15 Expensive Things That Are NOT Worth the Money
You dream about becoming rich so you can afford everything you ever wanted, only to find out that you hate having to take care of so many things. Most expensive things are just a clever way to separate rich people from their money. If last Sunday, we looked at what are considered to be good purchases, here are 15 expensive things that are not worth the money.
Welcome to alux.com, the place where future billionaires come to get inspired. First up, owning a yacht or a private jet. Look, chartering is the name of the game for the average rich. If you go on tour all the time, getting your own plane borders on break-even territory; for everyone else, it's a liability. You eat up just so you can brag about owning a plane—that's the truth.
Okay, it's the same with yachts and boats. They become just something you have to bother taking care of, and the maintenance and hangar space is actually pretty expensive. It's always better to be friends with someone who has a yacht than to be the person who actually owns it. The two happiest days of owning a boat are the day you buy it and the day you sell it. Most rich people actually regret purchasing both planes and yachts.
Luxury technology products—they're the last people to hate on luxury brands, okay? But there has to be a limit, and that limit is at technology. Who remembers the Virtue phones? These things used to cost thirty thousand dollars. These were all the rage in the early 2000s. But the problem with luxury tech is that, well, luxury is linear. Dom Pérignon is basically the same since forever, and the heritage and limited availability make it a luxury product.
Tech is non-linear, meaning the technology evolves exponentially and is prone to disruption. In the case of the Virtue phone, in 2007, Apple launched the iPhone, a superior technological product. The tech is so good and so valuable that to spend the extra money on a Virtue phone became seen as such a dumb decision that the entire brand collapsed. It's the same with luxury music speakers from Louis Vuitton, the gold-covered iPhones, and more. If the next model comes with better tech, it immediately invalidates the previous model—that's just how it goes.
Drugs and alcohol—have you noticed how people around you are fully quitting alcohol? This is especially true amongst the younger generation. Consumption of both drugs and alcohol comes with diminishing returns, and the negative results compound over time. Now, we understand that not everybody responds the same way to the same stimuli, but across the medium to long-term horizons, the data becomes clear. Your brain is affected; your organs are affected. You will die sooner, and you will enjoy life less.
On top of that, you feel depleted the next day. In this case, the price to pay is just too high, especially knowing you don't get much out of the experience. Also, in terms of your actual experience, look, there's no difference between drinking a $75 bottle of wine and a $750 bottle. Even the most qualified sommeliers, who when tested, would rate the same bottle of wine both high and then low just minutes later. Even more, 23 of the mass sommeliers were stripped of their title just a couple of years ago because they were cheating during the test. Just putting it out there.
We'll talk more specifically about wine toward the end of the video. Expensive baby clothes or gear—you told yourself that when you become a parent, you'll fix all the holes your childhood left in you. For most of you, those holes were about not having enough. So you buy your kid everything that's new. The baby crib—you'll use it for like three to four months max. The brand name clothes you buy will last until the first time they get put in the dryer and drop down two sizes.
You buy your child really fancy toys, and they end up playing with your car keys anyway. As snobby as our channel can be sometimes when it comes to choosing the highest quality product in order to get you the highest return for your buck, look, okay, when it comes to babies, stick to the essentials. The biggest mistake parents make is to believe they can buy their children a happy childhood. Time and love beat everything else.
High ticket business events—are you ready for a hot take? Here, at business events, you get reminded more than you're taught anything new, especially if you're a self-learner already consuming content online and reading books. These events are more entertainment than education. That's why most of them have changed their names to include the word "festival". Ten thousand dollars to see Tony Robbins in Sydney seems excessive, even with the super buffet and meal refreshments and the e-downloads afterwards.
Now, we spend on average between $50,000 to $100,000 on self-development per year. This includes books, events, membership clubs, strategic coaching when we need it—and honestly, these business events have been popping up everywhere around the world, and they don't actually do much in driving your business forward. They're expensive in the first place. You feel good in the moment, but a week later, there isn't much you really took away from it.
Where you see an actual benefit is in the private membership groups, where you're around people with a similar net worth to you. These cost anywhere between $10,000 to $100,000 per year, and there are two main benefits of joining this kind of group. One, you get to learn directly from people who've actually done the work already, and they can share firsthand experience. Two, you get to be part of a community.
The problem is, most people don't have $20K to join a group, especially if you're in the early stages of your journey. So all that knowledge is kind of inaccessible to you, or at least that was the case until now. Last year, we decided to fill this gap ourselves and give everyone access to the same kind of information these people get inside these really expensive private groups. That's why we launched the Alux app for only $99 a year.
