transcript

Speaker 1:
[00:00] I get a lot of frugal tips sent my way. Like, a lot. Some helpful, some ridiculous, and some downright disgusting. You know who you are, and you should be ashamed of yourself. But hey, I'm grateful for the content. So today, I'm reacting to BuzzFeed's list of people sharing their frugal habits for 2026 that actually feel doable. And as the master of frugal ceremonies here, I'll expertly guide you through the ones that are actually doable and actually worth your time. Actually, actually, actually. But before we start, shout out to our channel sponsor, DeleteMe, for keeping the lights on around here. A lot of lights. So bright. My corneas are burnt to a crisp. Let's get to it. Shout out to Megan for making this content. Number one, from Schnauzer2008, No food delivery. I had a very traumatic loss last year, and in the grief after, I used it as a crutch. I'm starting to feel like myself again, and have committed to meal planning, using what I have and having backup plans like frozen pizzas, just in case. Nobel Peace Prize to Schnauzer. I mean, I'm just saying, if Trump's getting it, I feel like you deserve it, Schnauzer, at this point. This is fantastic. This is a real one. People don't realize how much money leak is happening because of your convenience that you preciously need, because you can't just drive a car and go get the food yourself, or hear me out, make it. I just offended a lot of people. Because your mother never taught you how to cook, to be fair, my mom didn't teach me how to cook, and she's an amazing cook. So shout out to the moms who are so good at cooking, they never taught you anything. They went, just leave it to me, pal. I'll take the falafel from here. But I want to prove it to you. I'm going to use this handy dandy phone of mine, pull up the DoorDash app and show you the actual difference in price in real time. So one of my favorite spots is Tzatziki's Mediterranean Cafe. Is it legitimately Mediterranean? No, but it hits the spot. And the beef feast, you can't miss with the beef feast. All right, so in this DoorDash app, I'm ordering one grilled beef feast, got the Greek dressing, got the rice on the side. And this comes out to a total of $19.61 subtotal with a $0.49 delivery fee. Apparently, I'm saving $3 with deals. So this is actually $3 cheaper than it normally would be, with fees and estimated tax of $4.91. So total before tip, $2,501. I'm going to tip $5 because my mother raised me right. And they're worth at least $5 for driving it to my house, if not more. And if you're ordering more, tip more. So that comes out to a total of $30.01 with the $3 in savings. So it's really $33 that I would have spent if I did the DoorDash app. But nay, I'm going to close out of this app and go to the Trusted Tzatziki's app. And I'm going to drive the 10 minutes from my house and go pick it up myself. And as you can see, it comes out to a total of $17.22. Are you tracking with me? Do I... you know what, fine, fine, no, no, I'll do the math. 1722 divided by 30... was it 030 05? Does that sound about right? 57% of the cost by using the Tzatziki's app. So really it's 43% off if you just be a grown adult and go get the food yourself. I rest my case, Your Honor. No further questions. Number two, I'm doing a spending freeze for January. No eating out and no buying clothing, home items or accessories. Having a limited amount of time makes it feel more achievable, but I feel like the awareness refreshes good habits. Thank you, Kuboospoomoo. Wow, what a mature thing to do for such a childish and wonderful username. This one is real. I love a no spend month. That's what I call it. This is a great reset for your spending, and for a set amount of time, usually a month, you commit to not spending money on anything that is not essential. So you're not cutting out everything. You still got to pay the rent, utilities, gas, groceries, insurance, et cetera, but anything else, gone. No eating out, no clothes, no impulse Amazon buys, whatever it is that you tend to overspend on. All right, think of it like Lent, but you don't have to be Catholic. You could be Catholic too. So choose the month wisely. Don't choose a month where you know you're going to have a lot of expenses coming up, a lot of holidays or birthdays or trips. Choose a month where you know it's pretty much a standard month and try the no spend month and use a debit card and cash and see how much less you spend and see how much better you feel. It's like yoga for your wallet. Number three, one of my goals is to use at least one thing from the freezer each week. I also plan to make one thing for the freezer each week such as shredded chicken, ground beef, diced peppers, etc. Hopefully, that will be a time saver in the end. Big Tomatillo coming through on this one. I love this one because it forces you to use the stuff that you already paid money for. So you're not wasting it and you're saving money by not going to get more stuff that you're probably going to waste in the future. And freezers hold food for a very, very, very long