
4. Boats
There is a saying that the best days of owning a boat are the day that you buy it and the day you sell it. Believe it or not, there are 17 million recreational boats in the United States and one out of every 10 households owns one. You might assume that rich people are the ones owning these boats, but it’s actually a very middle-class dream. Most boat-owning households make less than $100,000 per year. When asked how often owners actually use those boats, only 25% of owners claimed they were heavily used.

Even small boats cost at least $10,000 to purchase, and there is a lot of expensive upkeep for repairs and cleaning. It’s not every smart to spend this amount of money on a hobby that is hardly ever used. For example, my next-door-neighbor owns a boat. He even built a huge garage to put it in and purchased a new pickup truck to tow it an hour to the beach. On nice days, he takes the boat out and cleans it lovingly with the music blaring, so the whole neighborhood knows that he owns a boat. But he only uses it to go fishing once a year.