George Kamel - 31 Small Habits That Lead To Big Savings

Episode Date: August 13, 2025

🎥 Watch my video 17 Things Frugal People REFUSE to Buy.   Today, I’m reacting to a list of 31 money-saving habits from the fine folks at BuzzFeed. You’regoing to find out which ones are weird and which ones are worth your time. Next Steps: • 📈 Are you on track with the Baby Steps? Get a free personalized plan. • 📙 Order my book, Breaking Free From Broke, in hardcover. • 💵 Start your free budget today. Download the EveryDollar app!   Connect With Our Sponsors: • Get 20% off when you join DeleteMe. • Learn more about opening a high-yield savings account with Laurel Road. • Get up to 40% off Cozy Earth with code GEORGE. 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

Little things really can make a big difference. Take your kidneys, for example, or bees, or me. And the good people of Reddit agree, because they recently got together to share how their small money habits turned into bigger money wins. So today I'm reacting to a list of these habits, pulled together by BuzzFeed, and you're gonna find out which ones are worth it

and which ones are worth skipping. Let's get into it. Let's see what the gang on Reddit says. All right, habit number one. A very stupid seeming trick that helped me is having my grocery list on my phone instead of on paper. I always have my phone on me, so I'm never going shopping again without a plan. Plus, always having my wants and needs and looking over them multiple times makes me think about them more.

Do I really want a frozen pizza? Or was that an I'm-so-hungry thought? Well said. Exotic Fan 5062. With a screenshot of said list. Let's see what she's got. Bananas, oranges, spinach, broccoli, coffee. Kefer?

Hardly know her. Peanut butter, cat treats, and paper towels. Wow. Eating healthy. And a cat. We love her. We love to see it. I'm a big fan of this one already. Now, if you're a pen and paper guy, she's not trying to offend you. Okay? I'm an iPhone guy, so yes, I would have my grocery list here, and this is unhinged because you can just click the little checklist button,

and it makes the whole thing into a checklist. Why didn't she do that? I don't know. Does she not know that's a feature? But yes, using a grocery list is very important to winning financially so that you're not thrown off track buying a bunch of crap off the end cap because you felt snacky. And in the national study of millionaires, we found that 85% of millionaires made a grocery list. So, we're off to a great start. Next up. If it's not an immediate need, we have a 24 to 48-hour rule for online shopping. You can place it in the cart, but you must wait 24 to 48 hours before checking out.

There are so many times we never go back to it. If we do, then it's probably something that's needed. We also ask ourselves often, is this a need or a want? Definitely helps us to not overindulge in wants. Way to go. spiral out, keep going 42. This is a strong one. And this is just the power of delayed gratification of pausing and fighting against impulse, which is the hardest thing to do in a world where marketing is constantly in our face telling us we need it, we need it, we need it, buy it now, by now,

two hour shipping, get it now. So I like this one because it causes you to just pause, reflect, and maybe even abandon cart. All right, number three, not keeping credit card info saved on your phone or computer is a big game changer. Turns out if I have to go reach for my wallet, I suddenly don't need the stuff right now, I tell myself I will do it later and I end up really thinking about it. I love this one because it involves bringing friction back intentionally. The world is trying to go frictionless so that we part with our money even faster. And so removing your card info, using a debit card so that it's your own money, adding some pain to the purchase, all of that friction helps you make better spending decisions. Big fan of that. Next up, I like the envelope

budget system when you allocate some cash to needs, wants, etc. My problem is that I can't buy stuff online with cash. So I've bought a Visa gift card that I'm using as my monthly wants envelope. It's not perfect, but I get the benefit of the envelope system and I can use it digitally. Big fan of the envelope system, Dave Ramsey popularized this back in the day, and now Gen Z has co-opted it and called it cash stuffing. I don't care what you call it. I love it, because again, it adds friction to the purchase when you have to use actual cash and when you run out, you run out. Oh boy, don't love this one already. My built rewards credit card earns double points on the first of every month. I keep a bookmark on all the things I think I want throughout the month

and go through what I actually want at the start of the month to maximize reward points and still get things I feel like I want without it being an impulse buy. This is very focused on things that you want and falling for the credit card scheme of, hey, it's the first of the month. Spend the most money you can now and hopefully you have money to pay your bills later. Hate it. Hate the reward points game. Not worth it. Just do a budget and you will create more reward points in actual money by just keeping more of it. Number six, cook more at home and plan weekly menus. We throw out basically nothing and we have saved a staggering amount on takeout and restaurants saving thousands. We barely ever eat out these days. I don't even miss it. Way to go.