time. And if you're my grandma, nothing goes bad if it's in a freezer. It's amazing. Your wedding cake from 14 years ago is still good if it was in the freezer. So I would definitely encourage this and get creative. What I do personally is I will use an AI tool like Claude or ChatGBT and say, hey, I've got this item. I'll take a picture of the items and say, make me something delicious and quick based on what I have in front of me. And it'll whip it up. And I just follow the recipe, follow the instructions. And within 15 or 20 minutes, I got food on the table and I didn't waste any money. Coming in at number four from Ickyisrightagain, Ike. If your name is spelled Ike, I-C-K-E, your mother didn't love you. There's no other way around it. Well, here's what they had to say. I just called my cell phone provider, had to wait an hour to talk to someone to negotiate for a better plan and saved about $60 a month. That's pretty wild. I will take those savings any day. That's hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of dollars a year. And a lot of people simply aren't willing to take an hour out of their day. Think about it. You just saved hundreds and hundreds of dollars, which means your hourly rate is hundreds and hundreds of dollars for spending an hour on the phone. I like to try the customer chat first. I find it's easier. It can be chaotic in the house, and I can still kind of keep up with the chat. It can email me the full summary of the chat. And so I have proof of what was said in the chat. And I've done this a whole bunch to save money on, especially my internet. This is the big one. And get this, the average phone bill is now $113 per month, which is insane. But lucky for me, I've never had to call my cell phone provider to try to save because they've already locked in the savings forever. And the way I do that is through Boost Mobile, a sponsor of today's video. You can unlock up to $600 a year in savings compared to the big name carriers when you switch to their unlimited plan. It's just 25 bucks a month forever. And good news, it takes mere minutes to switch. No contracts, no hidden fees. You can even keep your same phone and number. So make the switch and start saving. Go to boostmobile.com/ramsey. And that is based on average annual single line payment of AT&T, Verizon and T-Mobile customers compared to 12 months in the Boost Mobile Unlimited plan as of January 2026. See website for full offer details. And here's a frugal tip you probably haven't thought about. Cleaning up your digital footprint. Because if your personal info is floating around the internet like a beach ball at a Katy Perry concert, you are more likely to get targeted for phishing attempts, scam calls, texts, all of which can cost you time and money. But thankfully, there's DeleteMe. They find and remove your personal info from hundreds of these data broker sites to help protect your privacy. So if you want to spend less time fending off scammers and more time focusing on your money goals, just go to this website, joindeleteme.com/george and I'll sweeten the deal. You'll get 20% off their annual plans for doing so. Alright, back to the list. Alright, I'm skipping to number seven, Net Zero Stuff. If I buy something, something else has to go. I have enough stuff, adding more makes my life more complicated, not easier. Thank you, alpaca picnic. Very helpful tidbit. I like this idea. It's a good habit to build into your life because we do accumulate so much stuff. And if you've ever moved, you realize, how did we get here? How did I accumulate so much crap that I didn't even need that has been stored away somewhere and I forgot about it? Sometimes you're excited. You're like, oh my gosh, I love this thing. I forgot I had this. Why did I put it in this random drawer? But the key is you get rid of something else when one thing enters. So maybe you have you own 300 items, which most of us have thousands. But if you have 301, take something out that you're not using. That way you always stay in the minimalist bubble. Okay, we don't want to leave the bubble. Do not do it. This is a great one. I need to implement this. This is one that I love, but I have not tried myself. I'm not a hoarder, but I like it. I like a junk drawer. You know what I mean? I'm not a hoarder. Like you wouldn't walk into my house and be like, whoa, this guy keeps everything. But I got trinkets for days. All right, skipping down to, oh, I like this, number 11, really cutting down on impulse buying or buying for the person I want to be and not who I am now. Lupine, that's a really good one. Think about this. What they're talking about is you are making identity based decisions. I'm the type of person who doesn't go into debt, who budgets for the things they need, who values a capsule wardrobe instead of having too much to wear. And it's all stuffed in the closet with tags still on it. So, if you treat this like, hey, future me, that version of George who's insanely in shape, somehow even more in shape than he is today, that guy wouldn't buy that thing or