MONEY HACKS: Is Your Routine Silently Draining Your Wallet?

As more people transition back to the office in 2025, many are realizing that their daily routines are costing them more than they expected. Small expenses, some obvious, some hidden, can quietly add up, leaving you wondering where your money went at the end of the month.

Have you considered how much your commute, daily coffee, or streaming subscriptions are actually costing you? What about those expenses that snuck in while working from home and are now just part of your routine?

In this Money Hacks video, we share some of the biggest ways your day-to-day habits could be costing you and what you can do about it. Whether it’s meal prepping, cutting back on often-overlooked expenses, or making small but impactful financial tweaks, there are ways to take control of your spending without sacrificing what matters most.

Have any money questions you’d like answered? Our Money Hacks series is built on conversations we have with employees, investors, savers, and anyone planning for their financial future. What topics are on your mind for our next episode?

Video Transcript:

Alex:
Hey, this is Alex Assaley! It's episode number 123 of Money Hacks, and as we're kicking into 2025—already one month into the year—we’ve been talking with a lot of investors on ways to set yourself up for financial security and success here in 2025.

Kim:
And I think there are a few things we're thinking about, right? Yeah, you know, we're finding that a lot more companies are doing a return to the office, either partially or full-time. And that presents some financial challenges that we need to kind of be prepared for.

So, if we look back five years ago, we were used to paying for commuting expenses and buying lunch—my gosh, packing lunch to bring into the office, packing water bottles, and being prepared. But now, we've got to worry about new expenses. Maybe we have new dogs, maybe we have new kids. Now, we've got to think about daycare, gas expenses, commuting, and time in traffic.

So, we really need to think about what that’s going to cost us—extra for not eating breakfast and lunch at home, for eating at the office. Can we prepare food at home? Can we meal prep for the week? Can we save money by not going out for lunch? We know expenses are going to be a little higher when you return to the office, so how can you navigate that?

I think we need to be a little conservative with our expenditures. Maybe pull back just a little bit. Start slowly working on who's going to watch your kids, who's going to walk your dog, and then maybe think about whether you can squirrel away a little money just in case things are more expensive than you're used to.

Alex:
Right, right. We did a video maybe towards the end of the year about just thinking about your overall financial picture. I like to call it your cash flow plan for 2025. And I agree—as your day-to-day, week-to-week, month-to-month life changes, ensuring that you're revisiting where your money is going every week, where your money is going every month.

And if it makes sense, maybe start increasing emergency savings. Or, you know, there are a couple of common money mistakes that we all fall victim to. One is impulse spending—buying things just kind of on a whim, like, Oh, I kind of want that. Maybe being a little more thoughtful about those purchases.

Another one that I find really common in one-on-one coaching sessions is the myriad of subscription services that we all have.

Kim:
Yeah, no kidding. Like Netflix, Peacock. I mean, we talk about all of these, right? We have all of these different apps. We used to have cable with all these channels, something to watch. But now, we don’t have cable—we have apps. And you might have ten different apps at $15 a month, and it really adds up.

Alex:
Yeah, yeah. That amounts to a lot of money. So taking a look at that—are there a couple that you could put on pause or just stop altogether?

And my final tip—I don’t know why you have to do this, but you do—is to go back and renegotiate prices. Let's say it’s one you really want to keep. Kim and I are both in the car a lot, and I have Sirius XM satellite radio. Every year, I have to—now they make it easy, I just go online and talk to a bot—but I have to negotiate the price down.

If you don’t do that, it’ll jump up to like $25 a month, and you’re paying a lot more over the course of the year than if you just take a little time to negotiate it.

Kim:
You probably save $100 to $200 in the course of a year. And sometimes, you just try to cancel and they’ll offer you a deal. Especially with some of these add-on services—it’s amazing how cheap they can get when you say, I want to cancel because it's so expensive.

And then, you kind of wait, and they go through their process, and suddenly it's $5 a month when it used to be $25.

Alex:
So, we want to make sure you're making the best decisions when it comes to both long-term retirement savings as well as for today and tomorrow.

These are just a few tips, but if you have more, or if you have questions, or if there's anything we can do to help, please feel free to drop a note in the comments, give us a call, or send an email.

Thanks! We'll see you next time.