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Welcome to Money Talk for Real, a podcast where I talk about making money, spending money, and everything in between. I'm Nick, and in this episode, I want to talk about the cost of convenience. Especially nowadays, a lot of stuff you're paying for is probably just for convenience. And I also want to talk about why it's killing your budget, because it absolutely can do that. Everything today is designed to be easy. You want food, boom, delivered. You want something, want it fast, one click. You want to avoid inconvenience? At the end of the day, you can just pay for it. Everything is nowadays, that is literally some business's entire business model. That is how their marketing is designed, is to make your life easier. And let's be honest, it works. We're all stressed out. We all are busy living the grinding, the hustling lifestyle. And it's so easy and a peace of mind to just pay extra for something to be convenient. And I'm myself included, I'm not picking on anyone. And at first, it does feel great because, again, it's the peace of mind. Oh, the convenience, right? But over time, that's can that uh convenience starts costing you, and it costs you a lot more than you think. It's the common theme on this show that I talk about, how it's small hits. You're not even gonna see it, you're not even gonna notice it at first. But over time, it costs a lot more than you think. So I'm gonna break down how convenience is quietly, again, small, meaning it's little expenses here and there, quietly draining your money, draining your bank account. Why it's so hard to stop it, because again, it's a feel-good thing, right? And how to take back control without feeling totally miserable or negatively impacting your lifestyle. Think about how easy it is to spend money today, though. Convenience is literally everywhere. Food delivery apps, Amazon, subscriptions, tap-to-pay, one-click pay, auto-renew everything. It is so easy to spend money today. From a business standpoint, if you're a business owner or one of these businesses, that is how they make their money. They want it to be easy because they want your money. They're trying to run a business. And they get you every single time, right? These small little tap to pays, auto-renew, again, all the stuff I said, you don't even feel that stuff sometimes. There's no friction. A lot of times it's small values and it's easy. So you don't even notice it. It's not painful. And if, and if, as humans, if we don't feel the pain with something, then we're not going to change it, right? If there's no friction, that's the point. Because the easier it is to spend, the more that you will, which is good for those businesses. It's not accidental, it's designed that way. Their marketing teams have designed it to get your money in a very easy way. Convenience, though, always comes with a price. We know that. Always comes with a price. Convenience costs so much. Let's talk about an example: food delivery. Um, they're higher menu prices, right? Because and you know, just the menu price on, for example, DoorDash, the menu prices, each food item on the menu costs more than the menu in the store. And then on top of that, you pay a delivery fee. And then on top of that, you tip the driver or the delivery person. So that $12 meal, that would have been a $12 meal, is now $25. Crazy. Double. That you know, those prices can change, but I'm just making examples here. The one-click shopping I talked about, you skip the thinking part because it's a one-click boom. That's cute on sale, boom. You've already bought it before you even thought about it. And if you don't think about what you're buying, naturally you're going to buy more, you're going to spend more. Subscriptions is another one. You don't notice those. They're auto-renewed, they're subscriptions. Every month, you just plan that out. Well, yeah, this is what I pay every month. You just kind of accept it as normal. And so they keep charging you every month, ba-boom, ba-boom, ba-boom. From a business owner perspective, a subscription model business is the best type of business to have. It's recurring revenue every single month. Especially if you're if it's from a customer like you that just doesn't pay attention to it, it just they get paid no matter what. Then you're talking about paying to save time. That's another one. Paying for car washes, paying for services, paying for upgrades. They're not terrible, they're not bad on their own, but they're constant. Again, individually, maybe no big deal, but together, that's kind of where the damage is. You add all these things up. The real problem here isn't convenience itself. We all need some sort of convenience in our life. That's almost a level of normalcy in human lives in today's world. The problem is not the convenience. In my opinion, the problem is how often you use it and how often you pay for it. Because the convenience turns almost into a habit, turns into a learned behavior at that point. And habits or financial behaviors in this case are going to turn into automatic spending, which is very dangerous. You don't decide anymore. You default to that. You say, I don't feel like cooking, boom, order food. It's just your default. It's like, okay, well, that's just normal. We order food because I don't feel like cooking. Then you say, I'll just get online, boom, buy it. You've already bought it. One click, check out, one click, uh, one tap to pay checkout, one click, checkout. You've already bought something. You say, I'll deal with it later. Okay, well, now your subscription just renewed for the month because you thought about it later instead of addressing it right now. That's where your money is really going. It's not big mistakes necessarily. I'm