As you’re leaving the mall with your friends, a shirt in the window display catches your eye. You go into the store to “check it out”. As you were waiting in the check-out line, you thought to yourself, “Do I really need this?” And the answer to that is, you probably didn’t. You enjoy having it for the first couple of times you wear it. Then soon enough, it ends up in the part of your closet along with other articles of abandoned clothing, where it might as well have disappeared into Narnia.

One day you were invited to eat at some restaurant with your friends, but you couldn’t go because you’ve spent all of your money already. So you sit at home, sulking and thinking about the money that was used to buy that shirt, which is pretty much nonexistent to you now, that could’ve been saved for this.

There are about 26,873,000 teens in the U.S. And only about 40%-60% of them are currently saving up their money. And even then, 57% of teens say that they are saving up money for more clothes. There’s only so many things you can buy before you realize that you should be saving your money.

And for the approximate 310 million adults in the U.S.,

There’s 564,708 people without homes in the U.S., as of this January. Yet the amount of debt, which is still rising, in the U.S. is $18,239,004,976,000. Imagine how many people could have had their lives back if the amount of money that went to spending on unneeded things went towards helping others instead?