This one's a really tough one for people to get a hold of because it takes time, effort and even a little bit of skill to know how to meal plan, how to grocery shop the right way, how to cook at home affordably and not using a lot of time. And so families and couples with kids, get this, spend about $6,000 a year eating out or $500 a month. So think about that. You could save thousands by just shopping smarter, meal planning, shopping at a store like Aldi, where it's very affordable and cooking at home simply. And here's what I do. I just use chat GPT for whatever ingredients I have on hand and say, hey, make me a meal in under 20 minutes using these ingredients, using the oven or the air friar. Works every time. Number seven, always have something ready-ish to eat at home.

At the beginning of living alone, I wanted to be a strictly ingredients person, which was fine when I had stuff like bread and toppings or pasta at home, but there were times I didn't have stuff pre-planned and it made me much more likely to buy junk food after university because I didn't want to cook. This is a good one. Oh, thank you for the photo as well. What a spread there. There's a lot going on here. But this is true. If you only have junk food at home, guess what? You're going to eat junk food.

If you don't have food at home, guess what? You're going to go to DoorDash to get a meal. So having meals ready at home and not acting superfoods. when the food's not on the fridge because you didn't buy any. So, solvable problem. Number eight, I canceled my Wi-Fi and cable package $180 a month, and as a family of four, upgraded her cell phone plan to include 50-gig hotspot, which also came with two free Netflix accounts,

ended up saving $10 off our original cell plan. We use our hotspots for Internet. Hasn't been an issue. $2,160 bucks saved per year, chaghing. This is a big one. If you can cancel your cable, I don't know about the Wi-Fi part. I don't know that a hotspot will be the right fit for your family, but it worked for them, and I love the creativity here, and they got two free Netflix accounts, so it saved them on streaming costs as well.

And for that, I say, way to go, past Strawberry 6592. You're doing great. Number nine, I use privacy.com to create virtual cards for online subscriptions. Each card is a strict spending limit. So, for example, if I sign up for Netflix, I could either limit it to $8 a month or just set a lifetime limit of $16. After two months, it just stops paying the bill. If I want to reactivate, I can just go in, raise the spending limit. Yes, yes, yes, not a sponsor, but I'm a big fan of Privacy.com for this reason.

I use it for a lot of free trials where I don't want it to charge me, or if there's a site that I don't want to have my debit card information, I'll create a virtual debit card and use that on the site instead. So a lot of great parameters you can set using Privacy.com and a great hack. Number 10, emergency cookies. I don't eat cookies often, but sometimes I have a craving for sugary things, chocolate-y things. So instead of buying a box of cookies or chocolate, I make a big batch of cookie-sized balls and freeze them. I bake a batch of six or seven cookies at a time, takes around

15 minutes to bake, crisis averted, money saved, and better to eat six cookies than a box of 20 or 30. What are you the cookie monster? Just... 30 cookies in a sitting? I guess emergency cookies could be a hack. I would just say, can we work on this cookie addiction? We should really look into this. Nothing beats the cookie season. That's the truth. But I do like the idea of having something easily accessible that doesn't involve you going to buy a bunch of stuff and then making a bad decision because of it. Number 11. Making three meals at a time. Goodness gracious. Who are you, Martha Stewart? Giaata de Laurentis? Give me a break. Wherever I feel like cooking, I triple the recipe and freeze two portions. Oh, that makes more sense. Then when I don't feel like cooking, I can grab that instead of delivery. Okay. I misunderstood. I thought it was three different meals at a time. I was like, this is,

some next level food network show stuff. But I like the idea of basically batching a meal, making a huge meal, and then you can freeze portions of it and just reheat it later on. Saves you time, saves you money. Two thumbs up for me. Number 12, using my cash-back credit card to pay the bills.

