Show: On The Town Station: KNCO File: 9:7.mp3 Air date: 2026-09-07 Source: OpenAI whisper-1 · shrunk from 26.1 MB to 5.2 MB --- transcript --- Welcome back, we're taking a look at Americans' personal economy, how we spend, what we buy, the ways we try to save, and so much more. I'm Mike Dibosky and this is On The Money from ABC News. By now you have no doubt heard someone talking about some kind of maxing. Looks maxing, health maxing, sleep maxing is a personal favorite of mine. If there's something in your life that you can optimize, chances are social media has found a way to put maxing after it. And now, as ABC's Bethany Braun Silva tells us, there's money maxing. It's a new term for something families have been doing for generations, finding ways to make every dollar go a little further. With the cost of everyday life putting pressure on household budgets, parents are stacking discounts, shopping secondhand, using savings apps, rotating streaming subscriptions, and even going old school with coupons. Donna Vargas knows that routine well. She's a mom of three in Rhode Island, and she told me lately her family's money has felt stretched thin, so they started looking for savings almost everywhere. Donna still uses coupons, but combines them with newer savings apps. The family buys secondhand, and instead of paying for multiple streaming services every month, they rotate their subscriptions depending on what they actually want to watch. For Donna, money maxing isn't one big financial move. It's a lot of small ones. And she told me something else. They're actually having fun doing it. Instead of making the kids feel like the family is constantly cutting back, they've turned saving into something they can do together. Unexpectedly, it has brought them closer. Personal finance expert Kimberly Palmer says that's really what money maxing is all about. Well, money maxing is really a term that just means we're trying to get on top of our finances. We want to feel good about them, feel confident in the decisions that we're making. The name may be new, but Palmer says the first step is decidedly old school. Know where your money's going. Track your current spending. So take some time to look back over what you have been spending on in the last month or two, because often that can show you places where there's leaks of your money or places that are not aligned with how you want to be spending. That could be the subscription that renews even though nobody is watching it or automatically buying something new when secondhand would work just as well. For Ellie Ezra, a mom of three who hosts the finance podcast Mom's Money, that doesn't necessarily mean cutting everything out. In fact, she doesn't even like to think of budgeting as simply spending less. Budgeting to me is it's a noun. It's not a verb. It's look at what you have going on and have visibility into it and see what you're building, not where you just stop spending. Her philosophy is to spend intentionally and understand what you actually need. Back-to-school shopping is a good example. There can be pressure to start the year with new clothes, shoes, backpacks, new everything. But she says the first question should be simpler. Do we actually need it? The spend smart is what do you need? And I think a lot of people think, oh, I have to go do an entirely new shopping spree, but I don't think that's necessary. Her son needed a new water bottle this year. His backpack still going strong. So they bought some new patches and gave the old one a refresh. Sometimes maximizing your money means finding the best price. Other times it means deciding you don't need to make the purchase at all. Then there's the expense families encounter again and again groceries. Grocery spending is one of the biggest stressors for families right now, just because the prices have been inching upward. And so we're spending more at the grocery store than we're used to. This is where Donna combines the old and new traditional coupons alongside savings apps. Palmer says even signing up for your grocery stores loyalty program can be an easy place to start. One of the best things to do is opt into your local stores loyalty program because often you're just sharing a phone number or an email address and in return you get discounts automatically layered onto your purchases. And another strategy requires no coupon or app at all. Waste less. For a lot of us we end up throwing away items that we don't use and that's just wasted money. So sitting down at the beginning of the week and planning your menu and how you're going to be using food, consuming food for the upcoming week, that can be really helpful. It's the same principle Donna applies across her family's budget. Before spending more, look at what you already have. Before automatically renewing, ask if you're using it. But money maxing isn't only about this week's budget. Palmer says families should also look ahead. Well, one of the most helpful things for families to do is to project some of their biggest expenses that are coming up. So for example, back to school spending is one. Putting money aside every month in advance of those expenses can really help make sure we don't have to turn to credit card debt or some other form of expensive financing. And when a purchase can wait, timing becomes another way to save. We see cyclical sales that are pretty predictable for some of these items. For example, with electronics, we know that the price tends to dip on many electronics when we get to Black Friday. So instead of seeing a sale and deciding what to buy, money maxing flips that equation. Figure out what you need first, then decide when and how to buy it. And for parents, these everyday decisions can also teach kids about money. Donna told me her children are part of what her family is doing. Rather