like I'm some kind of fashion expert because I'm obviously not. But do we really need 52 different fashion seasons a year? That's basically a new season every single week. Like, are you kidding me? And think about all the times that you bought a piece of clothing and you either wore it once or maybe you never even wore it at all and it just laid in your closet for years. Now, obviously, everyone's going to be a little bit different here. But I think the big thing, the secret here is to stick with the essentials. Get yourself some nice black t-shirts, for instance. Okay, I'm kind of kidding here, but no, seriously, just get the simple colors that kind of just match with everything. And that way you'll have so many different outfit combinations. If you want to keep it really simple, black, white and brown are awesome colors that basically match with anything. But if you want to spice it up a little bit, you can choose some maroon, navy blue or forest green as well. Choose brands that are good quality and they'll last a while and you'll probably end up saving yourself another $1,000 a year. Number five on the list is going to be cable TV and other types of subscriptions. Many Americans are spending over $100 a month on cable and let's be honest, that's way too much. And I realize this isn't nearly as much as a lot of the others on the list and that's why I didn't rank it as high. But the reason I put this as number five on the list because not only are you wasting money, but it's also one of the biggest time suckers as well. I think everyone knows how much of a waste of time the news is, for instance. They're either going to tell you exactly what you want to hear or they're going to go the opposite route and they're going to fear monger and just try to scare you. And almost everything you see on TV is just going to get posted to the internet later the same exact day. So why even bother? Why pay TLC to watch 90 Day Fiancé when I can see what Big Ed is up to on YouTube a few hours later? And if you absolutely have to see what your local TV stations are up to or if you have to watch, you know, Sunday football or something like that, some of the bigger networks, what you can do is pay about $50 for YouTube TV. Overall, save yourself a lot of time and also money by cutting your cable connection and then just watch how much better your life gets. I haven't had cable for years and my life has been so much better without it poisoning my mind. So let's say that you save about $500 from this. But honestly, you're probably going to save a lot more when you count the time that you're saving. And let's say you put that time into starting a business or doing a side hustle or something along those lines, you could end up saving a lot more than that. Number four is going to be eating out. And this is a big one. So let's say you spend about $10 on lunch every single workday. And then you spend another $5 on a Starbucks coffee every morning. If you do that every single day for a year, that will actually add up to $3,750 a year. That's not counting going out to dinner with friends or going on dates. That's not counting ordering pizza to your house or going out for drinks with your friends after work. You get the idea here. There is so much money to save by being smarter about what you eat. Meal prepping for the week, for instance, has been amazing for me. I'll make enough food for the week and then I'll just go ahead and freeze it. And then whenever I need it, I'll just take it out and then put it in the microwave and warm it up. Sometimes I'll also use a crock pot in order to make really amazing meals that are super, super cheap. And then I can always just take these meals to work or take them out with me or just eat before I go out. And that way I just order a salad or something when I'm at a restaurant. You get the idea. This is one of the biggest money wasters out there. Now, the only exception I do make to this one is I do spend quite a bit of money going out to dinner with friends. But for me, I think that's worth it just because that's kind of like my social hour. That's the time where I kind of forget about everything else. But overall, I think the average young person can easily save $2,000 a year just by cutting back a little bit on food costs. Number three is going to be impulse purchases. Now, this is a huge one, especially if you're really bored right now because you've been at home all the time and you're just like browsing Amazon. Now, it's going to vary depending on the source, but the average consumer spends over $5,400 a year on impulse purchases. So some of the big ones on this list are going to be household items, technology, beauty enhancers. Now, there's a few things that I do that have worked really well for me when it comes to limiting impulse purchases. First is whenever I have something that I really want to buy, I imagine that thing in one hand and then the amount of money it's going to cost in the other hand. And then I think to myself, you know, which one do I want more? And if I'd rather have the cash than the item, then I won't buy it. Now, if it makes it past that step, then I'll wait at least a week before I decide to buy it. A lot of the times about a week later, I'll kind of look back on it and I'll just be like, why did I even want to buy that in the first place? That was a stupid idea. Now, if it makes it past that step, what I do is I actually end up tying the item to a goal that I have set for myself. So for instance, I've