It took a little doing from having to rebuild my credit score from scratch. I had to go the whole secured card route in the beginning. Yikes. But now that part is over and done with, starting to pay out from rewards that I usually apply to groceries. As long as you discipline yourself to pay the bill before it's due, it's basically free money. Because these are bills that you were going to have to pay either way.

Last year, paid for my entire Thanksgiving dinner. Okay, I've heard enough. Not a fan of this hack at all. Using a cashback credit card to pay bills, and you're hoping to have enough to pay the bills, which means you have to hope that you spent enough on the credit card to get enough rewards. This is an insane game that is going to leave a lot of people broke.

Avoid this one at all costs. 13. Using the Library. I love this one. Oh, this picture. Read them before they're gone. Warning, these and other items may be censored pending current North Dakota legislation. What? What in the book burning? What's going on in North Dakota?

They have a warning label on their books? And yet we let children buy Zinn? We got it backwards, man. If that's the worst thing your kids are doing is reading books at the library, you've got a real nerdy kid. Is this some sort of nerd thing? Are you calling me a nerd? Big fan of this one, though.

Library card, usually free. And even if you buy, you know, 3, 60. $18 books a year, that's still $50 saved. So support your local library, download apps like Libby or Hoopla to get content, audiobooks, ebooks, completely free through your library. Thanks, librarians, you're doing the most. Number 14, keeping a case of water in my car and some snacks. It stops me from just grabbing fast food or buying an overpriced gas station snack.

Again, this is all about staying prepared. You know you're going to want a snack. You know you're going to want some water. So instead of running into the gas station every time, just keep a little cooler in there, have a little snack pack, which I always have in my bag for travel and other things. It really helps avoid overspending, especially when you look at gas station prices these days.

What are they doing? That's how they get you. The gas, decent price. The snacks, highway robbery. I won't stand for it. I thought I was your snack pack. Number 15. I have chronic allergies,

so switching to handkerchiefs has been a big win. A couple of dozen cotton squares cost me less than a year's worth of disposable facial tissue and have been going strong for years, and they're easier on my skin. What in the Wilford Brimley's going on here? I can't get behind handkerchiefs. I feel like this is how we bring back dysentery and scurvy. I just, I'm sorry, this one's too disgusting for me,

thinking about, you know, Pop-Pops handkerchief. Whatever you've saved in tissue cost will never justify the snot rag that is in your pocket. And I don't care how you wash it, how you hang it to dry. I'm not reusing that thing. No, thank you. Number 16, I propagate my plants instead of buying new ones. New plants are a treat.

I will propagate these ones to make many plants to maintain a jungle without spending a fortune. Plus, they double as gifts. Almost all of my gifts are plants or things I have crocheted with yarn I got for free from a buy-nothing Facebook group. I think you're just obsessed with plants, which is a wonderful obsession.

But I can't say this is great advice for everyone. This feels like a lot of work, and I don't have a green thumb. I kill everything I love. Everything in my life, I murder. I guarantee this person, though, has seen all seven seasons of Gilmore girls and has a cat named Suki.

Bet. You have a problem. Yes, I do. All right, we have reached the halftime show here in the studio, and it's sponsored by Delete Me. Well, technically, not a show, but it's something you're not going to want to miss, because if you care about your privacy, you need Delete Me.

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All right, let's get back to it. All right, halftime show over. Back to the game. Let's go. Eye on the flag, flag on the play. Number 17. Order groceries and pick them up in the car park. I don't enter the store and impulse buy.

I stick to the list and I'm done. Saves both time and money. Love this one. Big fan of ordering it in the app and just picking it up. If I avoid going to the store, I generally save money because I'm not tempted by all the things that could be in said store. Use it. Number 18, anytime I get a gift card, I first think about things I need. For example, I got an Amazon gift card, and instead of buying random stuff, I used it to purchase shampoo, facewash, and toiletries that were on my list.

