Americans have saving money on their minds. According to a 2025 Vanguard survey, 75% of Americans didn\u2019t save as much money as they intended to that year. Additionally, 84% of Americans included a financial goal in their 2026 New Year\u2019s resolutions. But less than half of Americans are actually saving money. A 2025 Pew Research\u2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Americans have saving money<\/a> on their minds. According to a 2025 Vanguard survey<\/a>, 75% of Americans didn\u2019t save as much money as they intended to that year. Additionally, 84% of Americans included a financial goal in their 2026 New Year\u2019s resolutions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n But less than half of Americans are actually saving money. A 2025 Pew Research poll<\/a> found that just 47% said they were able to put money away.<\/p>\n\n\n\n One method for saving money is to adopt a frugal lifestyle<\/a>. However, not all frugal \u201chacks\u201d<\/a> are effective money-savers, as frugal people on Reddit have shared<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cI see a lot of advice about extreme couponing, driving across town to save a tiny amount on gas or groceries, and spending hours chasing the absolute lowest price on everything,\u201d one person explained, adding that they tried doing some things to no avail.<\/p>\n\n\n\n They added, \u201cIt just wasn\u2019t worth the time or mental energy. I\u2019d spend 30\u201345 minutes planning to save a few dollars, while ignoring bigger expenses (housing, food habits, and recurring subscriptions), that actually moved the needle.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n More frugal people shared the money-saving hacks they tried that ultimately weren\u2019t worth it. From gas to food and DIY repairs, these are the things frugal people wouldn\u2019t recommend trying to save money on:<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cNot every DIY is cheaper. It often only is cheaper if you need something that cannot be mass-produced. And even then, buying the materials is often more expensive than modifying an existing product.\u201d \u2013 discolored_rat_hat<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cOur rule of thumb is if you can fubar it 3x and still save significant money try it. If you\u2019re going to lose money if you aren\u2019t perfect buy it or hire someone. For example a bathroom remodel was quoted at 42k. We priced out the things needed at 5k, that meant if we (we mostly being my exceptionally handy husband, I just design and paint) messed up we could try 8 times and still be ahead. He did a beautiful job and it was just about 6K all in. The dishwasher broke. The part that was probably but not for sure the problem was 150. A new dishwasher was 400. We bought a new dishwasher. It\u2019s worked out great.\u201d \u2013 MsLaurieM<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cFixing my car myself ended up with a friend breaking it more. I did replace the battery just fine, but even that took way longer than it was maybe worth.\u201d \u2013 greatexpectations23<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cDriving around to find cheaper gas is pretty ridiculous. Like, I get filling up before going near the airport car rental, and not filling up at rest stops if possible, but otherwise just keep an eye out for what on your way. For me, it\u2019s cheaper to fill up in Delaware, but I only do so if I\u2019m down that way shopping. I don\u2019t purposely drive out of my way.\u201d \u2013 MissDisplaced<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cDriving with windows down to save on gas instead using your car\u2019s AC. The majority of fuel consumed by your car is used to overcome air\/wind resistance. The drag created by driving with open windows burns way more fuel than your car\u2019s air conditioning.\u201d \u2013 OCsurfishin<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cGas savings is the biggest thing. My car had a 20 gallon tank. Even a 20 cent price difference would only save me $4. If I get gas every other week at most that\u2019s $100 a year. But a 20 cent difference is huge. It\u2019s literally not worth it to try to save a couple cents per gallon.\u201d \u2013 no_sight<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cMoney wise, raising animals like chickens for the eggs, can be a money pit. But it depends on a lot of factors like the money you put to build the coop, the feed you are giving them, the treats, the time you spend taking care of them, etc.. In season, you can sell the extra eggs. But for a few months, it\u2019s possible you don\u2019t have any egg at all. So you need to buy them. Or put a light in the coop. But, you have happy animals and you know your eggs are not coming from a factory.\u201d \u2013 Brayongirl<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cBaking bread. Although I\u2019m a great cook, I\u2019m not good at making bread. I\u2019ve tried dozens of recipes. I then tried a bread machine. Nope. I\u2019ve accepted defeat. There\u2019s nothing like a good crusty baguette, so I\u2019ll gladly pay $5 and save myself the aggravation and cost of ingredients.\u201d \u2013 DareWright<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cMaking (laundry detergent, yogurt, cheese, whatever) from scratch. If it takes more than 3 steps and\/or 2 hours I\u2019ll just use less and\/or coupon for it. Between procuring the ingredients\/equipment needed, the labor involved with execution and clean up, and then the learning curve of possibly making a sh*tty end product, I\u2019m ok with paying for the convenience of a consistently good product.\u201d \u2013 PutNameHere123<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cBuying plastic containers for meal prep always resulted in the containers becoming worthless within a year or so due to warping or other things happening. I now use all glass containers and have been using the same containers for well over 4 years.\u201d \u2013 greatexpectations23<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cGoing to three different supermarkets and comparison shopping. In general, I stick with just purchasing what I need at supermarkets that provide a good value. Yes, maybe going across town will save me 40 cents on onions this week. Better that I buy everything at one location and save the time and mental energy.\u201d \u2013 pianoman81<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cI stopped buying things because they were \u2018on sale\u2019. If it was something I didn\u2019t need often, it was not worth the purchase price. I also stopped buying things I don\u2019t have room for or did not plan to use within the current month. It just was not worth trying to find storage for it.\u201d \u2013 tetcheddistress<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cCredit card churning. I know it can save money and I did do it for a while but the mental headache wasn\u2019t worth it for me. I just use a single cash back card with another as a backup and use it for everything. Keeps all my spending in one spot to help with budgeting and the mental load decrease is so much nicer.\u201d \u2013 OutsideImmediate9074<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cCouponing, at least these days, is often not worth it! It encourages you to buy brand name when usually genetic\/store brand is cheaper even after coupon, and is generally the same formulation. Most coupons these days are like 35 cents off 2 boxes of $4 cereal meanwhile generics are like $2.50 without a coupon. If you\u2019re brand-loyal that might be a hot take, but our house is fine with generics. Physical coupons have gotten crappier and less frequent, usually in favor of moving to e-coupons. E-coupons are hard to stack and often have restrictions\/limits that make them hard to use. The pennysavers in my area have half the number of pages that they used to, and are basically only P&G products and stamp ads lol. The dollar value of the coupons haven\u2019t been changing but everything has been getting more expensive, making them less useful than ever before. The time spent organizing, clipping, and putting together matchups is honestly just not worth it these days. To me, I see couponing as a job. If I\u2019m not making\/saving at least minimum wage from it ($8 savings per hour spent clipping\/organizing\/shopping) it\u2019s not a worthwhile use of my time.\u201d <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Americans have saving money on their minds. According to a 2025 Vanguard survey, 75% of Americans didn\u2019t save as much money as they intended to<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":6461,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6460","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/humorsidehub.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/651631901_1400850618742592_5169266013416279294_n.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/humorsidehub.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6460","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/humorsidehub.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/humorsidehub.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/humorsidehub.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/humorsidehub.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=6460"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/humorsidehub.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6460\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6462,"href":"https:\/\/humorsidehub.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6460\/revisions\/6462"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/humorsidehub.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/6461"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/humorsidehub.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6460"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/humorsidehub.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6460"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/humorsidehub.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6460"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Household and repairs<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
Gas<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
Food<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
Additional expenses<\/h2>\n\n\n\n