Frugal Habits That Secretly Drain Your Bank Account

then end up having to pay your barber more money to fix the structural and emotional damage? Well, this isn't as easy as yours. No? Just me?

“The truth is not every savings hack actually saves you money.”

So today I'm reacting to BuzzFeed's list of money saving habits that are secretly draining your bank account to help you figure out if you're being a smart spender or sabotaging your progress. But before we dive in, we got to talk. This is our 467th episode.

And this show is free, may I remind you, and our team broke the news to me that 72% of you have not taken a momentary moment out of your day to tap the subscribe button. And if you all hit that subscribe button, think about this.

We'd be well over a million subscribers yesterday.

And how is the show free you ask? Well, in part thanks to Delete Me for sponsoring the channel. As per usual with BuzzFeed, there is 48 of these. So our team has hands selected the best ones because time is of the essence. First up, driving across town to save three sensing Allen on gas.

Here's the story. My dad left a gas station to drive across town to get three cents off. The second station had raised prices, so he drove back. The original station had raised prices in the one and a half hours that had taken to drive across town or back.

So two cross town trips to pay 15 cents extra. If that's not a dad move, I don't know what is. Well, dad.

“And here's the thing you're not understanding.”

It's not about the money. It's about the principle, okay? Dad was on the hunt. This was an adventure for him and he was happy to pay for the pleasure. But in general, is this hack worth it?

It depends. Three cents, absolutely not, to drive an hour and a half. But you can do some basic math in your head if it's 10 minutes further to save. 30 cents a gallon, well, that could be some meaningful savings right there. So I'm not anti this hack, but I do think you have to be realistic about it.

And what I do, I'm not going to hope that the price is right. I use an app like gas buddy, and it shows me, "Hey, here's the price it. Costco and Sam's and Croger, and I go, "Cool, I'm going to go to Costco and get gas because it's top tier. That's the good stuff."

Costco, you've done it again. But I do understand the ridiculousness of this because he had to drive further, which then use more gas, which then mean he had to get more gas.

So it's never ending cycle for dads out there.

Shout it out to the new balances. They're doing the most. What do you think? Next on the list of, so-called money saving habits that secretly drain your bank account, if you're an arts and crafts person, seeing something you want and thinking, "I can just

make it myself and it'll cost me a lot less." And as the devil whispering sweet lies, recklessly into the tender ear of your hubris, if you don't already have nearly all of the necessary supplies on hand, it will cost you more to make it yourself. Wow.

Beautiful. When are you going to create a writing class? English major, maybe? Artificial intelligence? Uh, this is wild.

Another comment.

I saw something on Instagram and was like, "Why buy it for $100 when I can spend $2,000

to make it myself? Too real, LOL. If nothing else, seeing the price of fabric made me appreciate why clothes that aren't made and a sweatshop are more expensive." I totally agree with this.

Rarely, do you make the Halloween costume from scratch and it was cheaper than you go into a spirit Halloween and just buying it? And this goes for a lot of things. This goes for food. You know, sometimes you're like, "Well, I want to make this very specific sandwich."

Well, for you to get all of the ingredients to make that sandwich, it's going to cost you $50. Buying the sandwich would cost you $10. Now, you know I'm a fan of making food at home. You could make $10 sandwiches with what you spend from $50.

So the math is in math thing here.

“You're going with George, you should use it.”

I get it. But I'm saying for one sandwich and you just look at the receipt you're going that didn't make sense. So I would think twice, especially with arts and crafts, to not go out and get all this stuff.

Knowing that you may or may not finish the project and may or may not be great and you may or may not use all of the equipment for the rest of your life. So be careful, pointy, go out and buy a sewing machine because you don't want to pay 20 bucks. Next up, avoiding doing maintenance on things, sure it's cheaper today and it will probably

all be fine tomorrow, but sooner or later it's going to bite you. Schedule your maintenance where it will be scheduled for you. Well, that's ominous. Scarf Knitter. If that really is your name?

Okay, so I'm getting the context of this. This is a saving habit that secretly drank, yeah, absolutely. You're trying to save money because you're going, well, I don't want to do the maintenance and it's expensive right now, I don't want to spend the money. Well, then it's going to cost you 5 or 10x to do the repair because you didn't do the

maintenance. So this goes with everything. Take care of everything in your life and very rarely we have to spend big money to repair or replace it, whether it's furniture, boots, clothing, anything in your house, anything

So here's the easy thing to do.

Set up a sinking fund in your budget, which I hope you're doing. You can use every dollar to go, hey, this is going to cost me $1,200 for the year to do car maintenance. Great. We'll just put a hundred bucks away in savings in your budget line item so that by the

end of the year, you will have that money. It's not a big surprise, it's not a oh gosh, where am I going to pull the money from? All right, we're skipping down here, buying stuff just because it's on sale. Were you going to buy it a full price? No.

