We could all use a little more cash in our wallets, or stocks in our portfolio, or funds in our savings account, and we would all like to be healthier. I wanted to put together a list of things that people spend money on every day that are bad for them, and show how much you could save by eliminating unnecessary spending, while at the same time improving you health.

1. Coffee - Assuming you buy a coffee per day, 5 days per week you are probably spending $780-1300 per year. Cut out that morning coffee by just bringing a container of water from home, and you wallet and your body will thank you.

2. Tobacco Products - If you smoke a pack per day, you are spending about $1800 per year on cigarettes. That alone is a decent chunk of change but health insurance is cheaper for non-smokers, so you are missing out on that savings as well. Im not sure of the cost of other tobacco products, but I assume it has to be similar.

3. Lunch - Again assuming you go out for lunch 5 days per week and you spend $5 more going out that you would spend if you pack your lunch from home, you are spending $1300 more than you would spend if you packed your lunch at home and brought it to work. That sandwich from home is going to be a lot healthier than the burger from McDonalds you usually get.

4. Candy - If you eat even one small piece of candy per day, you are probably spending over $100 per year on candy. That figure could easily double or more if you eat a lot of candy. Candy is high in sugar and fat, so it is unhealthy and unnecessary spending.

5. Alcohol - The average american family spends $450 per year on alcohol. Again, if you are a heavy drinker you could easily spend twice this amount per year. Now a little alcohol doesn’t hurt but cut out most of it and save yourself $400 per year.

So I logged into my financial aid account for my chosen college and I saw that I would be getting $6200 per year until I get my bachelors degree in scholarships. Then I saw that one of my scholarships wasn’t setup correctly in the system and would actually be giving me about $1200 more than it was reporting. That means I will be getting $7400 per year ($3700 per semester) to pay for college. Now I am going to college in state, and staying at home, so college will not cost me that much.

Now you might say that I am not getting that much in scholarships, but I am getting that money from only 3 sources and I was not valedictorian or any other special person in high school. In fact, I didn’t participate in extra curricular activities at all.

So where did I get the scholarships? The largest scholarship is the Florida Bright Futures Florida Academic Scholarship. Next comes the presidential scholarship from the university I am attending, and after that is a small scholarship from the honors college within that university.

Now I don’t know exactly how much books and fees will end up costing me, but I am almost certain I will have a little extra money after each semester.

If you want to become popular on the internet, and you do because popularity leads to riches, you have to give something away. Yes, you read that right, make something good and give it away for free. An excellent example of this principle is Firefox and Opera web browsers. They are both great internet browsers but Firefox has 18% of the market share while Opera has less than 1%. Why? Opera used to charge for the ad-free version of their browser. The free version was littered with ads. They learned their lesson and stopped charging in 2005 but that was way to late. They aren’t even close to catching up. Last year Mozilla corporation earned $72 million from firefox through it’s integration with google, how much do you think Opera was making from its ads and sales?

I could list examples all day long but that isn’t necessary. Go through your favorites and pick out the ones you pay for. I know I can’t find any.