George Kamel - Frugal Habits That Secretly Drain Your Bank Account

Episode Date: February 25, 2026

💵 Start your free budget today. Download the EveryDollar app! 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.  Next Steps: ● 🎥 Watch 31 Small Habits That Lead to Big Savings. ● 📈 Are you on track with the Baby Steps? Get a free personalized plan.    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

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 help you figure out if you're being a smart spender or sabotaging your progress. But before we dive in, we've 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 this 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 hand-selected the best ones because time is of the essence. First up, driving across town to save three-souths,

cents a gallon 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 it had taken to drive across town and back, so two cross-town trips to pay 15 cents 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 principal, 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, you know, Gas Buddy, 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 used 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 craftsperson, 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?

This is wild. Another comment, I sew, and today I saw something on Instagram and was like, why buy it for $100 when I can spend $2,000 to make it myself? To 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 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 special. sandwich. Well, for you to get all of the ingredients to make that sandwich, it's going to cost you 50 bucks. Buying the sandwich would it 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 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 of that.

the 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 for you 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 or it will be scheduled for you 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 drained. 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 five 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. Anything in your house. Anything that you use, drive, you got to 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 going to cost me $1,200 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 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 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 going to 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'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 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. 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 your 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 great. 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 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. Are 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, 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-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-filet sauce is made. It's all the sauces. It's the suicide sauce. It's just everything in once. 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 to yellow mustard, but like a Dijon? Absolutely. Put that in a jar. A gray Poupon? 100%. Do you have any gray pupa? 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 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 lodge, what's up? And again, I take advantage of all. the discounts and then I cancel immediately. You're not going to 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 the 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. 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 the 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 madded. I had Taco Bell last weekend. I'm not ashamed to say. All right? I'm not ashamed to tell you. I got a crispy canteen a chicken taco and a Doritos Locos tacos. I learned Spanish by going to 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 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 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

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've 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 money, untold amounts of money. 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 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, hey, 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 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. 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 men's wear is not only ridiculously soft, but also super durable and made with responsibly sourced materials. And I can attest their men's everywhere pant, their brush bamboo. joggers, they will not self-destruct after a few trips through the spin cycle or one aggressive lunge to tire 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% at cozyEarth.com slash 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 at boostmobile.com slash 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 on the Boost Mobile Unlimited Plan as of January 2026.

He 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 firsthand 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 got to 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 got to 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. Or click the link in the description. That's it for today. you leave, be sure to share this video with a friend who needs a hair intervention. It's bad, Brian. It's bad. No more, no more, nope. If it ends with clips, we're not going. Thanks for watching. We'll see you next time.