Avidly Avoidable: How Does One Steer Clear Of Money Spending Traps?

Have you ever spent money and then instantly regretted it?

Yes, of course, you have.

What you have encountered is a money trap, a moment when you spend and leave that spot feeling great about your purchase only to realize that you really didn’t need to spend that much (or at all) and now have to figure out how to deal with the fallout as a result.

The most obvious place you overspend is online, mostly with shopping either during, around the holidays or gift-giving season or just a random stop, shop and stay far too long adding to your cart.

Online shopping is the epitomize of convenience and sometimes when you have online pay services or a store credit card, pointing and clicking feels liberating and then eventually forgettable as you start to rack of the money spent and then realize you bought what you didn’t need or spent too much on either yourself or for a host of friends or families, for example, around the holidays.

As much as you want to be lauded for showering those you love with gifts, you still have to be prudent with questioning yourself as far as if you can afford to do this or not.

Another spending trap is when a company or spokesperson offers you the opportunity to try something for free for a certain amount of time, but quickly glosses over the fact that you’ll be billed afterward on your credit card. You see this a lot with online, streaming services for music or television, for instance, but also with larger scale products that cost several hundred dollars (think kitchen appliances or general at home appliances). Again, the average consumer falls in love with the product and believes it is something they need, and then try it for “free” and end up spending monthly payments on a device or appliance they either don’t need or eventually forget about after a few months even though they’re still paying.

Finally, the art of the upsell is alive and well, and you might be falling for it more than you believe. The biggest wastes of money and certain savings traps are things like warranties or adding ancillary products after a larger purchase is made. Most electronics, for starters, are given warranties as add-ons for a few hundred dollars after you just spent $1,000 on a new television or computer. The real truth is most of these are covered by the manufacturer and will easily outlive that warranty with little or no problems. The hard sell that you need to “protect” these things should certainly always fall on deaf ears.

They don’t refer to “money traps” as such just because it sounds cute or cliché. They are tough to avoid and end up catching up with you at one point or another but being able to spot them and, if nothing else, minimize them will be key to keeping money saved rather than spent frivolously and regrettably.