Nick Lachey Shares CRAZY 98 Degrees Money-Saving Secret

From a young age, Nick Lachey said that he grew up “understanding the value of money.” The “Love is Blind” co-host told Vivian Tu on the Richer Lives by SoFi podcast that, because his family wasn’t extravagant spenders, he grew up appreciating “what it took to make money and how important it was to be smart with your money, because we didn’t have a lot of it.”

“I learned early on that if you’re lucky enough to make it, take care of it,” he continued. “Don’t be irresponsible with it.” He recounted how this extended to living in New York City with fellow 98 Degrees members, Drew Lachey, Jeff Timmons, and Justin Jeffre, and the extremes they would go to to save money.

Nick Lachey Reveals Ultimate ‘Cheapskate’ Move He and Band Made

“All in all, for a band that was successful, we were so frugal with money,” the “Dancing With the Stars” alum admitted. “There was a couple of years there where none of us even had an apartment. We were on the road consistently for two years. If we had a week off, I’d just go stay with my dad.”

But when asked about their ‘ultimate cheapskate story,’ he recalled the four of them living in New York City, making their first album.

“You’d be in the recording studio til three, four in the morning,” he said. “There’s four guys, you know? We lived in Brooklyn at the time. Like, split a cab. No, no, no. We weren’t going to split a cab fare to Brooklyn. We went and stood in the subway where they run, at four in the morning, two trains an hour.”

“So you’d stand there in the freezing cold for, you know, 25 minutes to save, what? Five dollars? It was a joke.”

Nick Lachey Admits He and His Bandmates Were ‘Paranoid’ About Money

Lachey realized that, while it seems crazy now, it was their thinking at the time. “What in the world were we thinking?” he said. “We were just so worried about coming out of it with nothing. We were so paranoid about making the wrong decision that we, you know, we just took the cheapest possible way out.”

Lachey and his brother, along with Timmons and Jeffre, were kids from the Midwest who didn’t grow up in luxury. So, instead of splurging when they finally had money, they did their best to save it.

“Four kids from Ohio who didn’t grow up with a lot, it was like, ‘Okay, well, we’re going to be as cautious as we can with this and like really, really, you know, be super conservative with our spending,'” he continued. “But, I mean, looking back on it now, there’s got to be a middle ground. We don’t have to stand in the subway station freezing, waiting for the A-train.”