Love this. So when you get a gift card, don't think, oh, this is going to be for random fun crap that I probably won't use. Use it for necessities if you can, especially while you're broke and trying to pay off debt. Once you're in a better spot, you get that Amazon gift card. Get that electric milk frother. Who's stopping you? Number 19, I bought a small dry erase board to put on the fridge, and I write on it every fruit and vegetable, meat, or leftover meal in my fridge,

and update as needed. Helps me keep track of things so they don't get lost behind other things and go to waste. Has prevented a lot of waste and also save some money. This is a smart one. If you can actually keep up with this, which in my house, I probably wouldn't. But if you are that person, you're pretty type A. You can keep track and delete things and write things. Maybe do like a little reminder on your phone to check in on this and go, hey, time for the fridge update.

This is a great move because you're right. Things do get lost in there. And here's a stat for you. American households throw away about $900 of food each year. So this dry raceboard just saved you $900 at least. Number 20, I learned to cut my husband's hair during the pandemic and now we never pay for haircuts. There was definitely a learning curve, but it's not difficult and I save us roughly $100 a month. That's impressive. That's some big savings. And that's about what I spend on haircuts a month. So, touchy.

Now, let me just tell you right now. My wife would need to do a 60-month apprenticeship with my barber before I trusted her with these precious locks. Gotta get that fade right, baby. I'm done. Number 21. I buy all my clothes and my kids' clothes secondhand. I haven't bought anything new other than shoes in a gajillion years.

If there was a reliable place to buy used shoes in good shape for kids, I would do that too. Haven't found it yet. This is a great one. always growing. They're just constantly outgrowing the thing that you just bought them. So buying brand new clothes or expensive clothes is a giant waste, especially for kids. So buy secondhand, reduce, reuse, recycle, save money while you're at it. Love it. Number 22. My husband and I once added up the savings of doing our own yard work instead of hiring a weekly Mo, Blow, and Go service, like everyone

else on our neighborhood has. And doing that for 29 years we've owned the house has saved us over $40,000. That is impressive. And probably a great workout. And I don't know if that's your actual mower, but look at that thing. It's seen some things. Now, personally, I'm not quite there yet, but I aspire to be a mower of my own yard one day. Number 23, wait before you buy anything for a new hobby or interest. It's lovely that you have a new interest, but do as much as you can without buying first to see if the interest will actually stick. Borrow some stuff from a friend or family member, read a couple books from the library on the topic, and if it's digital, try to find a free version first to try it out. If you actually use the borrowed or free stuff enough

that you really do feel like you need to buy the stuff, then go ahead. And even then, depending on what it is, check for you stuff. A lot of people get stuff for hobbies, then give up and sell basically new stuff. Goodness gracious, if that doesn't explain the average Americans hobbies, I don't know what it does. So many of us go out and get excited about a new thing. We buy all the gear for said thing, and it goes to waste. So I love this. If you want to try guitar, well, don't buy a $700 guitar to start.

Borrow one from a friend. Buy a $50 one used on Facebook. and if you actually stick with it in six months, upgrade the guitar. Bada b'bibing, bada boom. Number 24, only one subscription at a time. Want Netflix? Goodbye Apple Music. Wow, very aggressive.

If you can actually do this, I'm impressed, and I think there is a major savings to be had here. But I watch shows at night but listen to music during the day, so I don't know that I could just like stick to one at a time. But if you're really trying to tighten up that budget, I say cut them all if you don't need them and stick to as few as possible. Number 25. I collect water whenever I'm waiting for it to heat up in sinks and bathtubs

and use that to water my plants. How much water do you need for these plants? You running like a greenhouse? I have a lot of indoor and outdoor plants, so there's always something that needs more water, especially my outdoor plants in the summer. Okay, I guess if this is like your number one thing you've devoted your life to, is this greenery, then sure, collect some water.

