However, financial advisor turned social media influencer Humphrey Yang believes it’s possible. In a recent YouTube video, Yang told his 1.57 million subscribers that if they want to double last year’s savings in 2025, they should ignore the standard advice they hear about eliminating small pleasures, which don’t generate enough savings to justify the quality-of-life sacrifices they require.
“For example, maybe you’ve skipped some Starbucks runs or you’ve cut back on subscriptions or you’ve maybe even created a budget, but it still feels like your savings aren’t growing fast enough,” he said.
Yang thinks the real prize is hiding not in the little luxuries that make you happy but in the major expenses that can lead to significant gains in your emergency fund, vacation budget or down payment bucket with fairly minor tweaks.
Yang pointed out that if someone spends $5 at Starbucks three times a week, reducing that habit to one visit per week saves only $520 a year — a big lifestyle sacrifice for only modest gains.
Yang wants his followers to aim bigger.
He cited data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) showing that most households have the same major expenses — housing, transportation, food and insurance.
Yang wants his followers to scour these high-cost categories “because the small changes there can actually lead to much more significant results,” he said.
Yang said he recently secured a monthly discount on a new apartment by agreeing to sign an extended lease — the landlord was willing to pay for the security of long-term tenancy. On top of that, he negotiated two weeks of free rent because “the rental market in San Francisco right now is really soft.”
The season made this easy for Yang “because not many people want to move and find a new place during the wintertime when the weather is not so great, so if you are looking for a new apartment right now, that’s one strategy,” he said.
He also recommended swapping amenities, like parking spaces, for rent reductions or simply negotiating down the price just as you would with any big-ticket purchase, like a car.
To negotiate rent, Fidelity suggests first doing your research and timing it right, such as when your lease is up for renewal.
Insurance and transportation are two other top BLS spending categories. They serve as a one-two punch in sapping your savings — but you can punch back.
“Perhaps you can shop for better car insurance rates or perhaps you bundle your home insurance with car insurance for a discount,” Yang told his followers. “Oftentimes, if you just call a competing insurance company, you may be able to find a cheaper insurance rate to the tune of $300 to $500 per year, depending on how many cars or items you have. A lot of people are too lazy, or they just don’t want to spend the time to compare quotes, but I think in terms of a return on your time in terms of your savings, it’s probably one of the best things that you can do.”
In fact, according to Consumer Report’s 2024 auto insurance survey, 30% of people surveyed switched their car insurance within the past five years to save money, saving a median of $461 annually.
If you can’t manage to lower your premiums, Yang recommended carpooling or taking public transportation once or twice a week.
Next, Yang recommended employing a strategy he calls reverse budgeting.
“That’s where you start by setting aside your savings first,” Yang told his followers. “For example, if your monthly income is $4,500 and you want to save $500 per month, you want to set that aside immediately and then use the remaining $4,000 for expenses like rent, groceries, bills and transportation.”
Yang conceded that many people won’t have enough to spend if the first dollars from their paychecks go to savings. He said the only way to overcome this deficit is to analyze your spending habits from the previous three months before you start.
“The reason you want to do three months is that oftentimes, expenses will fluctuate month to month, and having a larger set of data to work with will give you as close to a true average of monthly spend that you can get,” Yang told his viewers.
Once you’re done, you’ll see target categories emerge that offer opportunities to comfortably reduce spending and enable the power of reverse budgeting.
Yang urged his followers to aim for double the commonly cited 10% that many personal finance experts suggest saving from each paycheck.
“The reason I like 20% is because not only is it five times the personal savings rate in the United States, according to FRED, but it also ensures that you’ll set aside enough of your money to grow over time and actually have a cushy retirement,” Yang said. “Because I’m assuming that even when I say you should save 20% — let’s pretend that’s the target — even if you don’t get there, you might hit 15%, which is still pretty good. It’s kind of like that saying shoot for the moon and you’ll land amongst the stars.”
No matter how much you saved last year, doubling it in 2025 will feel impossible if you take the end goal as your starting point.
Yang gave the example of someone who saved $7,500 last year feeling overwhelmed by the prospect of coming up with another $7,500 on top of that — so he recommended parsing that number into 12 manageable slices.
To save that amount in a year, you’d need to save an extra $625 every month. “That number is still a little bit daunting,” Yang said. However, he recommended breaking it down further to $156 per week.
“Breaking down a large savings goal into a smaller chunk works because it makes the goal seem less intimidating,” he explained.
Yang’s final piece of advice is to keep your savings out of sight and out of reach in what he calls a “vault” account so it stays out of mind.
“You only get to unlock this in very critical situations or when you reach the end of the year or perhaps when you reach your savings goal,” he said.
He recommended securing it with an unfamiliar password and opening a separate account — not a bucket within an existing one — with a different bank than the one that safeguards your funds for casual spending.
“You really want to think of this account like a locked treasure chest,” he said.
