I don't mean to brag but I've seen that I save money better than most people I know. For example, a friend and I both retired from the same place of employment (we're both federal retirees) and I was much better off than she was, because I took 400 hours of annual leave into retirement. The agency stretched that AL into the future and said that it covers four federal holidays, so I get paid for those four federal holidays, a bonus I hadn't expected. All that came to $10,000 which is tiding me over as I get accustomed to partial retirement checks until the final amount is determined and I get regular checks.
I carried over the maximum annual leave for at least the past ten years. My co-workers would express surprise: nobody carried over that much. But I looked forward to the future, and saved. I still took vacation time, but I never took the whole five weeks. It added up, because I was frugal.