wouldn't spend his time doing that thing. So this applies to every area of her life, but especially money. If you really look around, look at your bank statement and go, is this who I want to be? Really? The guy who door dashes everything in his life and buys crap on Amazon because he's stressed out from work? That's a sad life. So I'm going to implement this one even more clearly in my life. I think I try to do it, but if you look to my bank statement, apparently the person I want to be is somebody who spends their retirement on their dogs to give them a better life. Number 13 from Response Natural. I bought a cheapo budget notebook and I've started hand entering every individual expense as I go. It's tedious and I know there are apps that can do it for me, but I find writing it down and tallying it every couple of days helps me viscerally understand how much I'm spending and whether it makes sense. Now as much as I'm a tech bro, I actually love this. I think going analog is one of the best things we can do to add some friction back in our lives and slow down. Now the way I do it personally is with an app called EveryDollar. And the good news is you could manually enter every transaction you want into EveryDollar and it will keep track of it all and you can assign it to categories in the budget. So it's a little more advanced than what they're talking about, but it still accomplishes the same goal. Now that's the free version, in the premium version, all the transactions can just pop up from your bank account that's linked and it makes it even easier to track it all. But either way, the fact that you're paying attention to your money, that is the habit that will help you build wealth and avoid overspending. So kudos to you, response natural. Number 14, I hate cooking, but I can't afford to eat out. I would like to find some new recipes that I like and don't take forever to make, forever being more than 20 minutes. This is a good one, cuz this is something I agree with this statement. Like very few people love cooking. If that's you, I love you. I'm really happy for you. I wish I had that. I find cooking to be great if I have the time. But with an infant and a toddler and two very needy French bulldogs, it's rare that I just have 45 minutes of focused time to really, you know, get passionate about it. OK. And so what I do, number one, I go for this. This is a great method. You get a protein, you get a veggie, you get a carb. So whenever I'm shopping, I make sure those three things exist in my cart. Otherwise, I will walk out with a bunch of snacks, which is apparently not a meal, but it is boy dinner. So that helps, number one. And then number two, again, I use AI and I just take a picture of what I've got. I go, hey, I know there's probably a meal in here somewhere, but I don't know the right temps, the right times. I don't want to time it all out. And so it tells me exactly what to do. And I go, hey, I only want to use one pan on the stove, or I only want to use the air fryer. And that way, you know, you're not going to be sitting there with 19 things to clean up after an hour of slave into the kitchen. So that would be my go to for this person. Number 15, I'm going to try to be online less in 2026. I find the more I scroll or am on social media, the more I get FOMO or get tempted by advertisements. I'm going to do a reading challenge alongside a friend and use library books or my Kindle. So I'm not tempted to tap back over to web browser or app, plus some free music lessons that I have access to so that I'm too busy to waste as much time. Love that. Be too busy to waste time. That's a good life motto. But I do believe, and studies have shown, that the more you scroll, the more you're going to spend. For whatever reason, emotional therapy, you found something you didn't know existed that you now need from TikTok shop, which by the way, nothing on TikTok shop is anything anybody needs. Let me make that clear. So that's a good challenge. Another one is making everything black and white. You can just go into your phone and go grayscale. And that will really, it's just like, what are we doing? It's like looking at your ancestor's newspaper. It's so boring that it makes you want to get off your phone and stop scrolling, let alone buy stuff. Good hacks there. Number 16, trying to maximize the bills we do pay. What? I just got done switching as many bills as possible to credit card payments on my 2% cash back card. We were doing so good, guys. Some have a small convenience fee, but doing the math, we're ahead by a lot on this alone. I should preface this with the fact that I pay off my credit card bill every month. Okay, Squidward, Squidward would use credit cards. I guess this is before manners were invented. Okay, so you're saying you have all these bills to pay. So you're going to pay the small convenience fee to then get the cash back to then hopefully pay off the card. Juice ain't worth the squeeze, bud. Or should I say Sunshine 2625, if that really is your name. I abhor this. We're going to delete this from our