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The Dumbest Things People Have Ever Spent Their Money On

The Dumbest Things People Have Ever Spent Their Money On
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Photo by Kari Shea on Unsplash

Humans have a tendency to accumulate a lot of stuff during our lives, most of it things that we actually did need at some point.

But not all of the things we buy are even remotely necessary.

Whether it's that As Seen On TV doodad that seemed like it would solve all of life's problems when you saw the infomercial at 3 AM while dealing with a bout of insomnia, or that super valuable-seeming thingamajig you saw at the thrift store that you're definitely going to list on eBay some day, some things were just never a good use of money in the first place.


Redditor 3VD asked:

"What's one of the dumbest things you've ever spent money on?"

Socks

"When I was like 14 I bought a pack of intentionally mismatched socks that were really expensive. Like, only one of each pattern. Could have bought twice as many normal socks and just mismatched them myself."

- virgo-punk

"Were they Little Miss Matched socks? Because me too. Stupidly priced to get 3 socks that don’t match each other"

- dogz4lfe

$2

"When I went on a school field trip to Washington DC back in middle school, I bought a $2 bill at a souvenir shop for $20. smh"

- ogkudo

"That’s a shame they practically scammed a kid for 18 bucks."

- bluemilkmonday

Timeshare

"I bought a timeshare."

- Dyspaereunia

"This is what I came here to say. The happiest day was when I sold it for 10% of what I paid for it."

- MrGogaan

"My in-laws want to give us theirs in an inheritance and we don't want it. Why pay for maintenance fees that cost the same as if we just walked up and paid for a week?"

- PRMan99

Rush Delivery

"I was drunk and bought Monster Ballads off an infomercial. And I paid an extra $20 for rush delivery, because I was drunk and needed it asap, and it showed up a month later."

- TheDandyWarhol

"The worst part isn't paying for something extra...it's paying and then not getting it."

- siler7

Cory in the House for Nintendo DS

"A copy of Cory in the house for the Nintendo DS"

"Except for 30 dollars"

"In 2019...."

- WobbleFrosty

Fake Family Lineage

"I was just a few weeks out of basic training and bought one of those family lineage with the shields on it and description. I blew $500 or so bucks just to find out it wasn't even accurate."

- th3_warth0g

"Sorry for not understanding, but what exactly did you buy? A tattoo? A graphical drawing? A certificate?"

- GreatCazzywazzy

"It's like this picture frame and in it is the "family crest" for your surname and some cheaply googled facts about the history of your name. IMO they're 100% a scam. If you want to know your lineage get ancestry."

- CanHeWrite

Frogge

"I spent $40 one of those amusement park booths where you had to throw darts at balloons. For some reason, I picked out this really ugly 7ft tall frog stuffed animal. It’s in the corner of my closet and still scares me when I’m half awake in the morning."

- -ariose-

"I had one of those from six flags, I won it early in the day and my dad was so pissed. I named his Froggy McHopperstein and kept him for over ten years, my mom finally got rid of him saying she couldn’t spare that much space for him anymore. RIP."

- usernamemaybe

"At least you won, I spent $35 and didn’t win anything at the basketball game. Then the attendant wasn’t even facing the basket and casually threw it in with one hand."

- ndu867

Star Wars

"I once went to a novelty/thrift shop that had a ton of random sh*t. Ended up spending $10 on a framed picture of Count Dooku, Darth Sidious and Jango Fett from Star Wars since my gf thought it was funny. The frame recently broke and I found out after seeing the back of the picture it was from a calendar when Attack of the Clones came out. Someone just cut this picture out of an old calendar, put it in a frame and my dumb self voluntarily spent $10 on it."

- donnysaur95

"You bought the frame"

- cowboy4life

"At least it’s a fun decoration for when we have guests. It actually has been on the side table by our front door for several years now so a lot of guests see it and comment on the framed Star Wars picture. My gf just says it’s a picture of her grandpa"

- donnysaur95

The Most Beautiful KitchenAid

"I’d had a few drinks (TGIF) and wandered into a Williams Sonoma store in a state of euphoria. There I saw a special edition Kitchen-aide stand mixer made in bronze that was the most beautiful thing I’d ever seen. It was on sale for $999.00. Naturally, I bought it, but because I’m a single guy who doesn’t bake it’s just taking up much needed counter space."

- o_shrub

Beefaroni

"Chef Boyardee beefaroni."

"One summer, because I was hella bored, I bought some chef Boyardee beefaroni and put it in my friend's mailbox as a prank. He didn't find it but his parents did, and they asked their neighbors who did it. He suspected me at first, but I managed to get him off of my tail. Now our neighborhoods were fairly close to eachother, so I could be over there in a 50 minute walk. Every night, I walked up to their neighborhood (walking anywhere at 2:am is creepy as hell but the Boyardee bandit does not stop for demons) and put a can of beefaroni inside their mailbox."

"After about a month, they call the police to find out who's putting beefaroni in their mailbox. Luckily the police really didn't care that much and just told them to get a camera which they eventually did."

"Meanwhile my friend is telling me all of this from his perspective, right, so I usually know what they do before I strike. So I start covering my face, and pretend to hunch over. I have no idea where this camera is, so I can never be too careful. They call the cops again and give them a profile, and now the cops are looking for a crippled beefaroni bandit. After a solid 3 months of this, one of the baggers at the store gets word somehow, and starts getting suspicious because he sees me buying tons of beefaroni. He confronts me, I tell him the truth, and I sh*t you not he starts helping me beefaroni my friend's house. We're putting it all over hiding it in the lawns, porch, fence, you name it. Halloween rolls around, and I dress up as chef Boyardee. I go to my friends house and say 'Your daily subscription to Chef Boyardee beefaroni has ended. Would you like to renew?'."

"I hear laughter in the background, and it's the store clerk. Turns out he recently started dating best friend's sister, and that's how he heard. Truth be told, I don't think I've ever been punched harder than when my friend found out. Good times. We still laugh about it from time to time."

- Swimminginsarcasm

The moral of the story here, kids, is that just because it seems like a good buy at the time doesn't mean it actually is.

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