In a PIX11 morning segment, financial empowerment coach Ash Exantus (BankMobile) discusses everyday expenses that silently drain consumers' wallets and offers practical, low‑cost alternatives. He highlights six major "money leaks": daily coffee purchases, buying lunch out, premium cable TV packages, cell‑phone overage fees, frequent rideshare/taxi use, and recurring subscription charges. For each leak, Exantus suggests concrete actions—brew coffee at home or pool resources, prepare meals using bulk grocery purchases, audit cable bundles and drop unused premium channels, trim data plans by leveraging Wi‑Fi, switch to public transit, and scrutinize bank statements to cancel unnecessary recurring fees. The segment blends light humor with actionable advice and directs viewers to the PIX11 app for further financial tips.
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questions for you. Are you constantly wondering where your money goes? Are you wondering how you blew through that paycheck so fast? Well, this morning, Ash Exantus is the financial empowerment coach for BankMobile. He's here to point out just where you could be draining your pockets, right? Where this is all going. The first thing I noticed on this list— coffee.
Is that caffeine?
Your morning coffee, it's taking the money out of your pocket.
Especially the designer coffees, right? So if we're going to the coffee shops and the ones with the name— with our names on it, it's draining our pockets. So we can either brew coffee at home or put a pool together, you know, maybe, you know, get your coworkers to pitch in for coffee.
That reminds me, you know, an old comedian, Jackie Mason, used to say, I go into a coffee shop, I get coffee for $1.99, some free refills. You go into Starbucks, it's $9, they give it to you in a mug.
Exactly.
And when you go to work every day buying lunch also, I mean, should you be making lunch?
Yeah, you should be making lunch. And it doesn't have to be boring either. You can go to like a BJ's, Costco's, even Trader Joe's and get some nice, you know, lunch. You don't have to eat the tuna salad and sandwich all the time. You can actually get a nice lunch by buying it and making it at home.
Even if you stock up on like a pound of turkey, a pound of cheese, make some sandwiches, take it into work, it'll save you a lot of money. Absolutely.
And you can save thousands of dollars. I'm not saying just a little bit, but thousands of dollars by doing this.
Yeah, especially in New York where a lunch, you're good for $15, $20.
And another tip though too is find a local college nearby because they usually have sales for college students.
Nice. Okay. Cable TV.
Yes.
There's a lot of deals you can get on cable. You don't need the full gold package. anymore. Always keep PIX11, by the way.
Oh, absolutely. We need cable, but cable— but we have premium channels. We're being charged for things that we probably don't watch, right? And a lot of premium channels are actually charging a small fee that you can actually take it on the go as well. So you don't have to pay— just relook at your cable bill.
And of course, cell phones. You know, half of us don't understand the charges on our cell phones. How can we knock down those charges?
Take a look at your cell phone bill. There's always overage fees. A lot of times we have data that we don't even need because A lot of places now have Wi-Fi, so we don't even need as much data as we're carrying. So just take a look at your bill and see ways that you could knock some of that down.
That data gets me every time.
Oh my God, all the time.
And also taxis and car service, you know, the Ubers, everything. It's great once in a while, but to do it on a daily basis, that stuff racks up.
Yeah, it's draining your pockets, and especially because we think that it's saving us time, but we have a fairly good subway system, so we could use the subway systems and save some money there.
And finally, monthly subscription fees. People still have subscription fees?
I see this guy all the time. And here's the thing, the thing is, is that, you know, these recurring charges, if we're looking at recurring charges, they're draining a hole in our pocket. So just take a look at your bank statement first and foremost and see what are those things that you're paying recurrently. And if you can't afford it by paying a one-shot deal, then you probably shouldn't have it.
Ash Exantus, thank you, my friend. Happy Memorial Day.
Happy Memorial Day.
Ash Exantus from BankMobile taking you advice. If you want more information, you can just download our PIX11 mobile app, click on the Morning tab. Time now is 6:59. News at 7 starts right now.