Then it's not savings. It's an expenditure. It's a $10 word for a Buzzfeed article, but I'll take it. Another person said this, I worked with someone like this. He would go buy, not going to say that word, that was on sale because he might need it

in the future, like a bunch of tools and what's your language? God, Lee, he would frequent estate sales and pawn shops, too. By piles of junk and then claim at the end of it, how much money he saved. I'm like, no, you actually spent $500 instead of saving $250. Yeah, this part is, I think it's beyond logic.

I think these people just love the hunt, they love the deal, they love the adventure of it, and they justify it with, well, I'm saving money.

“But the truth is, you probably weren't going to buy it anyways at full price.”

So you're just buying it because you feel like you got it deal, and this is a, this is a tough one for the frugal people out there. This is a dangerous game to play, because you just go out finding deals instead of buying things you actually need. Well said, I'm a fan of that one.

Next, buying the cheaper and smaller packages of food at the grocery store, the price for the amount of food is often a lot higher. It's better to buy the larger size ones, and then maybe freeze some of it. Interesting. Okay, so we're not, we're not talking about, like, you know, you get your chicken at

well, it's 1067 versus 1048. They're talking about a small package versus the kind of family size bulk package. It'll be cheaper per ounce for that food. And that is true. Next time you're shopping, go look at the label, sometimes they'll actually tell you what

the price is per ounce, or if you got your handy-dandy calculator, just go, hey, I can get three pounds for 20 bucks, or I can get six pounds for 35 bucks. Whoa, slow down, Ray and man. You do the math. I'm not doing the math.

You do the math. That one's true. And we got a few comments around this one. I've noticed company sneaking the price per unit up on the larger sizes recently.

You can't always rely on this anymore, always check the price per unit.

Yes. Totally agree with this. This is something I do personally in stores. So sometimes assume, well, if I get more, I get the bigger package, it's going to be more savings, not always true these days.

It might be the same, or sometimes even more, because these companies out there, they're going to get you sneaky. And last one, accept if you're only buying what you can reasonably use before expiration. My spouse bought a large bottle of barbecue sauce when we use it maybe once a year. Now we've wasted fridge space, and more is going in the trash.

Yellow mustard is something I like to have for when I want it. But I only really need a small jar. So it can be better to buy a smaller size, especially a space, is that a premium? I think you guys are misaligned here in your marriage. All right, you got a barbecue sauce lover, you got the mustard lover, one's going, you

know, king size here, one is getting the smallest amount of mustard that can muster up. I think we need to come to a compromise here. Let's get a normal size barbecue sauce, a normal size mustard, just solved your marriage. Mix them together if you're a wild one, make some Chick-fil-A sauce out of it.

“Oh, don't say it, that's how Chick-fil-A sauce is made.”

It's all the sauces. It's the suicide sauces, just everything in one, sorry, the unalive sauce. I hate this timeline. Back in my day, we called it what it was. Also, do they make jars of yellow mustard?

I feel like yellow mustard doesn't deserve a jar. No shade yellow mustard, but like a Dijon, absolutely, put that in a jar. A grape hoop on? A yellow mustard in a jar? It goes in plastic for a reason.

It was trash to begin with, unless it's on a hot dog. Moving on, meal kits like hello fresh. They cost as much as your grocery bill, but you only get dinner and you still have to go to the grocery store to get other things. Another person said we only use them when they give us 50% off and for the convenience.

Sure, it's just intercovered, but you're paying for not having to think about it. That is true. The really paying for is convenience here.

Will it usually almost always be cheaper to get the items from the grocery store?

Yes.

“But if you want to pay for the convenience and you put it in the budget, it's still cheaper”

than eating out. So I'm not mad at these meal services. We've used these in crazy seasons. In fact, I used it recently because our life is just too chaotic to go out to the grocery store in the meal prep and think about it all so right now.

We are living off of some of these meal services. Living large! And again, I take advantage of all the discounts and then I cancel immediately. You're not going to get me.

Fast food.

Yeah, it's fast and it's food, but at what cost?

Wow. Okay, I guess this is a health thing is what they're saying. Same as regular. Oh my gosh. Lady Irish has got a mouthwater.

Same as regular. Put down restaurant these days by my experience.

“Man, you need to stay at home with the mouth like that.”

You don't need to be out in public. Spue in that kind of filth. When there's kids around. Stop. Think of the children.

Okay, let's focus on the money side. Fast food has gotten more expensive. If you look what it costs even a few years ago, inflation has really hit fast food hard. And so, you know, I go to Chick-fil-A, a kid's meal is now $8.

The adult meal is now $10, $12, even $13, $14, $15, if you're my wife.

Try to shift the blame on me. Is that gluten-free bun? They really think that sad, gluten-free bun, a Chick-fil-A is worth an extra few bucks. I say nay. And on the health side, it would cost absolutely.

I mean, if you look at the ingredients on this stuff, even a sauce, it makes you want to throw up. You're like, why do they put a blue 42 set-hut in this, why? Why did we need that? That's true as you didn't, but again, if you go through it fast food once in a while,

I'm not mad at it. I had Taco Bell last weekend. I'm not ashamed to say it. All right, I'm not-- I'm not ashamed to tell you I've got a crispy canteen that you can taco and a Doritos Loco's tacos.

