I think this well intentioned advice can actually act as a hindrance to escaping poverty. If you spend a ton of your time walking through the grocery story saving a couple bucks buying cheaper eggs you really lost a lot of your potential earns in that time you spent. Because this is a behavior you will repeat and repeat and the accumulation of this time is a net minus on what you could have saved if you spent that time learning a valuable skill. I think that's why any major uptick in peoples wealth is usually (not always) correlated by education. Places with smarter people tend to have more money because smart people generally speaking know how to create value.