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Hey guys. It's Chelsea from The Financial Diet, and this week's video is brought to you by Metromile.

And today we wanted to talk to you about all of the things that you are probably doing way too much, which are costing you money but are also costing you brain space, and happiness, and freedom, and options, and all of those other things you probably want a lot of. So let's just get right into it with the stuff you're probably doing too much and probably without even realizing it. Number one is grocery shopping or household shopping in general.

So there are two things that are generally pretty true about Americans. And while they may not apply to you all the time, you're probably definitely guilty of it at least a few times. A, we waste a ton of food, and often that food comes from what we bought at the grocery store.

And B, we often turn to shopping in times of high emotion-- things like stress, or anxiety, or sadness. And it totally makes sense that this would happen. There are opportunities to shop all around us, and supermarkets in particular are masterfully designed to ensure that we're buying more than we need and buying stuff that we're not even probably that interested in eating.

The average US household takes about one to two shopping trips per week. And for most of us, one per week or sometimes even less frequently would be more than sufficient. But the good news is if you make it a point to reduce your grocery spending and be much more conscious and decisive about how you shop, there are really easy ways to make that a part of your life.

First of all, you can be religious about never going shopping without a detailed grocery list that is based on what you are making out of these items and not just the items themselves. You can follow our little trick of going with two bags to the grocery store. One that must be entirely full of vegetables, whether fresh, frozen, or canned, and the other for everything else.

Not only is produce generally less expensive when you're buying either in season or the frozen or canned options, but it's also ensuring that you're going to be eating on average way more healthy meals. Lastly, you can become religious about freezing food properly. We're going to link you guys to a great guide in the description on all of the different strategies for maximizing your frozen food potential.

But remember also that it's not just about freezing meals. Being really smart about how you freeze high ticket items like meat or fish is really helpful in ensuring that you can buy these things on sale and don't have to go to the grocery store as often. Overall, it's so important to remember that these stores are designed to draw you in and to keep you there.

And so many grocery stores now are filled with things that don't even have anything to do with grocery shopping, like a Starbucks where you can get yourself a $5, 500-calorie coffee drink to carry around with you while you're shopping. No matter how you are grocery shopping today, you can set yourself a challenge to do it less frequently and to be much more strategic about the items that you buy to ensure that you are wasting as little food as possible. A great benchmark to strive for is to go a whole month without throwing out an item that went bad because you didn't use it in time, which I am very much guilty of doing.

Number two is checking your email. So if you are one of those people who has a tendency to check your email quite frequently throughout the day, and I think some people tend to do it almost as an impulsive reflex that they don't even realize they're doing it, you are doing your brain and your productivity and your overall happiness a huge disservice. There is tons of research out there that shows how much frequent email checking is actually harmful to your overall work day, with one study showing that on average office workers receive at least 200 messages a day and spend about 2 and 1/2 hours reading and replying to emails-- over half of which are irrelevant to them-- and check their email about 15 times per day.

The truth is that the vast majority of emails you're going to be checking on a given day are things that could wait. A really healthy way to approach email is to set two or three dedicated times each day to go through your email, perhaps one when you arrive, one midday, and one before you leave. This allows you to not only compartmentalize that portion of your brain space and not have to feel like you're thinking about emails all day, but it also kind of sends a message to the people that you work with that you are not an on-call surgeon with a beeper who has to come running to their email for every little thing.

If Tim in engineering really wants to hear back super soon on what everyone's planning to bring to the potluck on Saturday, he can wait. And most importantly, although it can give us the opposite impression, being constantly busy with this low-level tedious work is actually making us way less productive. This need to constantly feel like we're doing something or attending to work issues is actually making us way less capable to deal with the things that need our brain real estate.

So no matter how often you're checking email, you could probably be doing it less frequently, and you should. Number three is using utilities. Now it is undeniable that many utilities simply make life easier and more pleasant to be in-- air conditioning when it's hot outside, a washer and dryer unit in your apartment, your dishwasher.

All of this stuff is frankly really luxurious, and it's totally easy to think of them as normal, take them for granted, and way over-use them. And currently your average utility bill hovers somewhere around $100 a month, which when you add up various utilities, can be huge. And if you're not careful, you can end up like TFD team member Mary who was recently hit with a $650 utility bill one month.

We'll link you to her story about that in the description. The good news with utilities, though, is they can be very easy to reduce in terms of cost if we rethink how much we actually need these luxuries. The rule we try to follow in our house is no AC if it's anywhere under like 75 to 80 degrees.

And although we have a dishwasher, we try to hand wash about half of our dishes and only run the dishwasher on average once a week. We're also fairly good about keeping the majority of lights off during the day, which is something that I feel like a lot of people need to get more used to. And not only do keeping lights on waste energy and cost money, they also make your home a lot hotter, which you then have to cool down with more air conditioning.

Take a look at your utility bills from the last six months. See where they were high, see where they were low. And set a challenge to yourself to reduce all of them by at least 20% next month.

You will be shocked at how easy that is to accomplish with a few small changes in your conscientiousness around the house. Number four is driving. So here's the thing about driving.

I live in a big city, and I've lived in big cities for the past eight years where I haven't needed to have a car. And I understand that makes me more the exception than the norm. Most people in America do need a car for at least some of their day-to-day life.

And while the bigger question of getting some GD public transportation going on in this country, is something that we can't all necessarily control today, learning to accept the idea of driving even a little bit less can make a huge difference. The average American spends about $1,000 a year just on gas, and that's with no other car expenses, including the car itself and its insurance. If you take a moment to really look at your life and write out the things that you definitely need to drive for and the things that you actually could probably get away with not driving for, whether that means taking a bus or some other form of public transport, carpooling, or even walking or biking, do that.

