{"id":48044,"date":"2026-03-21T09:31:19","date_gmt":"2026-03-21T09:31:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/usa\/financial-audit-star-caleb-hammer-shares-the-money-mistake-he-sees-people-make-the-most\/"},"modified":"2026-03-21T09:31:19","modified_gmt":"2026-03-21T09:31:19","slug":"financial-audit-star-caleb-hammer-shares-the-money-mistake-he-sees-people-make-the-most","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/usa\/financial-audit-star-caleb-hammer-shares-the-money-mistake-he-sees-people-make-the-most\/","title":{"rendered":"&#8216;Financial Audit&#8217; star Caleb Hammer shares the money mistake he sees people make the most"},"content":{"rendered":"<figure><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/i.insider.com\/69bb101bebc245a53a811a71?format=jpeg\" alt=\"Caleb Hammer of &quot;Financial Audit.&quot;\"\/><figcaption>Caleb Hammer says he doesn&#039;t see Americans&#039; overspending woes going away anytime soon.<\/p>\n<p>Caleb Hammer via YouTube<\/p>\n<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<ul>\n<li>YouTuber Caleb Hammer drags people for their poor financial decisions on his show &quot;Financial Audit.&quot;<\/li>\n<li>He revealed the one mistake he sees people make the most \u2014 and why it&#039;s not entirely their fault.<\/li>\n<li>He also shared what he splurges on, having paid down his own debt.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>YouTuber Caleb Hammer has built a career digging into people&#039;s poor money decisions on his show, &quot;Financial Audit.&quot;<\/p>\n<p>He says there&#039;s one mistake he sees most consistently.<\/p>\n<p>&quot;It&#039;s the cars,&quot; he said during a wide-ranging interview with Business Insider. &quot;People are obsessed with getting whatever big truck or SUV that has the new year on it. And they say it&#039;s the safety features, because, you know, we were making cars one year ago that were just killing everyone. So you&#039;ve got to get the 2027 Ford F-150 Turbo edition.&quot;<\/p>\n<p>Hammer, who also sells a budgeting app, Dollarwise, and financial education courses, conceded that it&#039;s not entirely people&#039;s fault that they fall into the car trap.<\/p>\n<p>&quot;You need to have a car to have a job, and you need to have a job to have a car,&quot; he said. &quot;We have that endless loop because we have horrible public infrastructure in this country. We built everything around the car. So people are stuck in that loop.&quot;<\/p>\n<p>Still, he said, people will also try to justify spending beyond their means on their &quot;dream car.&quot;<\/p>\n<p>&quot;It doesn&#039;t make sense,&quot; he continued.<\/p>\n<p>Hammer, 31, speaks from experience. He once racked up $120,000 in debt by paying for college, a car, and some impulse buys. He taught himself about money management, which inspired him to start his show.<\/p>\n<p>Now, he has a mortgage and a modest amount of debt, and has shifted his priorities. He spends on the occasional dinner out, his dogs, and hiring good people for his company.<\/p>\n<p>&quot;I still love McDonald&#039;s,&quot; he said. &quot;I try not to get it, and my girlfriend doesn&#039;t want me to because it&#039;s bad for me. But at least I can afford it.&quot;<\/p>\n<p>Hammer said he doesn&#039;t see the financial situation of everyday Americans improving anytime soon, especially with the rise of buy-now-pay-later services.<\/p>\n<p>&quot;With Klarna being baked into everything and Afterpay, unfortunately, I have a feeling the show&#039;s going to be going till I&#039;m done,&quot; he said.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Read our full interview with <\/strong><a href=\"https:\/\/www.businessinsider.com\/caleb-built-youtube-creator-debt-financial-subscription-business-2026-3\" rel=\"noreferrer\" target=\"_blank\"><strong>Caleb Hammer here<\/strong><\/a><strong>.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Read the original article on Business Insider<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Caleb Hammer says he doesn&#039;t see Americans&#039; overspending woes going away anytime soon. Caleb Hammer via YouTube YouTuber Caleb Hammer drags people for their poor financial decisions on his show &quot;Financial Audit.&quot; He revealed the one mistake he sees people make the most \u2014 and why it&#039;s not entirely their fault. He also shared what [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-48044","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-usa"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48044","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=48044"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48044\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=48044"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=48044"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=48044"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}