Ringtones

I just had to copy the following post from the excellent Gill Fielding's blog for you. I think I've mentioned Gill before, she is the founder of the Wealth Company, is already a millionaire and has a keen interest in helping other people become wealthy too. Here's what Gill has to say about mobile phone ringtones:

I constantly harp on about how being wealth is simply a matter of choice: we all have enough money coming into our lives to have a choice of whether we become wealthy or not. Sadly, what most people do is choose to spend their money on stuff that doesn’t contribute to their wealth such as coffee, shoes, beer, and cigarettes.

And now there’s another expense that is about to zoom to the top of the all time ‘waste your money’ list and that’s ringtones.

Now I am not a big mobile phone user – I do have one but I have to crank the handle before it works – but so many people now have a mobile phone that we spend millions of pounds on ringtones – like that lovely frog theme. So in 2002 we spent £40 million on downloading junk to our mobiles, in 2004 that had risen to £320 million, and this year it is expected to reach £750 million.

Added to that we will spend £150 million on downloading games, £100 million on music downloads and a further £70 million on ‘wallpaper’ and screensavers.

Now if we add that lot up it comes to £1,070 million on downloading junk that frankly any one of us could live without.

So if even a fraction of this money was diverted into investments that compounded over time – there would be enough there to make sure we were all wealthy – and I could cry just at the futility of the money wasted on drivel like ringtones and screensavers.

If people could only make the right choice - to invest rather than waste - we could all be wealthy beyond our wildest dreams.