Do you throw away money?

Americans throw away money each year without even realizing it.  According to Yahoo Finance Americans throw away over half a trillion dollars per year.  Below you will find a list of things that we throw our money away on each year.

        $6 billion in unused gift cards each year.  Did you know that if you are given a gift card that you may not want then there is a way to either exchange it or resell it? Even if you may have used some of the money on it and just don't want that card for some reason.  You can still resell the card. You will usually get around 75% of the money left from the unwanted card.  That is much better than having a card that you will not use and just throwing away the money. Check out sites like Plastic Jungle for reselling your gift cards.

        $7 billion in ATM fees each year.  Check with your bank to see if they have any ideas on how you can save money on your ATM fees. 

        $12 billion in traffic tickets each year. Are you driving too fast or parking in the wrong places? Look at the money that could be saved just by changing how we drive or where we park our car.

        $29 billion on candy each year.  If you are like me you may be thinking is candy a waste?  According to Yahoo Finance it is.  The negative nutritional value is not good for our bodies. In that case, we could save by not buying the candy and drop a few pounds.  Now you have two ways of saving.

        $59 billion on lottery tickets each year.  Americans spent $59 billion on lottery tickets in 2010.  Most of us didn't get rich from these tickets.  So again, this is wasted money.

        $49 billion on credit cards interest each year. We need to stop wasting money on credit card interest and end the debt cycle for good.

$76 billion on soda each year.  As we all know these drinks provide no nutritional value, and we are better off drinking water.

$146 billion in wasted energy each year.  In past articles I have given you many ways to save on energy.  If you need more ideas then please visit energy.gov or the Energy Star's website for more help.

$165 billion in wasted food each year. This is a real sad thought.  With so many people doing without food these days it just hurts to think that we are wasting this much food.  I again have given many ideas on how to save your food for a later date.  If you still need more ideas please Google ways to save your certain food items. 

This is a long list of things that we are wasting money on.  If you are wasting money on any of these then you now know how to starting saving even more money now.

Can you think of any other ideas that we are wasting money on?