25 Things You Should Be Spending More Money On

Don't let the seventeen-year-old Men's Wearhouse associate with spiky hair named Devin fool you: that suit shouldn't be baggy. Unless you're going to play bass for a ska band, you want dress clothes that fit. So many men spend hundreds of dollars on suits that don't sit well on their form. Go to a tailor. If you can't afford a tailor, bring a female, gay man, or fashion forward straight guy with you as a shopping companion. They are right and you are wrong, especially about that t-shirt that says "Federal Body Inspector."

Men tend to overspend on casual kicks and fail to allot the correct cash flow toward dress shoes. It's best to have a few pairs of dress shoes to switch up depending on the occasion. You probably want something corporate, something fancy, and something for a first date or events that are informally formal. No need to go Sarah Jessica Parker on your closet, but don't wear the same black dress shoes from your sister's wedding to every non-sneaker occasion.

You don't have to have a green thumb to keep a plant alive. Some of them only require water a couple times a week. If you're truly forgetful, just buy a cactus. A couple plants can make the most stark, bohemian shithole of a room a little more palatable. No, we're not talking about those kind of plants; you already know how they can make your life better.

Equating possessions with masculinity is a fool's errand. The clothes don't make the man, the man's behavior makes the man. That said, the ripping of velcro is not necessarily a great sound for your date to hear when your settling up the tab. Invest in a good, sturdy wallet with the right number of pockets that's just the correct size for you. If the wallet feels nice and organizes your cash, cards, and ID just the way you like, life will feel just a little bit better—even when there's less scratch you'd like inside it.

Even if you live in the biggest cities in the country, you are never more than two hours away from some serious nature. Every national park is a thing of beauty; a great state or local park can be found forty-five minutes from anywhere. Buy a small tent, a sleeping bag, and a decent all-weather jacket, and you're ready to experience nature's beauty. A bonus: if a female agrees to go camping with you, you are going to have sex. House parties offer no such guarantees.

Not all of us have what it takes to be a handyman, but that doesn't mean that you should be the guy who borrows a hammer from his neighbor either. Tools are relatively cheap, especially considering the time and money they can save you. Start with a hammer, two screwdrivers (flathead and Phillips), a tape measurer, and a wrench. When you have a need for them, add a saw, allen wrenches, a drill, or whatever other tools you need. You may not end up a Mr. Fix-it, but you will no longer be emasculated by depending on your friends or your landlord to take care of every household issue.

Lessons are different from hobbies. A hobby is something you already know how to do that you pursue for pleasure. Lessons are for activities you don't really know much about, but would like to get better at. Almost all of us could use a dose of humility and there is no faster way to get there than to take any kind of lessons. Whether you're learning piano, French, or salsa dancing, stumbling through something new is a valuable experience that is sure to give you some measure of perspective. We never stop learning, unless, of course, we choose to.

Procrastinators don't have attractive work spaces. If you find a nice desk and a comfortable chair to work in, you'll be surprised at how your productivity suddenly skyrockets. Don't just pick up the first desk you find at IKEA, on Craig's List, or on the side of the road. Sit at the desk; walk through your spreadsheet and email game; think about if this is a place you could sit for hours at a time. Once you get that desk back to the crib, keep it clean and organized, even attractive. You still might waste time, but at least you'll waste time while sitting at your desk.

Neon beer signs need not be the centerpiece of your interior décor. A couple pieces from a local artist can cost as much as dinner and a movie. If you're in a paycheck to paycheck situation, Craigslist, Goodwill, and Ebay can yield some pieces that break up those white walls nicely. No one's asking you to dive head first into the art scene; just know that there is more to life than Thomas Kinkade and "Dogs Playing Poker."

If you don't go to the gym, it is probably because you don't belong to the right gym. Very few people are completely workout averse. If you hate lifting weights or jogging, boxing or swimming might not kill your motivation quite so thoroughly. Saving money on a gym membership isn't really saving money if you can't stand stepping foot in your dingy, cramped, crowded local fitness center.

Outside of pizza toppings and Bloody Mary garnishes, working vegetables into your diet is extremely annoying. It feels weird making yourself a salad as a mid-afternoon snack. But, you'd better get used to adding ruffage to your diet, as carbs treat your body less and less kindly with age. When prepared with an ounce of care, asparagus and eggplant can be almost as good as the meat dish they're complimenting. Almost.

Getting out of bed early in the morning never gets easier. One way to make sunrise productivity a little more palatable is to have good coffee or tea to look forward to. The cold, dark hours of the morning are the best for getting shit down, but they're, you know, cold and dark. Also, if you buy good coffee or tea, you be less tempted to spend $5 on Starbucks' burnt bean sugar drinks topped with whipped cream.

Networking shouldn't begin and end at networking events. After you grab the obligatory business cards or you meet a valuable contact on a project, follow up. Get a beer or coffee one on one. If you don't need anything from them, all the better. When you do need a favor, they'll remember that you had a great, genuine conversation back when you didn't want something from them. If you always go to the same bar with the same people, everybody there might know your name, but nobody new is learning your name.