But it feels like you're kind of just filling up buckets with water for your plants at some point. How long is it taking for your shower water to get hot? What are you doing at the bathroom sink? Not at the bathroom sink. You're just collecting water for plants. Just say it out loud, bro. I'm not doing this one. Number 26.

I signed up for acorns nine years ago. It takes the change from digital purchases, saves it, and invests it. I've saved quite a bit. Most debit cards offer similar tools for saving. For cash purchases, I take the change, throw it in a drawer. It adds up. All right, going to be honest, not a fan of acorns and the strategy of like, you'll just round up the change, and eventually I'll have to be.

$50 saved. I'd rather just be very intentional and go, all right, this thing cost me $1.78, and I'm investing $500 a month. I just don't think you're going to get anywhere by investing your change. Do better. Number 27, if I need to buy something important, I always make sure it's something that will last. Always check reviews, see how much it would be to repair, and never buy too cheap, because that almost always means a headache. I am a big fan of the buy it for life mentality. Now, there's very few things that will actually last the test of time, but I do agree that buying a better pair of jeans versus ones that you'll have to replace in two months,

I would just rather take care of the stuff I have and make it last longer. So love this principle. Number 28, when I know I'm going to have a busy week, I make sure to have grab-and-go protein in the fridge, smoke fish, cooked chicken, salami, lunch meat, whatever's cheap and looks good. When I'm coming home ravenous,

ready to crash and order in, I grab the protein and put it in front of us. We shove it in our mouths, and pretty soon we're able to think again and find out we don't need to order food in anymore. Protein, salt, and fat are a magical combination I pray that's not your actual fridge. That's just a fridge full of hot dogs.

I don't think it's the same person who posted. I think BuzzFeed is having some creative license here with the imagery. So just be aware. The internet's not all true. 29. I cycle to work most days. It's fun, great exercise, and saves a ton of money. Yeah, absolutely.

If you can do this, if your commute short enough and you have a bike and you're pretty, you know, you can make it to work without breaking a sweat, go for it. If my commute was 100 yards, I would do it. 200 yards, I'd think twice. That's a lot. But love this one if you can swing it. You'll probably be more tan than me. Number 30, I switched my phone plan to Mint Mobile and pay the year up front. Downloaded a screen limits app to prevent me from burning data, and for the last five years, my bill has amounted to $15 a month.

That's impressive. I'm a boost mobile guy myself, and I got to say, the savings is pretty astounding. When you hear people say, I'm paying $70 a month for my phone, I'm just going, do better, man. This is one of the easiest places to shave some money, and phone plans is a great start. Number 31, here we go. When it was time for a new car, I got a two-year-old hybrid. I hate the interior and exterior colors, but I get 40 to 45 miles per gallon. Now, instead of 16 gallons per week, I use 12 gallons per month.

I save 68 gallons per year, and I get it at Costco. Let's see what that amounts to. Let's say it's a gallon of gas cost. What could it be? $10 for a banana? I'll say $2.89. That's like $2,000 a year by going hybrid. So yeah, now you've got to think about this.

If the hybrid is $10,000 more, it's going to take five years just to break even on that. So don't just go, well, I'm going to buy a hybrid to save, or I'm going to buy a Tesla to save and spend $70,000 because I'm saving on gas. That's idiotic. Actually, crunch the numbers, make sure it makes sense for you, and always buy used. All right. We have reached the end of this list, and I'm exhausted.

But I'm going to give this list a solid B, because some of these small money-saving habits are legit. Some are mid, and some have triggered my gag reflex. Deathwater. But regardless, I am proud of all these people for trying to live the frugal life. It tells me they're going to win with money long term. So if you're trying to live that life, too, keep watching or find the link in the description for the next video about the 17 things frugal people refuse to buy. I'm going to warn you right now, number five, controversial. Prepare your heart.

If you enjoyed this content, hit the like and subscribe button so you can keep watching more like it. And let me know in the comments, what would you add to this list of small money-saving habits? Thanks for watching. We'll see you next time.