We pay industry experts hundreds of thousands of dollars on your behalf to share with you the most valuable things they learned through trial and error. The app saves you years of mistakes and accelerates how fast you'll hit your goals. Go to alux.com/app and get yourself a yearly subscription! People will think you finally got your life together and became some kind of business and life genius when in reality you just started using the Alux app for 10 to 15 minutes a day. That's alux.com/app to get started.
Expensive jewelry—everyone knows how much they paid for jewelry. The problem is you only realize just how much money it's worth when you try to sell it. It doesn't sell for what you paid for it, not at all! This is one of the biggest scams in the world. Trying to resell a diamond ring, for example, will reveal a 5 to 10x discount. You paid $10,000 for a diamond ring that will only sell for $1,500. There's more emotional value than there is monetary value in jewelry.
Once the price of something goes beyond the raw value of the gold used in making the chain or the bracelet, you're getting swindled. At the end of the day, gold, silver, and platinum—these are plain commodities, so there's absolutely no reason for branded gold to be worth more just because of what's inscribed on it. We're the ones mentally attributing the additional value due to emotional reasons. Luxury brands know this really well, and they leverage their brand to sell you commodity-driven products. This is why Tiffany's is able to sell you a $500 ring for $5,000.
Rare pets—unless you're racing horses or a professional breeder, there's no reason to overspend on pets. Not only are rare breeds usually linked to unethical breeding habits, but more often than not, these animals come with health vulnerabilities. They love the same straight across the board, no matter if it's a purebred or a mutt, and most pets can be trained the same way. You're almost never getting a superior product, no matter what people tell you. Sure, you can have your preferences, pay what's fair for a rescue if you want, but there's no reason to pay 100x more for a pet.
If Tiger King taught us anything, it's that exotic pets are a dangerous business, and that even to this day, there are more tigers in captivity in the U.S. than there are in the wild as a whole. Bottles in the club—expensive and unnecessary! Okay, $10,000, $15,000, or $60,000 on a bottle will never make sense to us. A bottle of Moët costs 50 bucks; a bottle of Dom about 200. That's your baseline. Everything you pay above that for the same product is just status signaling.
Status comes from you saying, "Look at how much money I can afford to throw away!" Go out, my friend. Okay, have fun, do whatever you want with your money, but you've probably been through this. For a couple of days later, you're thinking those couple of bottles would have paid for a trip somewhere really cool or for a car. The more you understand the impact of money, the less likely you are to waste it.
Expensive water—somebody's gotta say this, okay? Because we're guilty of it too. There's absolutely no reason to pay extra for something you can get for free. The reason why Voss water or Evian seem to taste better than regular water is because they come in thick glass bottles. If you get yourself a reusable bottle and throw that baby in the fridge, you're good to go forever! Back when Alex was more focused on the luxury side of things, we did a ranking of the most expensive water bottles in the world, and we remember there were a few gimmicky $20,000, $60,000, or $900,000 bottles of water.
And okay, look, can we all agree that unless that water is the difference between life and death, none are worth that asking price? Okay, good. Let's move on because you're probably guilty of the next one too—souvenirs. In every household, there's a drawer or even an entire section of the house filled with nonsense. These are gifts that other people bring to you that you have no purpose for. It's simply junk you purchased a while back or random things that you've now somehow accumulated over the years.
When we say souvenirs, we're not just talking about those knickknacks you get while traveling. The treadmill that's been covered by dust for the last 17 months—that's a souvenir from back when you thought you'd be a runner at home. So is that Peloton, and the books you bought and lied to yourself that at some point you'll get into reading. So is the waffle maker or the chocolate fountain, that PlayStation VR 2 you haven't touched in months. That drives the point home—you bought these things when you thought you were going to be something else than what you are, and reality proved you wrong.
It doesn't matter what the price tag was—all of them were too expensive for what you got in return and definitely weren't worth it. Expensive bottles of wine—sure, some people collect wine. Sure, some people resell wine for profit. Statistically though, you're not one of those people. For the average person, there's almost no distinguishable difference between a cheap wine and an expensive wine. The biggest return you get here is knowing what kind of wine fits well with what you're drinking.
Instead of dropping hundreds of dollars on bottles of wine, we'll simply give you the answer: Champagne is salty; that's why caviar goes well with champagne. Chardonnay—think seafood. Riesling—a salad. Pinot Noir—anything earthy, think pizza with cheeses and mushrooms. Cabernet Sauvignon—steak; Sauvignon Blanc—a soft finish, think salmon or scallops. And a Rosé—sushi, sandwiches, or vegetarian food. Getting the right kind of wine for the dish makes it taste 100 times better, and you'll never need to go above budget since for most people, there won't be any difference.
