10 Things No Longer Worth Your Money
Inflation has reshuffled the value equation on dozens of everyday purchases — what made financial sense in 2019 often doesn’t today. Personal finance creator Shelby Church identified 10 spending categories where the cost-to-quality ratio has shifted enough to warrant cutting or replacing the habit entirely. Work through each reassessment below to build a sharper framework for auditing your own monthly budget.
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Stop grocery shopping for elaborate dinners if you cook for one. A Pinterest-worthy dinner recipe — protein, fresh produce, specialty ingredients — routinely runs $40–$60 in ingredients for three to four servings. At a $15–$20 per-serving cost, a fast-casual meal like Chipotle split into two portions at roughly $7 each often wins on both price and variety. Breakfast and lunch staples like eggs and frozen fruit still favor home cooking; dinner is where the math breaks down for solo cooks.
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Skip buying a new gas vehicle. Between fuel, oil changes, transmission service, spark plugs, and brake work, gas-car ownership consistently costs more over time than EV ownership. Used 2022 Tesla Model 3s are now listed on Facebook Marketplace under $15,000, and regenerative braking reduces brake service frequency further.
- Cancel CLEAR and rely on TSA PreCheck instead. Church canceled her CLEAR membership after TSA PreCheck lines consistently matched or beat CLEAR’s speed. CLEAR’s eye-scan process requires multiple attempts and still ends with an ID check — removing the core time advantage the service is sold on.
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Skip valet parking. Street parking within a five-to-ten-minute walk is available in most urban restaurant corridors more often than valet operators want you to believe. Church passed on $30 valet at a recent LA event and parked two streets away for free. Unless extreme weather or a genuinely gridlocked block makes it unavoidable, valet is a convenience tax worth skipping.
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Reassess large national fast-casual chains. Panera is the clearest case study: after its 2017 private equity acquisition, portions shrank, bread shifted from fresh-baked to pre-frozen, and a sandwich that once ran under $10 now approaches $16. Regional alternatives like Mendocino Farms deliver better quality at a lower price — the equivalent sandwich runs $3 less.
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Stop using food delivery apps for convenience orders. The stated delivery fee is only part of the markup. Apps also inflate base menu prices — Church’s Mendocino Farms sandwich cost $2.55 more on Uber Eats before any delivery fee or tip, with the total often doubling the in-restaurant price.
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Treat U.S. health insurance as a risk hedge, not a value purchase. Church’s monthly premium doubled from roughly $200 to $400 between 2021 and filming, with an $8,000 deductible still leaving her with a $500 bill for an urgent care visit. She continues paying for catastrophic coverage — not because she considers it good value, but because the downside risk of going without is worse.
- Stop scheduling regular professional gel manicures. Gel nails run $50–$200 per visit in major cities. A UV gel lamp kit with a few polish bottles handles the same result at a fraction of the ongoing cost and eliminates the appointment overhead.
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Replace your Starbucks habit with a local independent coffee shop. Independent shops frequently match or undercut Starbucks pricing while offering higher baseline quality and more intentional sourcing.
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Pressure-test airline lounge credit cards against your actual travel patterns. Delta Sky Club access via premium cards is now capped at 15 visits per year — roughly $43 per visit when amortized against the annual fee. The card only justifies its cost if your home airport has a high-quality lounge and your schedule realistically fills that cap.
How does this compare to the official docs?
Church’s case rests on personal observation and crowd-sourced social evidence — the next section runs each category against independent cost data and consumer research to show where the numbers hold and where your specific situation changes the answer.
Here’s What the Official Docs Show
The video builds a solid case for auditing everyday spending, and across most of the ten categories the reasoning holds. Where official sources had something material to add — a bundled benefit, a cost benchmark, a subscription option — this section layers it in so you can act on each recommendation with sharper precision.
1. Grocery shopping for one
No official documentation was found for this step — proceed using the video’s approach and verify independently.
2. Skip buying a new gas vehicle
No official documentation was found for this step — proceed using the video’s approach and verify independently.
3. Cancel CLEAR and rely on TSA PreCheck instead
The product name matters here: the current offering is CLEAR+, not plain “CLEAR.” That distinction carries a financial consequence the video’s framing misses.
As of May 2026, CLEAR+ bundles TSA PreCheck enrollment at no separate cost — the video frames the two programs as either/or substitutes, but TSA.gov confirms CLEAR is an authorized PreCheck enrollment provider and positions both programs as complementary. Canceling CLEAR+, as the video recommends, also removes your bundled PreCheck benefit. Re-enrolling separately costs $76.75 through IDEMIA or $85.00 through Telos for a five-year term.
If standalone PreCheck genuinely fits your travel volume, the math works: $17 or less per year. But an existing CLEAR+ member canceling to “save money” may be losing two programs while thinking they’re dropping one.
One performance benchmark the video doesn’t mention: 99% of TSA PreCheck passengers wait less than 10 minutes, per tsa.gov. Children 17 and under use the PreCheck lane free with an enrolled adult.
4. Skip valet parking
No official documentation was found for this step — proceed using the video’s approach and verify independently.
5. Reassess large national fast-casual chains
No official documentation was found for this step — proceed using the video’s approach and verify independently.
6. Stop using food delivery apps for convenience orders
The video’s approach here matches the current docs exactly. One addition worth noting: Uber Eats advertises $0 delivery fees with Uber One as a persistent, site-wide promotion. If your order frequency justifies the subscription cost, delivery fees shift from a fixed markup to a reducible variable. Item-level price inflation above in-restaurant pricing — the video’s secondary cost argument — is not addressed on either platform’s public-facing pages.
7. Treat U.S. health insurance as a risk hedge, not a value purchase
No official documentation was found for this step — proceed using the video’s approach and verify independently.
8. Stop scheduling regular professional gel manicures
No official documentation was found for this step — proceed using the video’s approach and verify independently.
9. Replace your Starbucks habit with a local independent coffee shop
No official documentation was found for this step — proceed using the video’s approach and verify independently.
10. Pressure-test airline lounge credit cards against your actual travel patterns
No official documentation was found for this step — proceed using the video’s approach and verify independently.
The Delta.com credit card overview page returned “Access Denied” on all three capture attempts. The 15-visit Sky Club annual cap and ~$43/visit implied cost cited in the video cannot be confirmed or corrected from available documentation.
Useful Links
- CLEAR | Secure Identity at Airports, Stadiums, & More — Official CLEAR+ product page confirming current branding and bundled TSA PreCheck enrollment for members.
- TSA PreCheck® | Transportation Security Administration — Official enrollment pricing, authorized provider comparison (IDEMIA, Telos, CLEAR), and the 99% under-10-minute wait benchmark.
- Uber Eats | Food & Grocery Delivery | Order Groceries and Food Online — Platform homepage where the Uber One $0 delivery fee subscription is actively promoted site-wide.
- Postmates: Food Delivery, Groceries, Alcohol – Anything from Anywhere — Confirms active service status and Uber corporate ownership through shared interface elements.
- Pinterest — General visual discovery platform; no pricing or salon-service data relevant to the gel nail cost figures in step 8 was found on this source.
- Delta SkyMiles Credit Cards Overview — Page returned Access Denied on all capture attempts; Sky Club visit cap terms and annual fee structures for step 10 remain unverified from this source.
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