Shootin' It Straight - Money Monthly

Dimes make dollars, as the saying goes. The dime itself has become largely irrelevant in the modern world of finance. What once cost nickels and dimes now costs dollar bills. These days, we're getting milked dry by small amounts of money siphoned off daily, weekly, and monthly. The new game is to break everything down into a multitude of minuscule, stand alone charges billed month after month. Individually, the amounts seem insignificant, and most are voluntary. Despite the promise that picking and choosing what we pay for will ultimately lower our monthly bills, it rarely seems to work out that way.

A new phone costs you twenty five bucks a month. Insurance and added extras tack on a handful more. Various streaming services, each seemingly insignificant on its own, can eat up a day's pay before you know it. Music services sell you a package just to listen to your favorite tunes. The three major delivery services hit you with subscriptions or minimum order requirements. Monthly memberships for everything from car washes to coffee shops will chew through your wallet without you even realizing it.

These services are designed to get their claws into you with introductory rates that look mighty appealing. Over time, those rates gradually creep upward. Companies count on you either rolling with the increases or simply forgetting you ever signed up in the first place. It's no secret that financing and smaller, more digestible payments lure more buyers into the fold. Just be careful those nickel-and-dime payments don't add up to more than you ever bargained for.

We dropped cable television to save money by switching to streaming services. Now we pay for four of them. We let our desire for a new phone drag us into a long term contract. We signed up for a membership to a club we rarely visit. All these things seem to have the same goal: milking us dry while we stand in the head chute, smiling as it happens.

As much as I gripe about the situation, we must admit that we're often the culprits doing it to ourselves. We'd all be better off with one less notification, a couple fewer bills to juggle, and a few fewer automatic deductions from our bank accounts. We don't need every service, every membership, or every new gadget dangled in front of us.

Those dimes and dollars may not seem like much when they leave our accounts, but over time, they add up to thousands. Maybe it's time we quit counting what each little convenience costs us by the month and start counting what it costs us by the year. After all, a dime here and a dollar there can leave a mighty big hole in your pocket.