We live in a society of excess. Think about everything you ate yesterday. How much of it did you need to survive? How much of it could you have lived without? How much of it could have been better used by starving children in a third-world country? How much of it went to those children? Think about everything you wore last week. Did you honestly need all of it just to cover and protect yourself from the elements? Think about everything you bought this month. How much money did you spend on things you did not actually require to live your life?

If you honestly answered all those questions and don’t feel at least a little bit guilty now, you’re either incredibly humble or have absolutely no shame. I am certainly no great example in keeping one’s expenses to a minimum, but some excesses I see around me go beyond cruelty and selfishness and into plain senselessness. In all honesty, what is the point of spending $5.00 on something you know for a fact will break within two minutes of use? To test and see if you’re right? That’s like jumping on a bear trap to see if it really will hurt like hell. It makes no sense and serves no point. This is one of the most extreme and perplexing problems I see, but there are lesser ones, as well.

A time-honored piece of nonsense has stayed with us at least since the days of Rome. Buying food, not because you’re hungry, but because you like the food. I am ridiculously partial to Chocolate-Banana Milkshakes. Why? Because they are awesome, silly. One day, I noticed a special at Burger King for a Chocolate-Banana Milkshake. It was expensive. I had enough money. I bought it and drank it. Perhaps two thirds of the way through it, I couldn’t drink anymore and threw it away. A waste, yes, but it gets worse. The next day, I had too much work to eat lunch at school so once school was done, I went across the street with a friend to buy food for myself. I did not have enough money.

Luckily for my metabolism, my friend was kind enough to pay for my meal, but it was still an unfortunate waste, not only of the third of the milkshake, but also of the money I spent on it. If I had had the patience to wait until the next day when I was hungry enough for a meal, I could have enjoyed the brilliance of a Chocolate-Banana Milkshake AND saved my friend a Burger King’s meal worth of money(don’t worry too much about him, he now has mocking rights of me). These are simple mistakes of excess that seem innocuous and even nonexistent on their own. But when you add up four years worth of thirds of Chocolate-Banana Milkshakes, you might find you’re missing a significant amount of money.

Baby: The only renewable food source.