This article originally appeared on
AlterNet.
Unless
you’re a member of the 1%, you’re likely to wince when you open up your
heating bill or pick up a gallon of milk. But as much as you might
lament about the rising prices of everyday staples, there are many
common products that you can ditch to save yourself a wad of cash. The
best part is, you won’t miss them after they’re gone. Here’s a short
list of items that are outrageously marked up, rather worthless, or
risky bets that we’re all better off without.
Movie theater popcorn. The
mark-up for popcorn at the cinema is eight times over the price of
popcorn you can buy at the grocery store. But while movie-goers know
that it’s outrageously expensive, they’re inexplicably willing to stand
in long lines to pay that premium price. So, the next time you’re
tempted to plunk down $7 for a medium-sized bag, think about this: Those
buttery little nuggets can wreak havoc on your body. A medium popcorn
contains some 60 grams of saturated fat, 500 milligrams of sodium, and
between 800-1,200 calories per bag depending on the theater. That’s the
equivalent of eating 30 strips of bacon with eight pats of butter. And
don’t think for a moment that you can mitigate the damage by washing the
snack down with a Diet Coke.
College Textbooks. Along
with rising tuition and fees, the price of college textbooks has gone
through the roof, increasing by 82 percent over the past 10 years.
They’re now estimated to be about 26% of the typical student’s cost at a
state university. Undergraduate students can now expect to pay about
$1,100 annually for books and course materials. But some educators,
student groups, and activist organizations have banded together to
create inexpensive and even free open-source alternatives that can be
published in print, and on computers and mobile devices. Open textbooks
are faculty-written, peer-reviewed, and meet course requirements — just
like traditional textbooks — but they’re published under an open
license, meaning that online versions are free to download and
distribute. Print versions are affordable and cost less than $20 on
average, which can save the typical student about $100 per course. Open
textbooks are being used by more than 50,000 students at 360 colleges
and universities, but that’s still less than a tenth of the institutions
of higher learning in the United States.
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Inkjet Printers. Inkjet
printers are cheap, and you can buy one for less than $80 at a big-box
store, but they have an insidious hidden cost —the ink. A color inkjet
cartridge can cost between $28-50 and a black cartridge can cost between
$10-20, or up to $5,000 per quart. Moreover, you can expect your color
cartridges to print only a little more than 200 color pages or photos —
it would be cheaper to print your family pictures with Dom Perignon. But
with PDF documenting, paperless offices, tablets, and electronic
signatures, printers are hardly needed. Printed digital photographs can
be inexpensively produced at a local print shops, and often at better
quality. If you really need to print documents, the toner that is used
in laser printers is much cheaper in the long run than inkjet
cartridges, although you’ll expect to pay about three times more for
upfront this type of printer.
SMS Text Messaging. The
rates for SMS text messages, which range between 15 and 25 cents each
when you buy them piecemeal, are even more outrageous when you consider
that they piggyback on existing network signals. They cost the wireless
carriers almost nothing to transmit; it would take more than 500 text
messages to use the data that’s in a one-minute phone call, yet one text
message costs the consumer more than that call. But now that consumers
are buying text messages in blocks of 500 for about $10, or bundling
them into very expensive unlimited voice plans, the high cost is hidden.
Messaging might even end up costing users more if they don’t come close
to reaching their monthly messaging limit.
Fed up smartphone
users are starting to opt out of SMS messaging on their carriers,
replacing it with free messaging services such as Google Hangouts,
Facebook Messenger, and WhatsApp. These services, which require a
digital plan, also allow for the free sharing of photos, video, and
audio. But while you can only communicate to other people that use the
same service for free, some smartphone users like to use all three apps
to cover the bases.
Multivitamins. An estimated
50% of Americans take a multivitamin and mineral supplements daily at a
cost of up to $2 per pill. But the latest research on multivitamins
indicate that they are no better than a placebo, offering no health
benefits to people who are otherwise well nourished. Three recent
studies found that the use of multivitamins didn’t prevent heart disease
or memory loss, and had no effect on longevity. In fact, many health
experts claim that high doses of some vitamins may even be harmful.
Researchers say that a good diet and exercise is a better use of the
money spent on multivitamins.
Extended Warranties. Protection
plans or extended warranties for electronics and appliances are
notoriously bad deals. They’re nothing more than a bet you’re making
with a manufacturer or a third-party retailer, and the odds are not
weighed in your favor. Retailers push service plans because they get a
large commission for selling them, up to 50 percent or more. But often,
the repairs and maintenance provided by an extended warranty are already
covered by the product’s standard warranty. Consumer advocates also
point to data indicating that most products typically don’t break during
the period covered by the extended warranty. And the few times that
products do need repairs under an extended warranty, the service costs
are about the same, on average, as the price of the extended warranty.
You
may have a similar product protection plan offered through the credit
card you purchased the product with. Check with the issuers of your
credit cards to see what kind of product protection they offer, and
purchase products with the card with the best coverage.
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