I learned Spanish by going to Taco Bell. [MUSIC PLAYING] Moving on, took me a while to realize that using the dishwasher saves me more money than washing dishes by hand. That science, that's a good one.

Comment here, dishwashers are very efficient. They use far, far less water. And since you use less water, you need less energy to heat up the water needed. Thank you, Bill Nye. This is actually true.

Just having the water on full blast and washing the dishes for 20 minutes is way more water than your actual dishwasher uses. So use that dishwasher. Don't be afraid. Don't be scared.

Hey, let me tell you, my daughter's favorite thing to do as a toddler is to play dishes in the sink and so she just runs water at full blast while I count how much she's costing me. She's worth it. Next on our list of money saving hacks that may not be worth it.

Carrying a balance on a credit card to build credit. You don't need to carry a balance to build credit. Thank you.

“I vehemently disagree that you should even use a credit card.”

Let alone carrying a balance, which is about the worst thing you can do. And it doesn't help your credit to carry a balance. That is insane. Another comment here many years ago, I got my first credit card. I used to pay it off religiously.

I'll never forget having a conversation on the deck with my father when he told me the only

way to build credit is to carry a balance. I hate to be the one to tell you this, but his cornbread was not done in the middle. It sent me down a dangerous spiral. Well, that part's on you. And with some of the worst financial and life advice I ever received, I've been chasing

that advice and burden half of my adult life. I paid off one of my cards yesterday. It has never felt better. Way to go. This is most of us.

Most of us had parents who said, "Get a credit card. I'm going to add you as an authorized user." As soon as you turn 18, you got to get your own card and start spending on that. What they didn't tell you was, you don't need to carry a balance. And I cut up my cards what?

13 years ago now, haven't looked back. I used cash and a debit card, and I've lived to tell the tale. And I've saved so much my own told amounts of money. Billions and billions and billions and billions. Just by using my own money now instead of using someone else's money and having to pay

it back later. Even if you pay it off every single week, that's still simply too much effort and brain calories when you could just go live your life. Next on a list, buying really cheap stuff.

“I'm not saying you have to buy a top of the line, but at least get something semi-quality”

so you don't have to constantly replace it. The other person said you can only afford the cheap stuff then it breaks and you can only afford to replace it with more cheap stuff. It's a vicious cycle that not many people can break out of, said the nerd from that place. That's good.

I wholeheartedly agree with this. It's funny. We have a saying that it's expensive to be broke because everything in your life is constantly breaking. And the car is on the front and it's going to cost you because you haven't done the right

maintenance and repairs on it. And everything in your life is cheap and needs to be replaced constantly. But as you build some wealth, what you do is you buy higher quality things. Maybe it's one of these buy-it-for-life type items where that pair of boots is going to last you 20 years if you take care of it.

Instead of getting the cheapest boots possible causing, you know, foot injuries and having to replace it because the entire soul fell off three days later. So I'm a huge fan of this and I'm not saying go buy the highest end stuff while you're broke. You've got to work your way up to it.

If you get out of debt, get an emergency fund, now it's time to upgrade.

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offer details. Back to our list. Buy now pay later for anything that isn't an appreciating asset or generating cash flow, like a burrito, refrigerator, phone, wedding, etc.

I interned at a buy now pay later firm and I'm telling you all from first-hand experience

it's a scam. This might be my favorite one so far. Someone saying out loud that buy now pay later is a scam. And I don't even like the first part. There's no good reason to use buy now pay later.

This is pure broke people habits and they justify it because they got well, there's no interest or fees. I just need to make the payments for the next few months. Listen that is robbing from your future paychecks and causing terrible habits to take root in your life.

Just put it on my tab. I worry about it later because I don't have the wear with all to save up and pay cash. If you can't afford it now, don't buy it. That is the habit that will create wealth, not buy now pay later. And last but not least on our list.

And finally, quote voting for Trump.

What?

“I gotta go back to what was the point of this article?”

That's how BuzzFeed gets you. You forget why you're even rating this filth. It's a scam. Prugal people are calling out the so-called money saving habits that secretly drain your bank account.

Okay, so voting for Trump is a so-called money saving habit that secretly drains your bank account. I don't. I guess they just got to get political to stir up some hate and dissension of the comments. Who knows?

But sure. If you think the president is why you're broke or wealthy, you are the idiot. You are fake news. Bottom line, not every effort to save money is worth it. Some of these hacks may help you save a buck here and there.

Don't fixate on small expenses while overlooking big decisions that actually build wealth.

“But if you want to learn about more money saving habits that are worth your time, go watch”

this video where I break down 31 small habits that lead to big savings. Or click the link in the description. That's it for today. Before you leave be sure to share this video with a friend who needs a hair intervention. Bad.

It's bad, Brian. It's bad. No more. No more. If it ends with clips, we're not going.

Thanks for watching. We'll see you next time.