George Kamel - 13 Ways Frugal People Save Money

Episode Date: February 4, 2026

📈 Are you on track with the Baby Steps? Get a free personalized plan.   I asked you guys to share the weirdest, smartest, or most outside-the-box ways you’ve saved money. And boy oh boy did you deliver big-time. So today, we’ll be sifting through my favorite comments and seeing which ideas are actually helpful—and which should get you sent to a padded room.   Next Steps: • 🎥 Watch my video Frugal People Share Their Best Money-Saving Habits. • 🎥 Watch my video A Step-By-Step Guide to Lowering Your Monthly Bills. • 💵 Start your free budget today. Download the EveryDollar app!   Connect With Our Sponsors: • Get up to 20% off Cozy Earth with code GEORGE. • Get 20% off when you join DeleteMe. • Save money on your phone plan with Boost Mobile. • Go to FAIRWINDS Credit Union for an exclusive account bundle!   Explore More From Ramsey Network: 🎙️ The Ramsey Show 🍸 Smart Money Happy Hour 💸 The Ramsey Show Highlights 🧠 The Dr. John Delony Show 💡 The Rachel Cruze Show 🪑 Front Row Seat with Ken Coleman 📈 EntreLeadership   Ramsey Solutions Privacy Policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

I'll be the first to admit, I've done some pretty, weird and wild things to save money. But I'm sick of being the only one catching flack for it. Okay, if catching flack was an Olympic sport, I'd get gold every time. Go America, number one. Which is why I asked you guys to share the weirdest, smartest, or most outside-of-the-box ways you have saved money. And boy, oh boy, did you deliver big time. So today, we'll be sifting through some of my favorite comments to see which ideas are actually helpful and which should get you sent to a padded room. But before we get to that, big shout out to our new channel sponsor, delete me.

And if you want more content that helps you spend less and save more and avoid the traps, be sure to hit like and subscribe on this channel. All right, let's get to your comments. Trey said, while in university, a course required a $500 online portal access to do the homework assignments, but they offered a free 48-hour trial. So Friday afternoon, I locked myself in my home and did the entire semester's work on the first weekend to avoid paying that. Dude, that is next level. And also, I mean, you saved a lot of time just by hustling.

Did you pull like an, I mean, you must have not slept. Are you okay? Reach out, bro. That's impressive. I like that one. So this, the principle behind it is, is there a way around paying the full fee? Can I knock it out in the trial period and binge the show, or in this case, knock out the course? And he saved quite a pretty penny by doing that and really stuck it to the man in higher ed. Madeline had this to say, buy a pig, ask the butcher to keep the lard for you, render it,

you'll get like a gallon of fat to use for cooking. I don't know what part of Amish country you're from, but I don't even know where to buy a pig in my neck of the woods, let alone a butcher who's going to keep the lard for me, render the fat to make cooking fat for me. I'll just go to the store. Can I buy pig fat from the store? You can get lard.

Lard help us all. Have mercy. Hey, we asked for outside of the box. Madeline delivered. Zizu had this one. Biday on every toilet. Save loads on toilet paper. Plus 1,000 XP personal hygiene.

Wow. Okay. You know what? The bidet trend, it's hot right now. A lot of people on the bidet train. I recently was given one. And I tried it out. I'm not sold on it quite yet.

But yeah, the people who use them love them. And it's true. You will save loads on toilet paper. for this one-time expense of buying a bidet. And they're not that expensive. They range from like $20 to hundreds of dollars if you get the one with like a warming seat. And it's, I mean, it's got a, it makes coffee, I think, at this point.

