If you live in America in 2026, and you’re not so wealthy as to be absolutely shielded from daily life, you’re probably aware that everything is really expensive now. Gas and milk are both above $4 a gallon. Fresh vegetables are up almost 10 percent over this time last year, even though they will maybe give you explosive diarrhea. The median home in this country now costs almost half a million dollars. 

A lot of people — even those with relatively high-paying jobs — are very, very stressed about money.

In some ways, our current unaffordable era is starting to evoke the years right after the Great Recession. Unemployment was high, the economy was bleak, and a lot of Americans, myself included, were searching for ways to do more with less. 

One distinctive product of these harsh conditions was an entire blogosphere that emerged to give readers chatty, relatable advice on saving money. 

It was a kind of the golden age for personal writing on the internet, and these writers melded advice and personal narrative in a way that foreshadowed today’s influencers, but with a more lo-fi, DIY aesthetic. Starting in about 2008 and continuing for the next decade, these authors reached thousands of readers a day with tips on how to spend less and sock more away. There was Mr. Money Mustache, a brash “financial magician” who had retired at age 30 and believed ordinary people could save half or even 75 percent of their income. There was Trent Hamm of the Simple Dollar, an Iowa dad who shared his story of getting out of debt alongside recipes for cheap meals and homemade laundry detergent. There was my niche favorite, An English Major’s Money, by a young woman who shared my less-than-lucrative career path but who was nonetheless determined to achieve financial stability.

It wasn’t just old-school personal finance advice, it was a whole philosophical universe dedicated to the idea that by living on less, you could liberate yourself from the uncertainties of the economy and experience true freedom.

Collectively, I like to think of these writers as the frugalsphere.

Today, most of them are no longer blogging about saving money — some have gotten jobs in traditional media, while others have gone on to other careers entirely (or are simply enjoying early retirement). But their movement feels newly relevant today, as Americans struggle to afford necessities and face mounting anxiety over their economic future. So I decided to track down a bunch of frugality writers from that time, and see what they had to say about 2026.

One thing I wanted to know was why I wasn’t seeing the same outpouring of money-saving advice I’d seen in the wake of the 2008 crash. But I was also curious for bigger insights: What, if anything, is the equivalent of the frugalsphere in today’s inflationary era? And could the ethos of those optimistic coupon-clippers give us smarter ways to think about the unsettling new place we find ourselves in 2026?

What I found is that the frugalsphere still has lessons to teach us, but they’re not about reheating leftovers or washing out Ziploc bags. Instead, they’re about how to claim a sense of autonomy, even when our lives are buffeted by forces beyond our control.

The short, influential arc of the frugalsphere

The idea that you can achieve prosperity by carefully watching your spending is far from revolutionary, and self-help authors were extolling the virtues of frugality long before the Web 2.0 era. In the 1990s, for example, editor Amy Dacyczyn published a print newsletter called the Tightwad Gazette, teaching readers frugal tricks (Dacyczyn herself favored reusing aluminum foil) for the low price of $12 per year. 

But amid the upheaval of the Great Recession, when more than 15 million Americans found themselves unemployed in the worst crisis since the 1930s, a new generation of bloggers started offering advice about saving money, often directed at millennials starting their careers in a decimated job market.

“People were looking for something they could do,” Nicole Dieker Finley told me recently.

What Finley did was to start posting all her earnings and expenses on Tumblr around 2012, when she was trying to make it as an independent musician in Los Angeles. She soon caught the attention of the editors of The Billfold, a website launched the same year to cover money with a personal, relatable tone befitting the times. Billfold editors Logan Sachon and Mike Dang shared their student loan and credit card debt; Finley tracked her net worth and spending and wrote about her quest for financial independence. She later went on to a freelance career writing about money (including for Vox).

Kara Stevens, meanwhile, started the website the Frugal Feminista around 2012 while facing down student loans, credit card debt, and a tanking credit score: “It clicked to me that if I didn’t do something about it, I would be in this position of not being able to move forward in my life,” she told me.

Based in New York City, she shared tips for finding free events, cheaper dupes of popular brands, and deals on fancy hotels. “It was like, how am I living my Sex and the City life on a budget?” Stevens recalled.

As time went on, more bloggers joined the space, some of them already starting from a position of financial freedom. Kristy Shen and her husband Bryce Leung started the site Millennial Revolution after retiring in 2015 at age 31 with a seven-figure investment portfolio. 

“After 2008, people started freaking out and thinking that no job is safe,” Shen told me. “I think that’s when people started being more interested in finance.”

The message of the frugalsphere was that if you could leave cheaply enough and save enough money, you could weather any layoff — and eventually, not have to work at all. The bloggers of the era — many of them millennials aiming their advice at other millennials — tended to share a can-do attitude, a sense that with the right mix of care and planning, almost anyone could improve their financial situation.

