Text Messages -- 6,500% Markup
Text messages are such a tiny piece of data that they cost carriers only about one-third of a cent to deliver. But on a pay-per-text plan, the messages typically cost 20 cents to send and 10 cents to receive... that's a markup of 6,500%.

Movie Theater Popcorn -- 900% Markup
A medium bag of popcorn costs just 60 cents to make but retails for $6, a whopping 900% markup. An economics professor says theater owners have to mark up popcorn so much because they don't make a profit from the movie tickets.

'Free' Credit Reports That'll Cost You
There's nothing free about forking over $179 a year for information at Freecreditreport.com. Instead you can go to AnnualCreditReport.com, which is run by the Federal Trade Commission, and get a truly free report once a year from each of the credit agencies.

Name-Brand Painkillers -- 60% Markup
Is Advil's sleek design worth 160% more than the same medicine in a plain package? A 50-count bottle of 200 mg Advil tablets costs $8.49, versus just $5.29 for the exact same bottle of generic ibuprofen. Brand names may give us more peace of mind, but the cheaper stuff works just as well, and in exactly the same way. It's required to, by law.

Wine at Restaurants -- 500% Markup
Ordering wine in a restaurant can cost six times as much as drinking the same bottle at home. At the Olive Garden in Manhattan's Times Square, a bottle of Sutter Home's White Zinfandel goes for $24 -- but it retails online for as little as $4 per bottle.

Think that's rough? Prices for wine sold by the glass are tripled or even quadrupled since restaurants have to account for the chance that they won't sell the whole bottle before it spoils.

College Textbooks -- $900 a Year!
Each semester, college students shell out hundreds of dollars on textbooks they'll use for only a few months. The average estimated cost of books and supplies is approximately $900 per year.

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