It's crazy. Thank you, Zizu for that. Mag said, I used to put my wallet in the trunk of my car. Drive-thrues were a lesser pull if I had to stop and get out of my vehicle to access my money. Wow. So Mags added some friction into her life because she knew, hey, if the wallet's right here, I'm going to go ahead and pay. Now, my my pushback is a lot of

times you can like use an app on your phone to pay, use Apple pay. There's a lot of ways to do that. So if the wallet's going to do the trick for you, good for you. The trunk of the car, I mean, I would be worried because if like someone walks by and sees a wallet in a trunk, your car is getting broken into. So hopefully you've got a good tint or it's a trunk that you cannot see through a window, like a little sedan or something. I don't know. That's your business. But this is a smart one. Add friction into your life for the things that you know you're going to spend money on. Maybe that's online. Well, take out the Amazon login information, delete the card info, delete the app from your phone. You can do this in all areas of your life to bring some friction back

in to help you spend less. That's a good one. Chad said pickle juice. Trust me. I'm so, I have so many questions for Chad. What, okay, so the question was, what's an outside of the box way you save money and Chad inserts pickle juice. Do I need to Google this? Am I not in on a joke? And then he follows it up with trust me, as if we should question his integrity for commenting pickle juice? Now I must see. Chat GPT. How can pickle juice save you money? Prevents and stops muscle cramps, replaces expensive electrolyte drinks, reduces food waste. Most people dump the pickle juice down the drain, you can save it. Okay. Helps with digestion and blood sugar spikes. And it has DIY household uses like cleaning copper and brass, removing odors from hands, helping tenderized cheaper cuts of meat.

And it's a hangover and dehydration fix. Chad, why did I ever question you? We should trust you. This is the most, I didn't know. It's a free byproduct that can replace multiple paid products. And you can use it to marinate your chicken a la Chick-a-chic-fil-A. If it's good enough for them, it's good enough for you. Save your pickle juice. Yeah, we'll see. Moving on to something non-pickle-related, we're done with the brine cucumber content for now. Canceled Amazon Prime a couple of years ago.

Now most of the stuff sits in my cart until we reach the $35 minimum. The majority of the time I realize in a couple of days that I don't really need that thing. Save myself Prime subscription, plus hundreds in crap that we avoided ordering. That's a strong one. This one legitimately takes a whole lot of discipline

to cancel Amazon Prime. That is a commitment you're making, but I recommend it. Try it. Try it for a month or two. See how you do. And I guarantee you will spend less on Amazon. Now, will you have to go buy that thing elsewhere? Probably, but you'll probably get stuff that you actually needed instead of stuff you just randomly searched for, found, stumbled upon. Yada, yada, yada. So I think this is a great one, and it's part of my smart spender plan where I go, all right, what's the thing you need to buy? Is it going to add value to your life? What is the motive behind you buying? Is it a good one? All right, can you afford it in full in cash without going into debt or using a credit card? Great. Have you done all the research to find out if it's the best retailer option and price? That's the one where I question Amazon. Sometimes it's cheaper elsewhere, and you're going to Amazon for convenience. And then comes timing.

Is now the time to buy it? And so you really help answer a lot of those questions by canceling Amazon Prime completely and going without. I think we'd all do better. All right, let's move on to Jay. He said, I pick dandelions from abandoned lots and make hemp tea. on a small hobo stove and then sit out front of the local Pigley Wiggly and sell it to thirsty

townsfolk. After tax, I take in about $18 a day. I hope and pray this isn't satire. I really would love if this was a real story and we should be covering this should be narrative NPR podcast on your life and how you got to this

point of picking dandelions from abandoned lots to make hemp tea on a small hobo stove and then sitting out front of your local Pigley Wiggly and selling it. And God bless, if you haven't been to a Pigley Wiggly lately, you got to check it out. It's a time capsule. All right, they're hand lettering every label on every product. It's incredible.

The music has stayed the same. It's all from the 1980s, and it still slaps. Shout out to Pigley Wiggly. I don't think that's a good use of your time. 18 bucks a day, let's do the math on that times 30 days. That's 540 bucks a month. That's not enough take-home pay to cover my lifestyle. But if it's enough for you, for you and your small town, good on you, my friend.

Holy City Silver said, never pay full price for home internet and or TV service from major cable providers. I have Xfinity, and every 12 months, my internet only plan goes from 35 bucks to 80 bucks. I call saying I want to cancel service if I can't get a similar price again. It's normally resolved the first call. If the first is unhelpful, I call back again, saying cancel service is the reason, until someone puts me back on a discounted plan. This one works 100% of the time, and the truth is most people are too lazy to do what they did. And this is something that I personally do.