Also, they wanted to stick it to the man

The frugalsphere also had a tinge of rebellion about it. “Americans tend to have a very up-down relationship with consumption,” said Helaine Olen, a longtime financial journalist and the managing editor at the American Economic Liberties Project, an anti-monopoly think tank. After 2008, the pendulum started swinging against buying stuff, and the frugality bloggers were leading the swing.

Their implicit message was often that by refusing to buy expensive things, you were pushing back against corporations that wanted to control you. Frugality was, at least to some degree, about sticking it to the man.

At their peak, some personal finance blogs were reaching thousands of readers a day and breaking through into mainstream media. Shen told me that Millennial Revolution got 15,000 page views the day after a post about the virtues of renting a home was picked up by the CBC. Shen and Leung, as well as Trent Hamm and other bloggers, got book deals and started to reach a broader audience.

But the culture soon began to shift. The written personal blog began to die out, replaced by more visually driven social media – and an influencer ethos that rewarded the acquisition of new possessions, rather than showcasing ways to do without. Today, social media is much more about celebrating consumption than questioning it. 

On TikTok and Instagram, “it becomes about showing perfection and showing a good life,” Olen said. “And part of a good life, as we define it in the United States, is spending money.”

How frugality lost its shine

Today, some frugality influencers have found a home on TikTok, and the deinfluencing trend of a few years ago shows there’s still an appetite for anti-capitalism, even in the age of short-form video. But overall, the cultural and economic winds have blown against frugality, frugalsphere writers and observers told me. 

As inflation rose in the 2020s, necessities cost more, but saving also became less attractive. More people made the calculation that “if I don’t take this trip this month, it’ll be more expensive next year,” Olen said.

Upheavals like the Covid pandemic gave some Americans “a grim outlook on money,” Stevens said. Their feeling was, “there’s no chance that any of us can be wealthy. What’s the point of saving anything?”

Today, tips like making all your coffee at home instead of going out for a little treat don’t resonate the way they once did. This time is fundamentally different from 2008: The economy is nominally “good” now, and unemployment is low, but everything from eggs to real estate feels more unaffordable than ever. 

“People say, The cost of living is so high, I need some joy,” Stevens said. “Like, You can’t deny me everything.”

What the frugalsphere can teach us now

When I talked to frugalsphere writers about today’s situation, I ended up realizing that even if some of their specific tips are no longer as applicable, their mindset still is.

At its best, frugality advice was always about adapting to your situation, whatever that might be. When rice is cheap, buy in bulk. When basil is expensive, use the leftover pesto you froze in an ice-cube tray. Nothing is cheap right now — and, to be honest, I have never had the energy to freeze pesto — but the basic idea stands.

“Frugality to me means intentionality.”

Kara Stevens

“Be flexible,” Shen says. Millennial Americans once worried about their jobs being outsourced. Now workers all over the world are worried about getting replaced by AI. No matter what, though, “you have to change with the times.”

For Gen Z, that might look like entrepreneurship and investing rather than a traditional career and saving for a home, Shen said. I can’t yet imagine what it will look like for Gen Alpha, but there’s something reassuring about the idea that flexibility is a skill we can learn, one that can help carry us through even the most macro of macroeconomic shocks. 

One big thing that’s changed since 2008 is the politics of personal finance. In the 2010s and 2020s, many critics of the frugality approach began to point out that without systemic change to lower the costs of housing, health care, and education, all the coupons in the world weren’t going to make much difference. Today, affordability isn’t just an individual concern — it’s the cornerstone of a lot of political debates.

But even as we look to systemic solutions, there’s another big lesson Americans today can take from the frugalsphere: Control what you can.

For Stevens, that looks like acknowledging that “within any system that has a bias toward corporations or the wealthy, we understand that things may not be fair,” she said. “That also doesn’t mean that you don’t have personal agency.”

Exercising that agency might mean being more mindful around retail therapy rather than cutting it out entirely, Stevens said: “If I know that I need these little quick boosts to make me feel good because work is stressing me out, can I carve out a part of my budget that allows me to do that without completely disrupting my financial goals?”

Stevens, for instance, cares a lot about her skin, so she spends money on skincare products that really work for her, and cuts back on things like purses that don’t matter as much.

“Frugality to me means intentionality,” Stevens told me. It’s about “living more aligned with your values.”

In today’s era of polycrisis, it feels downright insensitive to promulgate the idea that anyone can get rich with the right combination of tips and tricks. But most Americans make at least a few choices every week about where our money is going.

If we can make whatever choices we do have in a way that’s intentional, in line with our larger goals for ourselves and the world — maybe that’s a 2026 version of financial independence.

There’s a new kind of influencer making the rounds on TikTok and Instagram: the loneliness influencer. Most of these influencers are young women, and “loneliness” might be a slight misnomer. They claim they aren’t lonely, simply alone — no friends, no family, no kids. And they prefer it that way.

“I really wanted to convey a normal life of somebody that doesn’t have this big, great, fun social life,” one influencer, Lana Isa, told Vox. “Like, what does a life look like as someone that doesn’t really have this great big social life, is not really interested in dating and generally prefers nights in? If you were to watch a Friday night in my life, you’d essentially just watch a girl enjoying her peace.”

