Top 8 Ways Laziness Costs You Money
Businesses know you're lazy; that's great for them and bad for you.
June 26, 2009— -- Brewer, abolitionist, social reformer and English Member of Parliament Sir Thomas Buxton said, "Laziness grows on people; it begins in cobwebs and ends in iron chains." Poet and philosopher Samuel Taylor Coleridge had an even darker take on the avoidance of work: "The love of indolence is universal, or next to it."
Indeed, laziness has been a scourge of humanity for millennia. In Christian mythology, sloth was one of the seven deadly sins, and the price was heavy. Transgressors were fed to the snake pits in Hell.
Click here to learn more about how laziness costs you money at our partner site, Forbes.com.
Better yet, why not just fleece them? These days countless businesses make hay by taking advantage of our collective indolence--everything from not bothering to spend 15 minutes surfing the Web for a better rate on a savings account to not taking half as much time to mail a $50 rebate on a new laptop computer.
Forbes asked a slew of experts, in fields ranging from personal finance to health care, to estimate the not-so-hidden costs or our laziness, and to demonstrate what little you can do--because in many cases that's all it takes--to turn things around. Here are some highlights.
Not Choosing the Best Rate on Your Savings Account
Many Americans are content to keep their money in traditional brick-and-mortar banks. Put less charitably, they're too lazy to root around for a better interest rate offered by online institutions. According to Justin Pritchard, banking expert at About.com, the best annual percentage rate you'll get at a traditional bank is about 0.75%, while Internet banks such as EmigrantDirect and Doral Bank Direct can easily offer a 2.25% APY. May not sound like much, but it all adds up. On a $100,000 principal, compounded monthly for five years, the higher interest rate yields an additional $8,000. A quick search for a good rate at an FDIC-insured bank plus the few clicks to set up an account can take under 30 minutes. "People are creatures of habit," said Pritchard. "If their money is somewhere, and they're busy doing other things, they don't necessarily try to do better. But if people have a decent chunk of change, it's worth it."