If my internet bill goes up, I call, and I get to the cancellation department, and they go, hey, whatever it takes, buddy, we want to keep you. You've been a customer for a long time, and they'll go back. Now, do you have to do this every year or every few years because they keep jacking up the price or because the promotional period ended? Sure. But five or ten minutes of your time to save hundreds of dollars a year is well worth it. In fact, I made a whole video breaking down, me on the phone, trying this.

Me using the online chat, and I even provide a free PDF that gives you a script to use when you're on the online chat or on the phone. So I will leave a link to that episode in the description if you want to check it out next. Catherine said, unplug the toaster after every use, waste of electricity, always use the bathroom in public before going home so that I'm not spending as much on toilet paper. Was that one? You connected it with a comma, Catherine. I'm very confused. Are these connected things? unpluged toaster, use public bathroom.

Got it. Check. Are you that concerned about how much toilet paper are you using at home that it's worth it for you to go out in public to do your business? And is it worth it for whatever venereal disease you could get by sitting on that gas station toilet? I hope so. She added, I work a part-time job as an usher at a local concert venue and get to see shows and get paid at the same time. Can't wait to see the Jonas Brothers in December.

That's a real one. For people that have the time to be a part of these events, you can see shows for free and get paid for it. Some of them, you might volunteer your time and get to see the show for free. Some of them you get paid to do it. And getting paid is obviously even better. Now, will you get to see the whole show and get to, like, stare? Probably not. You probably have to, like, do work.

But you'll get the periphery audio hyping through your ears and you get to experience the same concert that other people did at a way cheaper price. Zero dollars. In fact, you made money. All right. Keeping up with a toilet. paper content. Tyler said, use three sheets of toilet paper per wipe. So is this scientific? The role lasts at least a month, month and a half, depending on movements. I assume bowel was in front of that. Otherwise, use works or jim's facilities, then splurge on theirs. A lot of plurals in here.

We have movements, works, gyms, theirs. And he said, if you don't believe me, George, do the math. Sound X-Files music. I don't think we can legally play that, but... Dude. That was what you wanted me to play after saying do the math? Weird combo to pick, but okay. Yeah, I'm a big fan of using as little toilet paper as possible. The people who do... See a doctor.

You need to see a gastro doc like ASAP. Something is wrong. If you're bawling up toilet paper to accomplish the job, who raised you? Kids these days. Hopefully we're done with toilet paper content. I'm just personally over it. But Mad Chris said this. pieces of rubber and glued them to my shoes to extend the life of them. The bottom of the

shoe is beginning to have holes in it. What kind of pieces of rubber? You're just gluing random things to your shoe? That's got to be visually jarring. I would have concern for you if you were my co-worker. I'd be like, dude, let's go get you some shoes. That's wild. Now, if it's like a really nice pair of boots and you want to elongate the life, sure, let's get this fixed up. But if it's a pair of sneakers, it might just be time, my friend. Your feet, they're worth more. than rubber glued to them. But sure, it's a money hack. SJF, moving in with my husband's grandma in 2023

instead of an apartment when moving back to his own state, getting rid of our net bill, just using cell data, buying intentionally, eating more at home. Again, guys, if it's a comma, it's a connected thought. Like, I don't know if you didn't have this taught to you in school, but we got to keep the thoughts separate here. I get that you're trying to make it a list, but the grammar's really struggling here.

So you move in with husbands... Did your husband move with you? Or did you just move in with your husband's grandma solo? Moving back to his own... Okay. You got rid of your internet bill and use cell phone data instead. You bought intentionally and you ate more at home. Okay, these are good.

Overall, good takes. I apologize for roasting the grammar. And also, selling old phones you're no longer using at the phone recycling kiosk. Selling items you don't want or use. Keep things you actually use. Sign up for lawsuits that you... get in mail. Selling old phones, I don't know what a phone recycling kiosk is, but I have sold

old iPhones on a site called Swapa, and I made good money better than you would trading it in. And so people will buy your used iPhones and androids. No Android hate this time, I'm done with it, all right? I'm gonna walk away slowly. Just walk away. Selling items you don't use her want. I use Facebook Marketplace a lot for that stuff. Keep things you actually use, will that make sense. And then signing for lawsuits, I think what she's getting at is the class action lawsuits. You can sign up to you a part of that and you can get some money. I think I got some money from like a meta Facebook class action lawsuit. They sent me, I don't know, like 100 bucks or something.