memories, Men in Black style. Ladies and gentlemen, if you will look right here. Number 17, no cocktails out that aren't better than what I could make at home. I was a bartender for a few years and it pisses me off to go out and pay more for an inferior version of drink at a restaurant. There will be a couple of exceptions for bars and restaurants that are using unique enough ingredients and skilled enough bartenders that I couldn't reasonably recreate the drinks myself, but otherwise no drinks out. Dr. Spiders nailed it on this one. I do enjoy good cocktail and I only buy a cocktail if number one, it's a decent price, but number two, it is something that I'm like, I don't have these ingredients at home. I'm not going to hand carve a diamond out of this block of ice. That's insane. But I want to watch the guy do it and I'll pay for the pleasure. So realize that eating out cocktails, all of this, it truly is entertainment. And so just know going into it, you're paying to be entertained by an experience. You could make the same thing at home. It's not rocket science, but it does take some time. And I actually find it really fun to make cocktails at home and experiment, especially when you got a friend or two over or me and my wife. And I like getting really good at like a drink and really honing in on it. And then my wife thinks I'm a hero. It's been a while with an infant and a toddler, let me tell you. Off the sauce, as they say. I'll get back to it. Coming in at number 19. Stop buying stuff on sale just because it's on sale. It turns out saving money by spending money I wasn't planning to spend is not actually saving money. Well, thank you, Lernan Ehrnan. Your little Dr. Seuss over here. How many times can you weave in the word sale and saving? That's impressive. I think sales is one of the most genius marketing ploys out there and Amazon's Black Friday is a great example of this. What they'll do is they will artificially change the price right before Black Friday, make it a little higher and then they'll drop it down to where it was. But then change the MSRP up and change the deal price. It goes, it's 70 percent off and then Black Friday is over and it goes back to the normal price and it's the price you paid. So way around this one is for Amazon specifically is a site called camelcamelcamel.com. No affiliation, they're not a sponsor of this show, although what a great sponsorship that would be with a guy with the last name Camel. But it actually tracks Amazon prices for specific items. You can actually see if it's a good deal or you know what? I see every September the price is going to go down. I'll just wait for it to go back down to make the purchase and it'll even track and let you know when the price goes to the threshold you set, which is cool. Watch your back Jeff Bezos. Sales and marketing will trick you into thinking that it's a good deal. So here's my three rules. Never spend just to save. Just because it's on sale doesn't mean it's a good deal and everything's 100% off if you don't buy it. Take those to the bank. Number 20, being more mindful of the why behind when I spent. I have a history of spending to numb pain, but I got a lot better about tracking spending in 2025. I used the spreadsheet and categorized each dollar I spent and I only had a 43% long lasting satisfaction rate. So my plan for 2026 is to only spend money on what I categorized as long lasting happiness. Things like celebrating others, memories with my kids, etc. Wow. This is a beautiful combination of super nerd and very self aware person. I wouldn't know what long lasting happiness is with most of my purchases. I mean, there's things that I do out of necessity. I wouldn't call it long lasting, but I still need toilet paper in the house. So how do you rate that? I don't know. I'd love to see this spreadsheet. And that's something I say too often. You got a spreadsheet, I want to see it. What are the formulas? What kind of tables are we talking? How many tabs? Your boy wants to know. Overall, this is fantastic. Is it actually doable for most people creating a spreadsheet, tracking every single thing and then marking it and rating it based on satisfaction rate? It's simply a bridge too far. But it's a great way to sort of gut check the way you're spending. And it's a great reminder that spending money on other people, being generous and spending money on experiences with people you love, those are the best ways to handle your money. Spending, very low satisfaction rate when it's just on stuff for yourself. Spending on others, even better. Spending on experiences with others, even better. And investing also increases your happiness. Fun fact, shout out to Dr. Arthur Brooks. He's got the stats. I didn't make this stuff up. I didn't go to Harvard. Coming in at number 21 from Miserable Worth. Okay, off to a dark start. I'm keeping a sheet of paper on my fridge and every time I throw out expired produce, I'm adding it to the list. Essentially, I'm hoping to shame myself into being more vigilant about avoiding food waste. Boy, oh boy, if