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Have you ever heard a rap song about saving money? No? Then today is your lucky day, my friends. Your life isn’t complete until you hear a rap song about saving money.

Let me introduce you to Lil Dicky.

He doesn’t rap about buying Bentleys and poppin’ caps. In fact, he does the opposite. One of his songs is even bears the name $ave Dat Money.

If you haven’t heard it, stop.

You need this song in your life like yesterday. Check it out (warning: NSFW or people who don’t have a raunchy sense of humor or a fondness for naughty words):





Shooting A Rap Video About Saving Money…For Free

I think one of my favorite things about this video is that the dude made it entirely without spending a dime, and even made money in the end.

The clips of him walking through a ritzy neighborhood and knocking on random doors to see if he can use people’s homes to shoot a rap video (without paying for it) are about the funniest thing I’ve seen since Zach tried to sing an accurate rendition of SexyBack.

If you’ve got some time to spare, check it out this hilarious mini-documentary about the making of the video.

Pretty hilarious concept, right? Then I started thinking (or rather, Zach proposed it as a topic)…How much would Lil Dicky actually save by doing all those things for a year?

So, of course I had to get out my Sherlock Holmes magnifying glass to scope it out.

I’ll break down each claim one-by-one. I’ll look for the most recent estimates of actual spending patterns from studies. If a study was more than a few years old, I adjusted the numbers to 2017 dollars using this nifty calculator. Whenever hard data isn’t available, I’ll go for an estimate. And as a last resort, I’ll just tell you why the thing is good to do.

Ladies and gentleman, buckle up. This is gonna be a fun ride.

Without further ado, I present: Lil Dicky, $ave Dat Money

Verse 1

Rap game got it all wrong

We ain’t ’bout to go and spend money just to flex on her

We ain’t really got it like ya’ll

I’m the type of motherfucker that’ll check the check

Do the math, I ain’t never gettin’ robbed

Those margaritas not goin’ on my card

I ain’t ’bout to split a damn thing for convenience sake

I’m at the restaurant workin’ that waitress

Overpayment errors in restaurants are not well-documented, sadly. But, do you know what is? Medical billing errors! (Cue sad music)

11% of Medicare dollars are billed in error. Let’s assume the same rate applies to other insurances. The average non-retired adult pays an average of $798.15 per year in out-of-pocket expenses. Multiply them together, and voilà!

Verdict: $87.80

You ain’t heard of Lil Dave, or L the Jew biz major

Fuck you know ’bout the world he was raised in?

I’ve been saving money since I was motherfuckin’ 13

I wear the same pair of jeans everyday

Jean size varies according to dudes’ leggage. Let’s assume that one week of jeans equals one load of laundry. My laundromat charges $2.75 per load of laundry. Multiply that by 52 and hey presto!

Verdict: $143

Free sandwiches, homie, two stamps away

You can get a steak-and-cheese footlong for $8.69 in LA. Why LA? Because that’s where rappers live, right?

Let’s assume he gets two sandwiches per month, or 24 per year. If you get a free sandwich after 10 stamps, that’s two free sandwiches per year.

Verdict: $17.38

Book flight December but I leave in May

You can save a sweet wad of cash by not waiting till the last minute to book your flight.

Verdict: $346

My drugs are generic but still work the same

Generic drugs cost about 30% less than name-brand drugs. The average annual per capita out-of-pocket costs for prescription drugs is $195.55, and $338 for over-the-counter drugs.

Verdict: $160

I get logins for Netflix from my cousin Greg (Thanks, Greg!)

The standard Netflix packages run $9.99 per month.

Verdict: $119.88

Verse 2

I ain’t parkin’ that unless the meter green homie

Let’s assume that you can save about one hour per month by parking at a green meter and that meters run about $1.82/hour in downtown LA (because that’s where rappers live, right?).

Verdict: $21.84

Hair cut several months in-between homie

Most dudes get their hair cut once per month or so. If the average haircut costs $28, you can save a nice bit o’ cash by getting your hair cut once per quarter instead of every month.

Verdict: $224

Hit the motherfuckin’ lights when I leave homie

You can save about 7.2 cents by turning off the lights during an 8-hour workday. Let’s assume you do this every workday for a year (240 workdays).

Verdict: $17.28

Single ply TP ass bleed

Double-ply TP costs $1.75 per roll at my local grocery store and comes with 500 sheets/roll, making it 0.350 cents per sheet. Single-ply TP from the same brand costs $1.02 per roll and comes with 1,000 sheets/roll, making it 0.102 cents/sheet.

If the average American uses 57 sheets of TP per day, we can multiply that out and subtract the differences to come out with the final total.

Verdict: $51.59

Air B&B the mother fucker, least I’m never there

Apparently Lil Dicky shares a house with three other dudes rather than living in a fancy mansion (whaaaaaat?). If you rent out a room in LA you can expect to make $232 per week, according to AirBnB. But, I’m sure Lil Dicky needs a place to stay when he isn’t crashing other rapper’s video shoots, so let’s assume he only rents out his room for half the year.

Verdict: $6,032

I’m not in Cali, why the fuck my company in Delaware?

I honestly have no number for this one. Apparently Delaware is a huge tax haven, though.

Happy hour takin’ out the chicken, I don’t even care

That applies to both dating and wings

This varies according to which restaurants you frequent and how often you opt for the happy hour vs. full-price menu. I have no numbers for this one either, sadly.

