Car payments are another fantastic way to stay on the perpetual debt treadmill. I'm not anti-new car with current used car prices, but I have to laugh at idiot guys with mediocre jobs who finance BMWs & Acuras. Idiots.
It's ok if they really love their car. Some guys buy new filters and fluids for the car just so they can dick around with it and pull it apart. 1000 miles on it, nothing to do, let's change the oil!
New list. #1 cause of poverty: boredom. I buy stuff when I'm bored and need something to do.
I started making wine when I had nothing better to do. Then I stopped when I found something else to obsess about.
The lighting in my house was both expensive and time consuming because it was something to do. I have an entire drawer filled with light bulbs. Vacuum incandescent, halogen incandescent, and fluorescent types. I have bulbs of different color temperatures. I have ones that shine in all directions and ones that project a cone of light. Some of them turn on right away and some of them take a minute to warm up. Every room has multiple lights for different moods. The bathroom has 3 extremely bright 6100k fluorescent bulbs that make the room look cleaner as well as a halogen flood light that shines down on the toilet and feels warm like the sun when I'm taking a dump. Then there's also a 9w 2700k bulb in there that is more for night time (because 6100k bulbs tell your brain it's still day time)
Getting different types of electric heaters so I have complete control of heating was something to do (fanless + parabolic radiant + fan). Any room can be heated any way I want.
After tripping breakers a couple times, I marked which receptacles and light switches were on each breaker then ran some expensive extension cords all over the place to make sure everything was on a specific breaker. The majority of my suite runs through 1 breaker which all runs through my UPS (most of it on the surge-only side), and it all runs through a wattmeter.
I also bought wattmeters to keep track of power because I was curious. How much power does the electric heater in my bedroom use, how much power does that UPS circuit use, how much power does my microwave use in a week, etc.
My current project is to monitor my blood pressure after doing various things. I bought this $40 blood pressure monitor from a liquidation place. I'll see how different drugs affect it, different exercise, different drugs + exercise. I'm looking forward to the 600mg caffeine + shoveling snow test. Blood pressure will probably be 200/100 with a pulse of 200.