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You ever try to save money by cutting your own hair, only to immediately regret it and then end up having to pay your barber more money to fix the structural and emotional damage? What business is it of 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 to help you figure out if you're being a smart spender or sabotaging your progress. But before we dive in, we gotta 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 this show free, you ask? Well, in part, thanks to Deleteme for sponsoring the channel. As per usual, with Buzzfeed built, there is 48 of these. So our team has hand selected the best ones because time is of the essence. First up, driving across town to save 3 cents a gallon on gas. Here's the story. My dad left a gas station to drive across town to get $0.03 off. The second station had raised prices, so he drove back. The original station had raised prices in the one and a half hours it had taken to drive across town and back. So two cross town trips to pay 15 cents and extra. If that's not a dad move, I don't know what is. Wow, 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 depends. 3 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, you know, GasBuddy and it shows me, hey, here's the price at Costco and Sam's and Kroger 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 a never ending cycle for dads out there. Shout 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, that is the devil whispering sweet lies directly 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. Were you in a creative writing class? English major maybe? Artificial intelligence. This is wild. Another comment. I sew and today I saw something on Instagram and was like, why buy it for 100 bucks 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 in 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 going to 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 gonna cost you 50 bucks. Buying the sandwich would have cost you 10. Now you know I'm a fan of making food. At home you could make 10 sandwiches with what you spent for 50 bucks. So the math isn't mathing here. You're going, well, George, you said, you said, 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. It 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 before you go out and buy a sewing machine. Cause 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 or 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. It's expensive right now. I don't know. 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. And so this goes with everything. Take care of everything in your life, and very rarely will you have to spend big money to repair or replace it. Whether it's furniture, boots, clothing, anything in your house, anything that you use, drive, you gotta take care of it. And so maintenance is necessary. 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 gonna cost me twelve hundred dollars for the year to do car maintenance. Great. We'll just put 100 bucks away in savings in your budget line item so that by the end of the year you all have that money. It's not a big surprise. It's not. Oh, gosh, where am I gonna 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 at 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 gonna say that word. That was on sale because he might need it in the future, like a bunch of tools. And watch your language. Golly. He would frequent estate sales and pawn shops, too. Buy piles of junk and then claim at the end of it how much money he saved. I. 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 gonna buy it anyways at full price. So you're just buying it because you feel like you got a deal. And 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 sized ones and then maybe freeze some of it. Interesting. Okay, so we're not talking about, like, you know, you get your chicken. You're like, well, it's 1067 versus 1048. They're talking about a small package versus the kind of family size bulk package. It will 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, Rain 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 companies 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. You sometimes assume, well, if I get more, I get the bigger package, it's gonna be more savings. Not always true. These days it might be the same or sometimes even more, because these companies out there, they're gonna get you, you sneaky. And last one. Except 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 if space is at 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 king size. One is getting the smallest amount of mustard they can muster up. I think we need to come to a compromise here. Let's get a normal sized barbecue sauce. A normal sized mustard just solved your marriage. Mix them together. If you're a wild one, make some chick fil a sauce out of it. Ew. Don't say ew. That's how chick fil a sauce is made. It's all the sauces. It's the suicide sauce. It's 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. Mustard doesn't deserve a jar. No shade to yellow mustard, but like a Dijon. Absolutely. Put that in a jar. A Grey Poupon. 100%. Do you have any Grey Poupon? 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 hellofresh, 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 dinner covered, but you're paying for not having to think about it. That is true. What you're really paying for is convenience here. Will it usually and 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 to the grocery store and meal prep and think about it all. So right now, we are living off of some of these meal services. Living large. What's up? And again, I take advantage of all the discounts and then I cancel immediately. You're not gonna get me moving on to the opposite. Fast food. Fast food? Yeah, it's fast and it's food, but at what cost? Wow. Okay. I guess this is a. Is this a health thing is what they're saying. Same as regular. Oh my gosh. Lady Irish has got a mouth on her. Same as regular. Sit down restaurant these days, by my experience, ma', am, you need to stay home with a mouth like that. You don't need to be out in public spewing 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 at Chick Fil A is worth an extra few bucks. I say nay. And on the health side, at what cost? Absolutely. I mean, if you look at the ingredients on this stuff, even the sauce, it makes you want to throw up. You're like, why do they put blue 42 set hut in this sauce? Why? Why did we need that? The truth is, you didn't. But again, if you go through 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 ashamed to tell you. Got a Crispy Cantina chicken taco and a Doritos Locos tacos. I learned Spanish by going to Taco Bell. Bless you, Taco Bell. Moving on. Took me a while to realize that using the dishwasher saves me more money than washing dishes by hand. That's 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 and I. 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. And 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. 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 gonna add you as an authorized user as soon as you turn 18, you gotta 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 money, untold 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 the list, buying really cheap stuff. I'm not saying you have to buy top of the line, but at least get something semi quality so you don't have to constantly replace it. Another 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 fritz and it's gonna 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, hey, that pair of boots is gonna 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 sole 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 gotta work your way up to it. But getting out of that cycle, you can do it. If you get out of debt, get an emergency fund. Now it's time to upgrade. And an easy way to upgrade your life is with your clothing, the stuff you put on your body every day. And that's why I love Cozy Earth, a sponsor of today's episode. Their menswear is not only ridiculously soft, but also super durable and made with responsibly sourced materials. And I can attest their men's everywhere pants, their brushed bamboo joggers. They will not self destruct after a few trips through the spin cycle or one aggressive lunge to tie your shoe. Investing in quality basics like these is the opposite of expensive because you're spending once instead of buying the same cheap stuff over and over again. And good news, you can save 20%@cozyearth.com George and use promo code George at checkout. Or you can use the link in the description and before we get to more money saving ideas, I've got one that'll help you save every single month. Switching to a more affordable phone plan like Boost Mobile, a sponsor of today's video. With their Forever plan, you get unlimited data, talk and text with 99% nationwide coverage at just 25 bucks a month. And the best part is there's no price hikes, no hidden fees. This is forever. And that means you get quality service and coverage you need without the surprise phone bill at the end of the month. Plus there's no contract required and it's super easy to make the switch. And right now you can unlock up to 600 bucks in savings@boostmobile.com Ramsey or click the link in the description based on average annual single line payment of AT&T Verizon T Mobile customers compared to 12 months in the Boost Mobile Unlimited plan as of January 2026. The website for full offer details all right, 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 is no good reason to use Buy Now Pay Later. This is pure broke people habits and they justify it because they go 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'll worry about it later because I don't have the wherewithal 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 reading this filth. It's a scam. Frugal 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 gotta get political to stir up some hate and dissension in 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 US 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, if it ends with clips, we're not going. Thanks for watching. We'll see you next time.