Sometimes we waste money on things we don't need without even realising.

It can be difficult to spot things that are wasting cash because an item's affordability is subjective based on situation and personal preferences. Here are five things that may be a waste of your money.

Mistakes. They're a thing. It's in our nature to address what's immediately wrong and once the fire is out, work to prevent said error from occurring again. But even this final step might not be enough -- always use a mistake as a chance to step back and take a more general look at your behaviour, mindset and processes.

Several years ago, I made a huge financial mistake. As a freelancer, I neglected to pay my taxes throughout the year and ended up owing the IRS thousands in April. Not only was I flat broke, I also felt like a fool. But the thing is, beating yourself up over these kinds of mistakes makes you more likely to repeat them.

Making a mistake big enough to get you fired is a situation no one wants to be in, but knowing how to react could save you from losing your job. Here's what to do, if you ever find yourself in such an awful spot.

Lunges require you to bring one foot in front of the other and shift your weight forward, but what happens next can say a lot about your muscular weaknesses. Stability issues are pretty common, but the root of the problem can be anything from having a weak core, to tight hips, to unstable feet. Let's take a closer look.

Several years ago, I had a co-worker -- we'll call her Jane -- who was assigned to work with our SVP's office on a high-profile event. The project (and the staff, for that matter) was pretty rough, and Jane would often come to the rest of us at the end of a stressful day to air her woes of angry emails, unreasonable demands and generally difficult people.

Putting off a project until you have all the details right seems like common sense. If you only feel that hesitation because you're afraid to make a mistake, though, you'll never actually finish.

Your food processor is a great tool for making your own, fresh-roasted nut butters, but throwing toasted almonds or peanuts in the bowl straight out of the oven can wreak havoc on your trusty appliance.

How many times have you rushed through something without stopping to read the instructions first, making everything that much more difficult for you? It turns out this mistake can affect your business just as badly as it does, say, a hasty piece of IKEA furniture, and you could be sabotaging yourself without even realising.

Emails and text messages go off half-cocked all the time, whether it's a sensitive work message on which you unintentionally copied the whole company in on, or — as in Peter Dutton's recent stuff-up — a ranty text message that went to the target of your ire rather than to a crony.

Failure seems to be having a moment, and that's great. Embracing failure means you grow and progress, and that's a good thing. However, in your zest to fail, don't forget to actually learn from those failures.

Few of us enjoy making mistakes, but mistakes are inevitable when you're trying something new or challenging -- and failure is how we get better. Coder Christina Cacioppo writes about teaching students programming and how the most successful beginners were the ones who made more mistakes.

We can be pretty mean to ourselves when we mess up or get rejected. We call ourselves names, we criticise, we shame ourselves. Psychologist Guy Winch has a better idea: play detective about the situation.

Inevitably, people make mistakes when they're on the job. Nobody's perfect and it's how you tackle the aftermath that defines who you are as person and an employee.

Everyone makes financial mistakes, but it's all too easy to dwell on them. And unfortunately, dwelling is counterproductive. When it comes to your finances, you're better off looking to the future rather than the past.