Self care is really important. When you consistently put yourself last, your mental health will suffer, and not only will you pay the price, but so will your family and those with whom you interact. Its not frugal or smart to never spend the time and energy to take care of yourself, because eventually you will burn out, and you won't be able to keep up any more. Self care is extremely important.
The thing is, there's more than one type of self care. There's the self care involving bubble baths and relaxing, which is wonderful, and don't get me wrong, I highly recommend that.
But recently I was discussing with my therapist that while I've gotten quite good at doing self care (something I neglected for years), the feeling I get while doing self care only really lasts during the self care, but I'm not able to carry it with me throughout my day to day life. We discussed how I needed to figure out a way to bring the happiness and fulfillment that my self care gives me into my life, because I can't constantly be "self caring" because I also have responsibilities that I need to be doing and a life I need to be living.
As part of some of the therapy I've been doing, there is an aspect that works with emotional regulation, and that comes with a long checklist of things that you can do to help with that. Of those ideas, one of those that really stuck in my mind is the concept of building mastery. Working on a skill and improving it. (Learn more here about how to get therapy if such help sounds important to you.)