I had a nickel for every piece of rotten fruit and vegetable in the fridge, that was an aspirational purchase, I will add. Did I need the bulk arugula? No, I don't know what to do with that much arugula. How much arugula can one man eat? So I think this is actually a really good hack if you can get in the habit of it. You throw out the thing that's expired that went to waste and then you add it to a list to go, hey, maybe I shouldn't buy this again, or if I do buy this again, I need a plan for it. That's the problem, is you go buy some fruits and veggies without a plan, it's gonna go to waste. So for example, I wanted to make BLTs, so I bought three tomatoes, knowing that's all I'm gonna need. I don't need a basket of tomatoes, I don't need a bushel of tomatoes. Nay, I need three tomatoes to make a couple of BLTs for this loaf of bread. That helped me avoid the waste. I've used all the tomatoes, pretty proud of myself. Coming in at 22, MDW said, I'm doing a project pan this year, which is where you use up all the skin care, hair care, makeup, body wash, etc. before you allow yourself to buy a new one. I'm really bad about always looking for the latest and greatest, so I end up with a bunch of different items that aren't fully used and are just wasted. I'm hoping to curb this bad spending habit, while also saving money by using the things I have already spent money on. Again, this is very similar to the food one of use what you got before you go get more and if you get something, this might be a good makeup one. When you get a new piece, throw one away or give it away. I've seen some of these TikToks of these girls organizing their makeup stuff and they're dumping entire bins. It's wild. A lot of the stuff, you thought you'd like it and you didn't, and then you kept it thinking, well, what am I going to do now? All of a sudden, you're just hoarding old makeup. I imagine Project Pan has to do with the little, what are those called, ladies? Palettes? There we go, the palettes. When you get down to the bottom of the eyeshadow palette, I think that's called a pan. Is that right? I'm looking at these ladies and they know as much as I do about how this works. All I thought it was Peter Pan. It was giving Peter Pan vibes, but it has nothing to do with that. The guys fall into this too. I mean, guys have a lot of products these days. I think I'm guilty of this. I'm going to go home tonight and clean house in the bathroom. That sounded weird. I'm going to organize and throw out old stuff and not buy anything new. I actually, I just, guys, I'm guilty. I just went, I was at Sam's Club and I saw the Crest mouthwash, the whitening mouthwash that I like. And I thought, wow, 10 bucks for a two pack? That's a heck of a deal. These are some big old bottles. So I bought it, I get home. What do I have in the cabinet under the sink? A big old bottle waiting for me. So now I got three bottles. Egg on my face. All right, we'll end with the mythical codfish. Finally, I'm actively de-stashing everything. Deep wardrobe edit, craft supplies, books, decor, etc. I plan to sell as much of it as I can before I donate. Anything I make from selling things is going straight into a high yield savings account. Touchdown for mythical codfish. This is incredible. This is such a great combination of de-cluttering, minimalism, side hustling by selling it to make some money and saving. I could not have come up with this if I tried. So shout out to mythical codfish for this great idea. Guys, I'm thoroughly impressed. Most of these come down to just taking a beat before you buy something, a little bit of patience, checking to make sure you don't already have it, seeing if you can use what you got before you go spend more money. And if you want to be a smart spender, ask yourself these questions. It spells out the word smart, so it's easy to remember. Number one, self-awareness. Will this really add value to my life? Think back to that identity-based spending. Number two, motive. Am I buying this for the right reason? A, for affordability. Is this in my budget? Can I actually afford this in full in cash right now? The R is for research. Is this the best option, retailer and price? Let's take some time, have a little patience and do the research. And finally, T for timing. Is now the right time to buy it? The answer is probably no to that one, but you know, opportunity costs, it's real. Just think, is this the right time or can I wait a month or wait till it's on sale? So if you can answer yes to all five of those questions, you can go ahead and make that purchase and be glad about it. No regrets with intentionality. Otherwise, it's a no or simply a not now. And for even more ideas to help you save money, go watch this video where I react to frugal tips people actually use. And you'll learn something very interesting about pickle juice that I learned against my will. Don't forget to hit the like button on this video, subscribe to the channel and share this episode with a frugal friend. They'll appreciate you. Thanks for watching. We'll see you next time.