sure with some people it can be. Everybody's situation is different. So I am generalizing a little bit here. But it's not big mistakes, it's just the small defaults, it's the small behaviors that we've claimed are normal, which is also kind of why it's hard to stop. This is why it's kind of tough because convenience feels like a reward. You're meant again, we're in the hustle stage of life. We're all grinding, we're busier now than we ever have been in this country. And when you're tired, you order food. When you're busy, you pay for speed. Again, you're busy. Oh, I don't have time for it. Let me just pay for it, make it get here faster. When you're stressed out, you're mentally burned out, you don't want to deal with extra stress of having to go shopping or cooking. So you make it easier. And making it easier is convenience spending. So cutting out the convenience almost feels like you're making your life harder in a way. Because you have normalized, again, the tiredness in your life, the busyness in your life, the stress in your life. You have normalized being able to cope and control with that by spending money. And so if you stop spending that money, you feel like in your brain that you're going back to being tired, back to being busy, back to being stressed. That makes it hard. Nobody wants that. I get it. But the trade-off for that is happening whether you notice it or not. You're trading money for ease. And that's a luxury in life. That's not a necessity. Especially if you're trying to save money or if you're close to being broke or struggling, you might have to compromise with a little bit of stress, a little bit of busyness, a little bit of tiredness to save those extra pennies that can turn into dollars over time. You do this every day. It adds up big time. So let's say, as an example, someone is spending, let's say, $15 extra per meal on delivery, which is a very realistic number depending on where you're getting your food from, how often you're doing, or you know, how expensive the food is, and then how often you're doing it. Let's say you're doing that three times a week. That's $45 a week extra. Now I'm not talking about total. That's extra on top of on top of just eating out regularly, which you could also cut back. But $45 a week over a year's time, that's over $2,000 in a year. That's just one habit. One example of one habit. Stack that on top of and stack that with the subscriptions. Stack that with the subscriptions and the impulse buys and the convenience spending. Now you're talking real money. So sometimes when I get on here and say hundreds of dollars or thousands of dollars, and you think I'm exaggerating, that's I'm not. You see how it can add up super, super quickly. So, how do you take control? What exactly do you do? You don't eliminate the convenience. I said that a minute ago. Convenience is almost normal, but you can control it. Make it intentional. Don't make it automatic. Don't make it the default. Don't make it normal. Make it intentional. Choose to do it instead of just defaulting to do it. Maybe also add a little friction back into that. That's another way to control this. Because if you can pause before you buy something and make it hurt a little bit, you know, figuratively, like where you notice it, that's a way to take control. You're noticing it now, right? Next thing is pick your spots. Pick one or two. You know, pay for the convenience where it actually matters, not everywhere. Can you deal with the tiredness and the um the busyness, but not the stress? Then maybe just pay for convenience with the stress, but you know, accept the tiredness and the busyness, whatever, instead of doing all three. Pick your poison, so to speak. And also set limits on yourself. I'm not diehard on this show. I'm not gonna say never pay for convenience, but set a limit. Maybe you just say I'm gonna do this less often. I'm gonna do this only X amount of times per week, per month, per year, whatever it is. Set limits on yourself. Have control, have some self-discipline. The goal here is not to suffer. And nowadays, we're all so busy you need a little convenience. I'm not saying to suffer. The goal is to stop paying for convenience that you don't actually need. You just think you do, or you're trying to reward yourself with it. Once you can get control and do that, you'll realize how much money was slipping through the cracks, probably without you even noticing. So I think it goes without saying to recap here that convenience is not free. It just feels like maybe it is in the moment because it is frictionless, it's small amounts, it happens very fast, you don't even notice it. So it feels like it's not costing you much, but over time, it definitely adds up to more dollars spent than what most people realize. If this made you think twice about that next quick purchase, then I am proud of myself because that was the entire point here. Do you know someone in life that orders food a little too often? Maybe send this to them. Have them reach out to me. I'd love to talk to them about it. If you want to submit your financial situation or have money questions, I want to hear from you. You can submit them on my website at money talkforreal.com. You can click on the link called debt help. You can submit an audio version, record it right there on the website. I can play it on the show, talk through it, run through it with you. You can completely stay anonymous. Just send me your information and we will go from there. Again, that's money talkforreal.com slash debt help. Money talkforreal.com slash D E B T H E L P. Leave a comment if you have one, like this podcast, leave a five star review if you can, and I will catch you on the next episode. Thanks for listening. This is Money Talk for Real.