Heck, a pound of ground beef could practically serve as a dowry for a young Victorian-era lady. But not all ideas are worthwhile, and some are downright dangerous.

In a few interesting threads (here and here) on Reddit, contributors shared the advice that they thought was the very worst in Frugal Land. Some of them could work in certain circumstances, but most, you may find, are not really worthwhile.

And there's more. Some of this advice was great a generation or so ago. But times have changed dramatically, and we can no longer expect the same kind of economic stability that our parents had. We have had a period of massive inflation since 2020, and wages, in most cases, have not gone up to keep standards of living the same.

Are you out of the loop?

Sometimes my daughters inform me I'm out of the loop with regard to "how things are now." And they're right. When I left college to take an amazing job opportunity, my rent in a large city was around $300 a month. It was in that sweet spot of one quarter of my income, and I was very financially comfortable.

Now, however, the average renter in America is paying closer to 30-40% of their income, and one in five Americans are paying a whopping 50% or more of their monthly income to keep a roof over their heads.

Meanwhile, the high cost of keeping a roof over your head is weighing on Americans across the country, with the median annual rent now at $21,480, Zillow's data shows. The real estate firm estimates that nearly half of all U.S. renters are "cost-burdened," meaning that more than 30% of their income goes toward housing expenses. Among families with children under 18, 54% are rent-burdened, Zillow found. ( source)

You may have bought your home years ago, when prices were more reasonable, and gotten it paid off by now. You may have made a series of wise decisions that have left you in a much better place financially.

But, it's important to bear these numbers in mind when advising others. For some of us, life just happened in a way that unraveled our efforts toward stability, such as divorce, death of a spouse, or job loss. For others, especially the 20-somethings of today, they're looking at an entirely different Monopoly board.