Canadian real estate—you might think this is a joke, okay? But based on what we're seeing on real estate websites, the market is a joke. Not only in Canada but in many parts of the world. Some property prices are fully disconnected from reality. This beautiful house in Vancouver is selling for the fair price of $4.5 million, or this beautiful townhouse for just under $4 million U.S.
Meanwhile, in Europe, you could pick up a literal castle or chateau for under $1 million. There are hamlets or villages you can buy in Italy for three to four million dollars—like 20 plus properties with their entire micro economy. We know that some people still have preferences on where to live, but while you might be living in poverty in a rich place, with the same resources, you could live a comfortable middle-class life someplace else. At some point, this is a choice you're making.
Expensive home gym equipment and membership—we briefly mentioned the treadmill. It sounds really good in theory, building a home gym and getting yourself on a schedule, until you need to move some furniture around, and it ends up on the bench press. Your pull-up rack now holds clothes, and a yearly membership you haven't used since that one time you got a cold six months ago. Although the internet is there and you're aware that working out will benefit you, most people fail to build quality habits.
They fail to transition to this new identity. Actually, most people wish their life was different. Some even know what they would want out of life: to move to a new city, to find a partner, to do something else for a living, or finally be appreciated by their peer group. But they don't know what it would actually take to make the change.
Well, for the last year we’ve been working on another flagship product called Reinvent Mastery. It's a hands-on course that will hold your hand and give you specific actions to take to reinvest in who you are in under six months. Everything we've mentioned before—changing what you do for a living, moving to a different country, making friends there, changing the way other people treat you—with concrete examples and step-by-step plans in all directions.
The course is currently in post-production and will be available in the next two months. Finally, we built the course that you're waiting for. Go to alux.com/reinvent and make sure to add yourself to the email list. Those who were on it at the time of launch will get a massive discount over everyone else. That's alux.com/reinvent—don't say we didn't let you know. And as with all of our products, if for any reason you don't get the results you are looking for, we'll give you all your money back.
Fancy kitchen appliances—be honest with yourself, okay? When you decided to pay a fortune for all of those appliances, did you end up using the same three ones over and over again? When's the last time you actually made bread in that bread maker? When's the last time you used the juicer? What about the robot your in-laws got you for your wedding? You didn't, did you? You still order food or throw things in the oven.
We paid over four thousand dollars for a Miele steam oven and microwave that we use twice a month tops because it's a pain in the rear to clean it! And don't get us started on the warming drawer, okay? It's a drawer that keeps your food warm, and it costs three thousand dollars! More money doesn't always mean better.
And last but not least, going to weddings you don't want to go to. Yep, we're going there. Or you know better? Set or actually, we're not going. If you don't want to go to a destination wedding on the other side of the world where you pay for your flights, accommodation, and you're expected to bring a gift or pay cash, it's completely understandable.
In Europe, it's common to gift money to the newlyweds instead of using the registry method; it's just simpler that way. The problem is most of your acquaintances will get married around the same time. The cost per wedding sometimes takes a good chunk of your monthly salary. As a result, if you have three or four weddings in a summer, well, the average person might not be able to go on vacation because you're going to all of these weddings instead.
So here's the deal: this will be one of the most valuable things you'll have learned this month. Everything you want out of life is on the other side of just a couple of difficult conversations. Learn to say no; learn to let people know how you really feel and let them down easy for extra kindness points. So yeah, you're probably guilty of a couple of these on the list, right? Let us know which ones in the comments.
And as a thank you for watching until the end, of course, we've saved a bonus for you: staying in a soulless marriage just to keep all your money. If you've watched the previous Sunday video, we talked about expensive things that are worth the money, and one of them was a good divorce lawyer. If it's gotten to a point where divorce seems like the only solution, the only way out, then do it! Stop caring about the money and just go ahead with it.
Sure, you will take a financial hit in the short to medium term, but at least it gives you the opportunity to go through the rest of your life with someone you actually like. Pull up Jeff Bezos if you have to—get yourself in shape, get with a hottie, and live a little bit! If you are who you think you are, you will make the money back. But every year you spend in misery, you'll never get that back if you don't leave.
We're big fans of meditation here at Alux. We come from a generation where if something's broken, you try to fix it first. But if fixing it doesn't work, well, maybe it's time to move on or do what Jeff does once again and build a rocket company to send your partner on a solo mission to space. And whatever happens, happens. Jeff Bezos is wild.
Okay, all right, that's it for today. If you made it this far in the video, write the word "Jeff" in the comments because why not? Let's have some fun with it. We'll see you back here next time.