HELPFUL GUIDE: How to lose money and flounder financially

Adding thousands to your credit card debt is easy with this step-by-step guide, writes Andrew Thorpe.

WASTING CASH: Let's be honest, you don't even really need to put your mind to anything to achieve this. Picture: fatido

HAVING recently had The Barefoot Investor recommended to me as the cure for all my monetary woes, I thought it was a good time to reveal that I've been working on my own financial self-help book.

It's called The Barefoot Person Who Is Barefoot Because They Can't Afford Shoes, and it's an easy-to-follow, step-by-step guide to adding thousands of dollars to your credit card every year while cheerfully embracing the inevitability of your eventual bankruptcy.

Here's a sneak preview.

1. Eat mostly fast food

The key here is to never hesitate.

Slightly tired after work? That's your cue to order a pizza.

You deserve it. It's just money and you're getting paid next week anyway.

Besides, it's called fast food for a reason. Think of all that extra time you're saving.

While the frugal are meal-prepping on a Sunday using bulk-purchased ingredients, you're driving to Hungry Jack's and strategically catching up on your podcasts.

Why not take some toll roads while you're at it?

2. Invest in CDs

Almost nothing loses resale value as quickly as CDs, or "compact discs" for the millennial history buffs out there.

Not only is the technology obsolete, but once you rip them to your computer you'll never touch them again.

Don't let that deter you - buy hundreds of them.

Hoard them, then spend your time at uni cataloguing them when you should be studying.

Show them off to girls you bring home and watch them feign interest then never call you again, further delaying any hope of establishing dual-earning capacity.

When the vinyl market resurgence arrives, rest easy. You dodged that bullet.

3. Set goals and then defer working towards them in favour of constantly reassessing them

Doubt yourself. Specifically, chop and change university degrees.

You don't want to become an expert in anything in particular, you want to become someone with a negligible amount of knowledge about absolutely everything.

That way it doesn't aid your employability in any way, but it does improve your ability to annoy people at parties.

4. Get involved with Bitcoin

This one doesn't come from personal experience but I know a sure-fire way to lose money when I see one.

5. Become a journalist

When you do settle on a career path, choose journalism.

The hours are long and everybody hates you, but on the plus side the pay is low so you're in no danger of paying off that debt.

Andrew Thorpe is a journalist at The Observer.

Originally published as HELPFUL GUIDE: How to lose money and flounder financially