than making it feel like they're constantly being told no, they've made saving a shared challenge. Ezra says she takes a similar approach with her six-year-old daughter. When they're shopping, she gives her an allocation, ten bucks. She can spend it now or save it and have more later. So instead of saying I need something here, she realized I could have any of these things, but what actually is the most valuable? And sometimes her daughter decides the answer is nothing. I was like very happy when a six-year-old realized there's actually nothing in the store that's not valuable to me. I'm going to save it for later. Palmer says those conversations can help kids understand financial trade-offs. Even involving kids can be very helpful. It helps transmit how you want to be talking about money. It gives some financial lessons. But there is a point where maximizing your money can become too much work. The risk of money maxing is that you end up putting more effort into saving money than you are actually benefiting from. So if you find yourself spending hours combing through coupon websites just to save a few dollars, that might not be worth your time. The goal isn't to turn saving into another full-time job for already busy parents. You definitely want to think about the balance of the effort you're putting in and the payoff you're getting. For Donna, the payoff goes beyond what she saves. She told me there's something empowering about her family figuring this out together. Yes, their money is stretched thin, but instead of treating every coupon, second-hand find, or canceled subscription as another reminder of what they can't afford, they've made a game out of finding what they can save. And in the process, she says they've actually grown closer as a family. Maybe that's part of why money maxing is resonating. For some families, there simply isn't much left to cut. So it becomes less about deprivation and more about intention. Buy second-hand when it works. Use the coupon. Take advantage of the app. Cancel the streaming service nobody is watching. And before buying something, ask whether you really need it. Money maxing may be a very 2026 name, but families finding creative ways to make what they have go further, that part is nothing new. For ABC News, I'm Bethany Braun Silva. Coming up after the break. I think that the killer use case for AI on the job-seeking side is really about helping you improve focus and be strategic about the opportunities where there's a great fit. That's when On The Money continues. Shh, shh, shh. Here he comes. Surprise! There's an avocado shortage! Now half your food truck menu is costing more than it's making you! Also, you're out of napkins! Also, you're out of napkins! Those aren't cheap! Progressive knows small business owners usually don't like surprises because they cost you money. But a good surprise? Saving 10% or more on commercial auto insurance when you pay in full. Also, an ice cream truck stole your parking spot! Looks like you're in a turf war! Surprise yourself. See if you can save in as little as 8 minutes at ProgressiveCommercial.com. Progressive Casualty Insurance Company and Affiliates. Discounts not available in all states or situations. Pump up the volume. Business moves fast. Orders roll in. Deadlines close in. 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And the Nevada Union FFA drive-thru barbecue is on October 6th, but you need to place your order by September 17th. Get more information at 530-913-9505. This is Barbara Swinhart for KNCO News Talk 830. Wait, haven't you already seen those movies? Sneaker did it once. He can do it again. You're listening to On the Money from ABC News Radio. I'm Mike Dibosky. Seems like artificial intelligence is absolutely everywhere these days, including in the middle of the job hunt. ABC's Rob Hawley takes a look at how A.I. is affecting how we search for and find our next gig. We've been hearing the stories for months. This morning, Amazon announcing they will be cutting 16,000 jobs. Meta is laying off more than 8,000 employees, about 10% of its workforce. Microsoft is offering early retirement buyouts to roughly 7% of its U.S. employees as it invests more in A.I. Vision board and sharing platform Pinterest announced plans to lay off roughly 15% of workers. Many big tech companies have been implementing layoffs, some citing the increasing role of A.I. for fewer human workers needed. And even as A.I. reshapes how we work, it is also changing how we find work. A.I. has made it easier to apply for a job, but it hasn't necessarily made it easier to get hired for a job. Megan Skibinski is district president for the technology practice at staffing firm Robert Half. We are seeing a huge increase in curated, customized applications that match job postings almost to a T, but everyone has the same toolbox at their disposal and it's making it hard to stand out as an applicant applying for a job. Because as indeed senior talent strategy advisor Kyle M.K. points out, one of the things that we hear a lot from both employers and job seekers, primarily from employers, is like every resume looks the same now. And this is just what happens. This is the nature of using A.I. or LLMs to build certain resumes because they all start to fit into that same bell curve of they all start to look the same. Andy Challenger is chief revenue officer at outplacement firm Challenger Gray and Christmas. Right now with A.I., I hear from hiring managers a lot that when they post a job online, they get a thousand resumes very quickly that are perfect. Right. The A.I. resumes are like overdeveloped. They're really well honed specifically to the job. And so the resume is becoming less of a differentiator. It's really hard to stand out with a resume. And with that kind of volume, recruiters and H.R. departments