So yeah, take it. It's a little bit of work to sign up and keep track of it. But then you get a check in the mail months later, which is nice. R.G said, I make cold showers following Wim Hof's method. It strengthens myself against cold. I get almost no flus or colds. I switched the heater on in my house very rarely, and I save good money. Parentheses, I live alone.

Okay, we didn't need to know that, that you live alone. It felt like a sad cry for help. But I appreciate that, and I want to find out who, who is, do I, should I know who Wim Hof is? Am I dumb? He's known as the Iceman, a Dutch motivational speaker, an extreme athlete. Okay, that makes sense why I wouldn't know him. I don't know anything about athletes. Thank you for that, RG.

And you save money on your heating bill. That's the bonus. We'll get back to your frugal hacks in just a second. But first, let me tell you about Fairwins, a sponsor of today's video. It's important to choose a bank that has your back, and that is Fairwin's Credit Union. Unlike those other banks that hope you keep swiping, overspending, living on credit, staying in debt. Fair wins is the opposite. They want to help you make smarter choices and get out of debt.

And right now, you can sign up for their smart bundle, which includes a no-feet checking account, a high-yield savings account, and the B-Weird Ramsey-Brand debit card to really stick it to the man. So if you're ready to ditch, broke, and get with a bank that has your back, switch over to Fairwinds. Go to fairwins.org slash Ramsey or click the link in the description. And before we get back to your hacks, let me give you a bonus hack that the comments section is not going to let you in on. And that is switching to Boost Mobile, another sponsor of today's video. One of the easiest ways to save money every month is just by ditching your overpriced phone plan you've had since your first breakup. Boost $25 Forever Unlimited Plan gives you unlimited data, talk, and text with 99% nationwide coverage.

That's more reliable than your emotional support hoodie post-breakup. And the best part, no contracts, no hidden fees. And, by the way, the price never goes up, ever somehow. So stop overpaying and head to boostmobile.com slash Ramsey to get the deal or use the link in the description. All right, let's get to some more hacks, and this time it's a lightning round. Judo Panda said, I quit buying crap I don't need to impress people I don't care about. Ultimate hack right there. All right, it's a superpower.

If you can just not care what anyone thinks and buy the things, things that actually add value to your life. Most of the stuff we buy is really to impress other people or to keep up some status or try to feel something that we're not currently feeling. Retail therapy. What else do we got here? Ooh, this is a good one. My neighbor and I made a deal for the winter.

I let him park his race car in my garage for the season, and he plows my driveway for free. Saves me so much money. That's fantastic. Make a deal with your neighbor. Aaron said, I've saved untold riches by never having a credit card. That's a strong one. I wholeheartedly agree. I'll never know how much money I've saved

because I haven't had a credit card in, I don't know, 13 or 14 years now? That's pretty wild. And finally, I cut my own hair, saves me $40 every three weeks, buzz a six on top, tapered down to one on the sides. It's basic, but I don't have great hair to work with anyway, so the simple short style suits me well,

both aesthetically and financially. God bless. If I could do that, guys, if I could just take a flowbeat to this and be done, out $1,000 for my haircuts at this bougie barber, I would 100% do it. I didn't realize the Flobie was a high-quality product. And here I am, I'm totally wrong. But hey, just wear hats, problem solved.

All right, I have to give you guys some credit here. Some of these put my money-saving hacks to shame. Although I'm not sure why so many of you are obsessed with toilet paper hacks. Feels like there's a lot going on there that you need to work out with a professional. But one thing is for sure. Small, smart savings really do add up and they help you achieve your financial goals. So if you have a frugal habit I didn't cover, let me know in the comments, and maybe we'll do another one of these someday.

And if you like this video, I bet you'll love this one, where I react to even more frugal habits. You can click here to watch it next or click the link in the description below. As always, don't forget to hit like on this video, subscribe to the channel, and share this with a friend who needs to know about the pickle hack. Okay? Do not gatekeep about pickles. Thanks for watching. We'll see you in the next one.