wanted to get a new camera now for a while because my old camera was basically a potato and it had horrible autofocus issues that I just could not fix no matter what I tried. So let's say my goal was to get you guys to smash the like button 100,000 times, which you did because you're amazing. Then when I reached that goal, I decided, okay, it's time to buy a new camera. And then I went ahead and I bought it. Now, I do this for a lot of things. And basically what I'm doing is I'm rewarding myself for achieving my goals. And this ends up keeping the cost pretty low because after a while, I kind of just lose interest and I end up not wanting to buy the item. I'd say that I save at least $2,000 a year from this, maybe even more. Number two on the list is going to be your car or your motor vehicle. And this is one of the biggest killers of wealth out there. Now the average car payment in the US is over $500 a month and that's getting higher and higher every single year. And I've talked about this a lot in other videos, but having a super nice car is one of the most common ways of living above your means. And I'd have to say, I think this is the most common mistake that I see young people making. And I think the best thing to do here is, especially if you're young and it's one of your first cars, buy a car that is a really good quality, reliable car that's about 5 to 10 years old. So it's taken the brunt of its depreciation. So it's old enough that it's depreciated quite a bit. So it's not super expensive, but it's not so old that it's going to have a ton of issues. Now, I personally recommend buying Japanese cars like Honda or Toyota. These are amazingly reliable. They just run forever. It's incredible. They almost never break down, but even when they do break down, they're super cheap and easy to fix. I'm not even that good when it comes to fixing cars and stuff, but I've actually made some repairs on the cars myself because they're just super easy and simple. And because of the fact that they're so easy to fix, they're also a lot cheaper to ensure. This is why a brand new Mercedes S650 costs three times more than the Honda Odyssey to ensure. And I understand that there's more to it than that. You also want to avoid sports cars, luxury cars, cars with specialty parts, and then cars with low safety ratings as well. But I think you get the point here. Now, if you absolutely have to have a fancy car, like let's say you're a real estate agent, for instance, and you have to uphold a certain image, then usually leasing a car is probably going to be a better option for you. Overall, you can easily save $3,000 a year when you factor in the cost of the car, the insurance, the gas, et cetera, the depreciation and all of that. Number one on the list is going to be your housing and rent. And this is another one that can get really out of hand if you're not careful. And especially when you're young, you want to save as much money on rent as you possibly can. Now, there are many ways to do this, of course. For instance, one way you could do it is you could just keep living with your parents. If you're going to college, there's going to be a lot of cheap options for housing. So for instance, when I was an undergrad, I lived in a scholarship hall, which was about $1,500 a year. That was only a couple hundred dollars a month. And that included rent, utilities, as well as food. You can also look into roommates as well. That one is pretty obvious, I think. And I found that having three roommates overall as in you and two other people is a pretty good ratio. And when you start getting more roommates than that, like bad things end up happening and it's usually just not a good idea. And if you've ever had a bunch of roommates, you'll know exactly what I'm talking about. Another option is you can find a really good deal on a house and get a mortgage that's actually less than what the rent would be on the house. This way, you're still paying on that mortgage every single month, but you're also going to be gaining net worth in the form of equity. And if you find a really good deal, you can do what's known as house hacking, where you're basically getting paid to live in the house. And so on top of the equity that you're earning on the house, you're also getting paid to live there. Another option that not that many people talk about is the fact that you can always just move to a place that has a lower cost of living. Overall, there's a lot of options out there and you can easily save yourself $5,000 a year by being smart about your housing decisions. So let's go ahead and add all of these up. $5,000 plus $3,000 plus $2,000 plus $2,000 plus $500 plus $1,000 plus $1,000 equals $14,500 a year. Now let's say you start doing this at 18 years old and you invest that $14,500 a year into a low cost index fund. The average stock market return for an index fund is around 10% every single year. And so when we plug that into a calculator after working for 40 years, only investing this and nothing else, you will have over $7 million. And that's more than enough for anybody to retire comfortably. So what you want to think about is the opportunity cost here of all that money that you're throwing away. Check out my videos right here. I made them just for you. Go ahead, smash the like button, hit the subscribe button, ring the little notification bell and then comment down below any ideas or comments that you have on the video. Thank you so much for watching and bye for now.