are turning to A.I. themselves to do screening and in some cases even do preliminary interviews and assessments of individuals. So it is in the best interest of a job seeker to put their best foot forward. And there it's essentially robot versus robot right now. But indeed, Kyle M.K. says, in a way, A.I. may be helping recruiters find the best candidates. There's a lot of tools out there to automate hiring and to look through resumes and to find certain needles and haystacks. But truly, it is a human task through and through of identifying someone who we think would be able to thrive in the environment and in the culture that we're inviting them into. So even though A.I. might be reading resumes, this allows the recruiter or someone in H.R. to really identify, well, would this person thrive in this type of environment? Catherine Fisher, a vice president and career expert at LinkedIn, says recruiters using A.I. tools to collect basic information may actually be giving them more time with candidates. If that gets done the first round with using A.I., then it gives that recruiter more time to actually spend time with with candidates. And so that, I think, is the really important thing to realize. It actually helps with more human interaction. And actually, 59 percent of recruiters say that without A.I., they would have overlooked other candidates. So it's actually also helping them find the right people. But in a jobs market that just about every expert is calling a low fire, low hire market, it can seem like A.I. tools are working against job seekers in a really tough competitive market. I don't blame people. They are perhaps mass applying. So they're applying to jobs that they may not be qualified for. They may not have the experience and skills, but you know what? I'm going to apply and see what happens. And so what's happening is then then the recruiters are getting inundated by all these applications and they simply don't have time to reach back out to the candidates. So that's creating this feeling of like, oh, gosh, you know, I put it out there and then it never goes anywhere. And sometimes that is true. And it could be because they've just they've had so many applications. Fisher says to try and cut through, use A.I. the right way. There are tools out there to help you refine your messaging. Never use these tools, obviously, as a first draft, always as maybe a second or third draft and never the final draft. Indeed, Kyle M.K. says don't allow A.I. to strip you out of your application. What we recommend to job seekers is you still want to have a personality. You still want to show who you are in your resume and to be very clear about how you are going to bring your uniqueness into the team and what it's going to provide the company in ways that they may not have thought of. And while it might sound counterintuitive to people desperate to find a job, Megan Skibinski at Robert Half says using A.I. to try and play the numbers game may actually work against job seekers. As an employee, right, looking for a job that you're using A.I. as a assistant, not to custom or manufacture, mass manufacture your resume. In fact, you're better off instead of sending out 50 mass applications. You're probably better off doing 10 thoughtful applications that are more in-depth and valuable than just the mass application process. Pat Whalen, director of product management at LinkedIn, says the real role for A.I. in the job search may be earlier than writing that cover letter or resume. I think that the killer use case for A.I. on the job seeking side is really about helping you improve focus and be strategic about the opportunities where there's a great fit. So let me give you a couple of examples. We have an A.I. job search product that helps you articulate what you want in the job. In your own words, you can just sort of describe exactly what you're looking for. And we're going to help search across the world of jobs and find the ones that match that goal as best we can. Then we have a product called Job Match that actually takes a look at your profile and your resume and says, how do your qualifications compare what that hire is looking for? And just about every expert we talked with says in an age where A.I. tools are helping people build resumes and A.I. tools are reading those resumes, personal connections may matter. You can get some sort of recommendation because you've networked in with a former colleague or a friend. It's that company who will spend 15 minutes on the phone with you to tell you about their time at the company and their job. They can give you a recommendation that sets your resume on the top of that thousand resume stack. It's a huge driver of being able to potentially get in front of a hiring manager and really earn the role. The power of leveraging your professional network, asking for informational interviews, targeting companies or industries that you want to pursue, and asking for a 15 minute informational interview is mind blowing to a lot of people that are in the workforce today. You're 3.6 times more likely to get hired if you know someone at the company. So recruiters, hiring managers pay attention. That network is actually more important. I would say now the hiring managers have their tools that are sorting through 10,000 resumes. Job seekers have their tools that are making these perfect resumes for every single role. And at the end of the day, it's kind of a standoff. So trying to find your way through and actually get to a human being is the name of the game right now. Rob Hawley, ABC News. It is all about money at the end of the day, whether you're looking for a job, trying to maximize your finances or just shopping for a new gadget. From all of us here at ABC News Radio, thanks for listening to On the Money. --- end of transcript ---