Isa, and influencers like her, are just one representation of a larger trend, though. The Atlantic’s Faith Hill, who recently wrote a story titled “The Strange Appeal of the Solitude Influencer,” told Today, Explained co-host Noel King that, even though you mostly hear about young men facing a loneliness epidemic, women are having a hard time, too.

“If you actually look at some of these statistics, young women are struggling a lot on a lot of these measures, and, in some cases, more than young men,” Hill said.

Hill spoke with Noel about what’s going on with young women, how their crisis looks different from men’s, and why they’re covered differently.

Below is an excerpt of their conversation, edited for length and clarity. There’s much more in the full podcast, so listen to Today, Explained wherever you get your podcasts, including Apple Podcasts, Pandora, and Spotify.

In the first half of the show, we talked to a young woman who has made a name for herself as a loneliness influencer. What do you think is going on here?

My first impulse when I heard about this genre of video that people are watching is that there’s a lot of people spending a ton of time alone.

We’ve heard a lot of people talk about the loneliness epidemic, so I thought people were getting social connection through these videos from a safe distance, rather than spending time in person with people. Maybe there’s some of that going on. But, I also realized, as I was looking through these videos and reading all the comments, that a lot of the people commenting seemed to have a lot going on in their lives socially, so much so that they were busy, and exhausted, and burned out.

For some people, the appeal was actually in the fantasy of it, in the way that some people would look at influencers posting about these fabulous, exotic vacations they can’t afford to take. People have a very complicated relationship to solitude. People are working long hours. A lot of people [are] taking care of family members without much help. Many people are sort of torn between these needs for social connection and solitude.

Does that mean that this is, perhaps, not as sad as it appears on its face?

I don’t think it’s all sad. My heart goes out to people who are needing more solitude, as well as more social connection. Most people probably don’t have the perfect balance, and I can relate to that myself. I feel like I either have too many plans or not enough.

It’s not necessarily all happy, but it doesn’t mean that there are just so many people out there who are only getting social connection through these videos. I think there’s something a little more complicated going on.

We’ve all heard about the male loneliness crisis. You wrote a very interesting piece that basically said, actually, women are in crisis, as well.

I’ve just been hearing so much about men, and especially young men, being in crisis. I think there’s a lot of reasons we should take that seriously, and I do. But I felt like in those conversations, young women were kind of being flattened into a comparison point where, instead of people talking about how on some measures young men are struggling more than they used to, it got twisted into “young men are struggling more than women.”

There’s this image of the thriving girlboss, the one who is going to college, graduating college, entering the workforce on these conventional measures of success, doing so well. But if you actually look at some of these statistics, young women are struggling a lot on a lot of these measures, and in some cases, more than young men. And so, I don’t think it needs to be a suffering competition, but I did think part of the story was not coming through.

In what ways are women struggling?

Women have, for a long time, reported depression and anxiety at higher rates than men. That is getting worse. It seems like mental health on a lot of different measures — different kinds of stress and distress and suicidality — young women are reporting that at higher and higher rates. It turns out that women actually attempt suicide at higher rates than men do, on average. And the reason that more men die of suicide is that they’re more likely to use lethal means such as firearms.

A lot of times this conversation really revolves around college attendance rates, and women are attending and graduating college at higher rates than men. But a woman with a bachelor’s degree still makes less than a man with a bachelor’s degree on average, even within the same field of study.

When I talk to people for this story, researchers and therapists, I heard that a lot of young women are in for a rude awakening when they graduate from school. They’ve been in this bubble where they did feel like they could grow and thrive and they were taken seriously. And then, you go out into the real world, where sexism is still very real, and a lot of women are working in workplaces where they realize they’re not taken as seriously, or the people around them who are in positions of power are all men. That’s a difficult realization.

Why, if women and men are both in crisis, did men pull focus?

Women, as an overall population, tend to be a fairly high-functioning one in this narrative. I talked to someone who had trained as a medical sociologist, and she told me a saying that they used to use in this field was, ‘Men die quicker, but women are sicker.’

Women are more likely to endure a lot of chronic illnesses and to sort of soldier on with their pain unnoticed. And we might not be taking that as seriously, because the idea that women are struggling isn’t necessarily a new one or a super surprising one to a lot of people. I think men having a hard time is more of a news story, and we have become, perhaps, kind of inert to women’s distress in this way.

I wonder, as you found yourself covering this, where do you find the hope here?

I am heartened that we’re talking about [young adults] a lot. There’s been a lot of concern lately about Gen Z, and a lot of what we’re talking about when we talk about young men struggling also applies to young women, so we’re onto some of the right things.

I wrote another piece about young adulthood a while back that was really about the idea that young adulthood actually is a really hard developmental phase. And when I published that article, I think for a lot of readers, it seemed to be somewhat of a surprise that young adults are struggling, too. Even just since I’ve written that, people have talked more about young adults struggling. So I do think people are starting to take that seriously and understand that this is an age group that might need help.