Committing yourself to reducing even a few of the day-to-day driving items off of your list can make huge financial differences in addition to just being way better for Mother Earth and potentially helping you burn a few calories in the process. For example, you may still need a car to commute to work every day, but you could start biking into town to do your errands on the weekends. Or there might be a bus route that basically makes the exact same trip as your day-to-day driving commute.

So now in addition to saving all that money, you can read books on your commute or even sleep. The point is on average as a society, we are driving way too much. Even just driving down to the corner for something we could easily walk to.

And it's not because we need to, it's because we're so used to thinking of transportation in terms of cars. But that's an easy mentality to change, and you can challenge yourself to save hundreds or even potentially thousands of dollars a year by doing it. Number five is paying for subscriptions and service packages.

So here's the thing about subscription and package services and all of that kind of stuff. They can be great deals but only if you're getting your money's worth. Whether it's a magazine subscription, your monthly cable bill, a subscription to a monthly box service, the point is every year at least you should be doing a true audit of what you're paying for and what you're actually using out of it.

And it's not just the things you're using rarely. There's also a substantial chance that you've signed up for something, whether because of a free trial period or because you thought you would use it, and you've totally forgotten you're paying for it. The average annual savings of those who actually went through and did cancel all of their unused memberships was over $500.

Seriously. And it's not just things like those frivolous boxes that can be so addictive. Even your Netflix subscription may not be something you're using that frequently or could be shared with another person.

Once you've gone through and done that full audit of what you're actually getting use out of, do a double check to see if there's any of those costs you could be splitting with someone. The point is subscriptions and package deals can feel so enticing and so promising at first, but you would be shocked at how much three years later you don't even remember that you're paying for this bullshit. Number six is negative self talk.

Now here's the thing. Humility and being modest and not overselling your ability to do something is generally a good thing. It can be very off-putting to be around someone who is way overly confident about their abilities or kind of aggressive about bragging.

But there is a huge difference between that and underselling yourself or speaking of yourself in a really critical and demeaning way instead of being thoughtfully constructive about what you might have done wrong or want to improve on. Even just constantly making self-deprecating comments and jokes can be really, really harmful to your mental health. And a lot of times the way we talk about ourselves tends to become a self-fulfilling prophecy.

And this isn't just foofy inspirational talk either. There's real science to how much talking negatively to ourselves can really impact our health. Research shows that speaking to ourselves in a compassionate way can actually change the way our body handles stress.

Researchers gave participants a surprise public speaking task and public math task to make them stressed and then measured signs of inflammation in their blood. They found that even when controlling for differences, such as self-esteem, people who are more inclined to self-compassion showed a smaller physiological stress response. So whenever you are having one of those really self-critical thoughts, stop yourself actively.

And even say out loud, hey stop. I'm great. Don't be mean to me.

And really ask yourself. Would you talk that way about someone else you knew and loved? No you would not.

Lauren is behind the camera shaking her head. She would not do that. Don't let the desire to improve become an excuse to beat yourself up.

You're pretty awesome. And finally, number seven is washing your hair. So here's some facts.

If you are washing your hair every day, you are washing it too much. And I'm sure this comment section is going to be flooded with people who are like,. I have a rare scalp that gets really oily and I can't not wash my hair.

Fine. There's like five of you maybe that need to wash it once a day, but the average person should not be. It's not just too much, it's also actively bad for your hair and scalp.

Now here's the thing. A lot of people do know that they should be washing their hair less frequently, both for financial and follicular reasons. But they also know that the period when you're weaning yourself off of those day-to-day washes can make your hair be really wonky.

And unfortunately for some people, that is unavoidable, although during that time you can use a little bit of extra product and things like dry shampoo to help yourself through the journey. But once you've made it through that weaning process, you will probably find that you're comfortable washing just a few times a week, if not for some hair textures just once a week. In general, our bodies are the way they are for a reason.

And the natural oils that our scalp produces are very good for our hair. And when it comes to all beauty and cosmetic routines like this, it's important to always take a step back from them and ask yourself, why am I doing this? What am I getting out of it?

And why am I doing it as frequently as I do? At the end of the day, it's important to remember that the beauty industry is always trying to sell you more product. For a shampoo company, people washing their hair seven times a week is awesome, and people washing their hair one time a week sucks.

But you're not a shampoo company. Just like you'll do with your subscriptions and your driving habits and all of these other day-to-day costs, take a day to really go through all of your beauty and upkeep spending. See what you can cut out.

See what you can do less frequently, and see what you might even be doing totally wrong for your body or skin. But almost everyone can start with the hair washing. Ultimately, these things that we're doing too frequently are totally natural.

We live in a society that wants us to over-consume, to overspend, and to often do things way more than necessary, but we have the power to control it. And we also have the power to understand our habits and understand what we're really getting value out of. If you challenge yourself on each of these points to reduce down to just what you need, we promise you that you will feel a happier wallet and a happier brain.

And if, like we mentioned, you are looking to cut back on your driving, one awesome option that you should check out is Metromile. Basically, Metromile is an insurance service that's totally pay per mile. It allows you to pay just for the miles you drive without judgment of driving style or behavior.

It's designed for people who want to be able to drive sometimes but definitely don't need the added cost and hassle of a blanket policy that covers you the same amount each month whether you need it or not. The per mile insurance is currently available in California, Illinois, Arizona,. Pennsylvania, Washington, Oregon, New Jersey, and Virginia with most states plan for addition in 2018.

Learn more or get started today with Metromile at the link in our description. So as always guys, thank you for watching, and don't forget to hit the Subscribe button and to come back every Tuesday and Thursday for new and awesome videos. Bye. .