Well, hello my friends, and welcome back. My name is Stephanie Safarian and you're listening to episode 285 of sustainable minimalists, a twice-weekly show about intentional and eco-minimalist living.

On today's show we are discussing 10 ways Americans waste money.

Now to my non-Americans listening,

I'm betting that you have a stereotype of the average American in your mind right now

and it's probably not so flattering. Americans are assumed to be materialistic and wasteful and overly consumerist in their outlooks on life.

Now to the Americans listening, I think you know as I know that deep down there is some truth to this

stereotype. As a culture we can be quite wasteful and we can be quite materialistic and we can spend a lot of money

unnecessarily so that's what we're talking about today on today's show I am

outlining 10 ways Americans specifically tend to waste money and to make this episode

extra fun I have rank ordered the list in terms of exactly how much money per

year the average American waste on said item or service.

So number 10, 9, 8, it's not that much money wasted, but as we get down to 3-2-1, we're going to see big numbers of wasted money each year.

So we'll be working our way down to number one.

Some of the items on today's list are silly, some are really darn serious, and the majority of them fall right in between silly and serious. So let's get right and two.

Wasted Money Item number 10.

Waste of money item number 10 is unused gift cards.

Think about where you keep your gift cards.

Is it in a drawer? Is it in an an envelope how many do you have in there do you even know do you even know what's in that

envelope most people enjoy getting a gift card as a gift you can use it for whatever you like. It's not as impersonal as money, right?

Gift cards are a popular gifting choice. Heck, I regularly buy gift cards for others because in my view they're minimalist you can buy what you want you can buy what you need I am a huge fan of gift cards over trinkets all day

but it turns out that by one estimate

41 billion dollars worth of gift cards went unredeemed from the years 2005 to

...