As we say good-bye and good riddance to 2020, the New Year gleams like a yellow brick road to better days.
But the early going may prove steep because of a pandemic-depressed economy with heavy personal debt and high unemployment. Which is why the most pragmatic New Year’s resolutions might be those that save us money.
Unlike thornier resolutions such as giving up chocolate or exercising daily, these are painless since they cut out those things we never needed in the first place. Here are a few examples:
Stop paying an extra $300 a year for premium gasoline, or what was once called “ethyl.” Premium, also known as supreme or extra, is the same as regular, but with more detergent and other additives, which AAA says is a waste of money, regardless of what’s in your owner’s manual. And for anyone still in doubt, NPR’s beloved “Car Talk” gurus Tom and Ray once famously explained that modern fuel-injected engines render ethyl extraneous, so “stop lining the pockets of oil companies, OK?”
It’s time to kiss pajamas goodbye. Who knew that we’ve been frittering away an average of $40 on an article of clothing that is not only unneeded, but bad for our health? I became aware of this during an unseasonably cold camping trip to the Boundary Waters National Forest in Minnesota, when a fellow camper, an army veteran who had bivouacked in Germany in the winter, said my teeth would stop chattering if I went “commando” in the sleeping bag in order to circulate my body heat more efficiently. He was right, and the American Academy of Sleep Medicine seconded his advice: “Wearing pajamas can actually alter your body’s natural temperature and negatively impact your sleep cycle … (which) can cause anxiety, overeating and weight gain.”
You can save between $8 and $10 dollars every week — or $40 a month and nearly $500 a year, if you prefer — by swearing off non-alcoholic beer. No matter what inspired you to buy it in the first place (calories, temperance, health), it tastes nothing like beer and a lot like mouthwash that does nothing to cure bad breath. I’ve tried them all, from the big beer company brands to the fancy imports, and you’re better off with ginger ale, cola, root beer, Kool-Aid, O.J. or rain water.
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Not long after my brother, Charlie, graduated from the University of Illinois at Chicago College of Pharmacy, he warned me and my brothers not to buy supplemental vitamins because we’d be literally flushing our hard-earned wages down the toilet. Any doubts I may have had about Charlie’s advice were soundly erased by researchers at Johns Hopkins University this past year when they determined that not only do multivitamins not cut the risk for heart disease, cancer, cognitive decline or premature death, Vitamin E and beta-carotene supplements actually cause harm. So guard your health by boycotting vitamins and using the average $129 annual savings to buy fresh grapes and apples and real beer.
Save another $400 by avoiding home warranties, those annual policies that promise to replace or repair anything broken. After our Realtor advised we purchase one for the 12-year-old house we were looking at, I filed a claim for a washing machine that stopped working three months after we moved in. I agreed on the phone to pay the $50 for a service call during which the home warranty-approved repairman said we needed a new machine. Unfortunately, the problem was a “pre-existing condition” and the washer was on its way to breaking down before we showed up. Duh. What isn’t headed toward breakdown or obsolescence as soon as it leaves the factory? The diagnosis taught me a lesson and exposed the colossal scam central that is the home warranty industry.
Have you ever noticed that the more you use lip balms, such as Chapstick or Bert’s Bees, the more you seem to need it? That’s because as the film from the balm evaporates, it dries out our lips even more, according to Dr. Leah Jacob, an assistant professor of dermatology at Tulane University. “It starts a vicious cycle,” Jacob told Live Science magazine. That’s as good a reason as any to break the $5 per month habit. Or, in my case, more like $20 a month habit since I lost those tiny sticks all the time.
Never, ever buy a timeshare. Don’t get bamboozled out of $22,180, which is the average cost for, essentially, a one- or two-week vacation at the same place and at the same time every year. A 2014 article in Forbes magazine, along with just about every American economist you care to ask, says they’re lousy investments, too hard to rent or sell, rob you of your freedom and are invariably freighted with secret fees in the small print, including property taxes, maintenance fees and utility charges. Admittedly, my wife and I once scored a free cab ride to our Cabo hotel by agreeing to sit for a time share high pressure sales pitch. It ultimately required a threat of violence by my wife, swinging a heavy plastic shopping bag full of brochures as a weapon, to get them to let us leave without signing.
Please feel no obligation to thank me for the $23,789 in potential savings you will enjoy if you make these resolutions. You might, however, use a tiny portion of the windfall for a newspaper subscription. An investment in education is never a waste.
David McGrath is an emeritus English professor at the College of DuPage and the author of “South Siders,” a recently completed collections of columns on life in the Midwest.