Peep matinees phone bill got the motherfuckin’ fam on it

There are two claims here: peep matinees (that’s a movie matinee right? I feel so uncultured now) and staying on a family cell phone plan.

Matinees are $2.25 cheaper than full-price tickets at my local movie theater. If the average American goes out to a movie five times per year, that’s $11.25 saved. You can also save up to $300 per year by staying on a family plan as opposed to going it alone.

Verdict: $311.25

401k rollin’ over bands on it

I don’t know what “rollin’ over bands on it” means, but I do know what a 401k rollover is. It’s a way to consolidate all of your old 401k plans into one (ideally) low-cost 401k. How much you save depends on what the fees were with your old 401ks, how low the fees are at your new 401k, and how much money you roll over.

Coppin’ sweaters in the summer, went and sail on ’em

The fuck you rappers bragging ’bout? You overpaying for it!

I….don’t know. Although rappers generally are overpaying for things, though. 🙂

Verse 3

I ain’t never hit a bar with a cover

The average cover charge for an event at a bar is $5. If you go to a bar once per month, say, and avoid ones with cover charges, you can keep a tidy sum in your bank account by the end of the year.

Verdict: $60

Related post: 5 Things I’ve Saved On By Staying A Tomboy…And 5 Things I Haven’t

Low thread count, hard with the covers

My local store sells 3,000-thread-count sheets for $52 and 200-thread-count sheets for $25.

Verdict: $27

Free trial memberships though

I never join the shiz though

Fuck you think this is though?

This is another one that’s hard to quantify. What trial memberships are you getting? For how long? It all depends, and thus it’s hard to calculate.

Frequent flying like a motherfuckin’ finch tho

I myself just booked a flight to Peru with airline points for free. Otherwise, I would have spent several hundred dollars.

Verdict: $774

General Tso, half a dozen on the stick

Just so I can whet the appetite of dick

What you talkin’ about?

I don’t know what you’re talking about. General Tso chicken comes on a stick? Again, I’m so uncultured…

My AC never doing nothing, blow fans

It costs 39 cents/hour to run a whole-home AC unit, versus 1 cent/hour to run a fan. Let’s assume that Lil Dicky runs his fan instead of the AC unit for 12 hours/day for three months out of the year. He can save a ton of money by avoiding the AC!

Verdict: $431.60

Walgreens card shoppin’ all the off brands

Boy go hard when collecting, got Venmo

Again, impossible to calculate. What cards are you buying? How much are your friends borrowing from you?

Save every motherfuckin’ roach, tryna smoke

I feel like I should know this since I live in Colorado. Sadly, I don’t.

Check the clothes in my drawers, I ain’t playin’ around

It’s LD, lil boy, Mr. Hand-me-down

The average American millennial dude spends $475 per year on clothes. You can’t use all hand-me-downs, though, so let’s assume 30% of his wardrobe is in fact from other people and he didn’t pay for it.

Verdict: $142.50

Dirty drawers gettin’ worn, can you blame me now?

You think I got $4.50 up in quarters on me well I fucking don’t!

Ummm….gross. Let’s assume a week’s worth of dirty underpants takes up 1/3 of a load in a washing machine (yes, the machines are tiny at my coin-operated laundromat). That means you’d have one full load every three weeks, or 17 loads of underpants laundry in a year. According to Lil Dicky, it costs $4.50 per load of laundry.

Verdict: $76.50

Related: We’re savings $5 in quarters every week by using this cheap foldable indoor drying rack (affiliate link). That’s $260 in a year!

Verse 4

If you at a restaurant and got an iced coffee

And the waiter been refillin’ that without a word of caution

And you get your fuckin’ bill and you can see ’em double chargin’

For the coffee and you told ’em there’s a problem

Sing a long like

Ohh don’t double charge for me for that

Don’t double charge me, we like

Ohh don’t double charge for me for that

Don’t do it to yourself

‘Cause I might just ask what the ice cube’s worth

What the ice cube’s worth

That’s the only differentiate in making this a non free perk

And I might make work more difficult for you than it need be

So think about it, take a minute let it breathe b

Wow.

Did you know the average price of a coffee is $2.70?

Verdict: $2.70

But think about it bro, you saw me get the burger with the bacon on the side

After looking at the price of the side, of just bacon and comparing it

To what the difference in a cheeseburger verse the bacon cheeseburger was in making my decision

I would hate to be the waiter, tryin’ to tell me something different

Imma get on Yelp in a minute and review this piece of shit place like only a **** know how

Unless you take the extra coffee off I might get loud

Unless you, oh, it was just an accident?

You didn’t even mean that?

I’m so embarrassed

I couldn’t find any hard numbers on how much a bacon cheeseburger, a regular cheeseburger, and ala carte bacon costs at the average diner.

But to guesstimate, let’s say 20 cents?

Verdict: $0.20

How much did Lil Dicky actually save in

$ave Dat Money”?

Let’s cut to the chase. Drumroll, please….

Lil Dicky saved at least $9,046.52.

That’s pretty impressive!

Even though this rap song was meant as a jest, it still makes a great point: you can save a ton of money each year just by questioning the little things in your life.

What item surprised you most on this list? What do you think he could add, and how much would that save per year? Leave a comment below!