NEW YORK, December 30, 2025, 11:00 ET
- O’Leary argued small daily spending habits, like buying lunch, can crowd out long-term investing.
- He also urged viewers to avoid new cars and oversized mortgages, saying big-ticket choices can erode wealth.
- Federal data show U.S. households spend thousands a year on food away from home, putting the “small costs add up” debate back in focus.
Kevin O’Leary said people who insist they cannot afford to invest often make room in their budgets for recurring small purchases, including what he called $15 lunch salads. “People tell me they don’t have money to invest. And then I watch them spend $15 on a salad for lunch,” O’Leary said in a YouTube video this month. 1
The message is landing as households keep looking for ways to stretch paychecks, even as everyday costs remain a top concern. The latest annual Consumer Expenditure Survey from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics — which tracks “consumer units,” roughly households — put average spending on food away from home at $3,945 in 2024. 2
O’Leary, a Canadian entrepreneur who appears on ABC’s “Shark Tank” alongside investors such as Mark Cuban, has leaned into kitchen-table economics in recent media appearances. In a Fox News segment on Dec. 27, he discussed the affordability crunch facing many families. 3
In the video cited by Benzinga, O’Leary framed his advice around what he called five common spending traps and argued wealth-building starts with cutting recurring costs, not chasing higher income.
He first singled out new cars, saying buyers absorb a steep drop in value — depreciation, or the loss of an asset’s worth over time — as soon as they drive off the lot. He also criticized leasing, describing it as paying to use an item that is steadily losing value.
O’Leary urged viewers who need a car to consider a “certified pre-owned” vehicle, a used car that is typically inspected and backed by a manufacturer or dealer warranty. He argued that buying a three-year-old vehicle lets someone else take the biggest depreciation hit.
He then turned to food spending, casting eating out as a convenience purchase that becomes routine and hard to notice on a day-to-day basis. O’Leary said that habit can crowd out regular investing, especially for workers who never set up automatic contributions.
O’Leary said redirecting roughly $3,500 a year into investments over 30 years could build more than $600,000 if it earned a 10% annual return — an assumed average gain used to illustrate how compounding works. Compounding is when returns generate their own returns over time.
He urged people to bring lunch from home and make coffee in their own kitchens, arguing those changes preserve cash flow that can be invested rather than consumed.
When people do eat out, O’Leary said, they should be deliberate about it rather than defaulting to what he described as forgettable chain meals driven by convenience.
Housing was another central target. O’Leary described a primary home as a liability — something that costs money to keep — because mortgage payments, property taxes, insurance and maintenance require monthly cash outlays.
He warned against buying the most expensive house a bank will approve and argued that stretching to the limit leaves households with little margin when costs rise or income falls. His rule of thumb: buy far less than the maximum a lender offers, and keep room in the budget for saving and investing.