Everybody beats themselves up for going out to eat too often, but rarely do you see anyone do anything about it. If you populate your freezer with frozen dinners and chicken nuggets, of course you'll be tempted to hit up Seamless on the reg. If you learn how to cook a couple dishes you really enjoy, then you'll be less tempted to dine with General Tso three times a week.

If you don't enjoy doing something you're not going to do it. Not reading enough? Is your Kindle collecting dust in a drawer? Does the only reading you're doing involve scrolling through BuzzFeed GIF lists on the toilet? It might be because the toilet is the most comfortable place you sit in a day. Craig's List is full of comfy recliners that wives demand their husbands get rid of. That poor living room redecorating man's loss is your gain. Also, do yourself a favor and have the chair face somewhere besides directly at the television.

If you live in a major city, you'll find that someone you admire is speaking once a week. Politicians and professors, artists and authors make the rounds to lectures, symposiums, and forums. For less than $20 bucks you can sit face to face with the people that inspire you. Watching great men and women speak in person is worth the price of admission. You're guaranteed to get something out of it that you don't experience by watching them appear as a news show talking head or on a late-night host's couch.

At one point or another, people came to believe that relaxation is for pussies. The old days of men's men chilling in a sauna with a cigar or settling in for a deep-tissue massage have been replaced by the idea that relaxing without alcohol is reserved for hippie losers. Finding a way that you enjoy to relax can be a game changer. Yoga, sauna, massage, meditation: it's all good. Finding a preferred method of relaxation is just as important as finding a way to stay fit. An organized mind is a fit mind. To keep the mind organized, sometimes you have to wipe the slate clean.

Don't just donate blindly to charity. It will make you feel better for a minute, but the feeling will fade. Research and commit to a cause. Donate time as well as money and become invested. If you can visit your soup kitchen your little league team, you'll feel far more connected than you would be to a check written out to a faceless entity.

The reality of modern life is that many of us have a thing we do for money and a thing that we wish we could be doing for money. As a result, our days are pretty full. Even if you're on that rise-and-grind tip, it's good to have a hobby. It is immensely pleasurable to get involved with something that you don't have to be good at, that you can simply enjoy. Not everything you do needs to be turned into a side hustle. In fact, you don't even have to post on Facebook every time you do it. Even in our hyper-connected, monetized world, it is okay to do something simply because you enjoy it.

There are trips and then there are vacations. Though Americans are great at taking two weeks a year to force feed themselves margaritas in front of the shore, rarely do we take short trips for the sake of our sanity. It's easy to craft excuse after excuse for why you can't get away from the grind for a weekend. There are too many errands; there is too much work to catch up on; there are too many birthday parties and so forth. Once you actually get in the car, you'll be surprised at how quickly these excuses melt away. When you get back from wherever you went to recharge, you'll find that you didn't really miss anything at all.

Unless you have some serious health issues no one needs those gold-plated insurance plans. But, that doesn't mean that the minimum coverage makes sense either. As you rush to sign up for an insurance plan before the deadline, make sure you read the different options carefully; a few extra dollars a month could save you money on doctor's visits and medicine down the road.

It is so easy to take your family for granted. Once you grow up and move away from the home of your youth, you need to nurture your relationship with your parents and siblings. A strong relationship can easily devolve into the exchange of phone pleasantries and gift cards. When Father's Day, Mother's Day, and birthdays roll around, connect. Ask your family members what gifts they would like and make it happen. Every time I go home and look at my dad's Barack Obama Grill Spatula and accompanying "Fired Up and Ready to Grill" apron, I know that I'm not a completely terrible son.

Enough shitty tippers have gone viral that you likely already know it is a bad idea to stiff your waitress. If you put a goose egg in the tip column accompanied by a bitchy phrase, Reddit will have your ass. But we're not just talking about servers. Tipping for services that aren't normally tipped benefits you in the long-run. You throw an extra couple dollars to the dry cleaner or the cable guy, and you'll be surprised how much your service improves next time. This isn't about buying someone's favor. It is about deciding that you want to build a relationship. Any time you tip outside a restaurant, odds are that it will come back to you and more.

Go to your friend's show. Check out their recreational softball league. Support them through their first chili cookoff. You aren't too busy; you just think it's going to suck. If someone asks you to come to something, and we're not talking about a blanket Facebook event here, but if they actually ask you, they probably really want you there. So, pony up the fifteen bucks and go see Shakespeare set on the eve of the financial collapse or whatever dumb thing they're doing. Then people will come see the dumb thing that you do in your spare time and everyone will be happy.

How do you buy time? By making less money. If you are finally comfortably making ends meet, think about your work-life balance. Are you enjoying life to the fullest? If not, do you still need that side job at Game Stop or The Sunglass Hut? It's easy to forget that America has a far more work-centered culture than many other countries. You don't have to work eighty hours a week. If you're boss thinks that you do, you don't have to stay at that job. Great careers aren't usually nine-to-five punch-in-punch-out situations, but many people stay late at work because they think they are supposed to, not because they need to. All you're supposed to do is get the most out of life, and sometimes that means working less and making less so you can live a little more.