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Let’s have a little fun.
On Sunday, I reviewed Jeff Yeager’s new book, The Ultimate Cheapskate’s Guide to True Riches. Yeager has graciously offered to give away three copies to Get Rich Slowly readers. Rather than just do a random drawing, I thought it would be fun to share stories of extraordinary cheapness. It’s the Ultimate Cheapskate’s book contest!
Here’s how it works:
- By tomorrow night, leave a comment on this entry with a true story of extraordinary cheapness from your life (or the life of somebody you know).
- On Sunday, Yeager and I will select our three favorite stories. These commenters will receive a copy of his book.
Remember: this contest is meant to be fun. It’s a celebration of the lengths some people will go to save money. To give you an example of the sorts of stories I’m looking for, let me share some real-life examples from my own family.
First, my cousin Nick remembers two stories of his father’s cheapness:
- “My dad was so cheap that he once drilled a hole in a nickel so that he wouldn’t have to pay eight cents for a washer.”
- “My first memory of gas prices is driving home from my grandparents. We drove into a gas station, and pulled up to the pump. The guy came out and said, ‘Can I help you?’ My dad said, ‘33 cents a gallon? No you can’t!’ We drove off. Five miles down the road, we ran out of gas. We had to pay a farmer 50 cent cents a gallon.”
In January 2006, my Aunt Virginia shared a couple stories of how cheap her husband is:
My husband likes quantity and sales.
For example, we just moved, and in the process I ran across an old receipt from Wal-Mart. It’s a receipt for 366 pair of panty hose. Yes, that’s right: 366 pair of panty hose. Also on the receipt are batteries, motor oil, and oil filters. After seven years, I still have enough new nylons left to last me until January 2007. They were purchased in July 1999.
More recently, Pop found a bargain at Wal-Mart the week after Christmas. Fruitcake regularly $2.99 was on sale for $1.00 a loaf. The more you buy, the more you save. Pop saved $106.00. He bought 53 fruitcakes, all that was left in the store. He spent $53.00.
For a longer example, check out Pop Buys Pop, in which my Uncle Stanley buys 70 two-liter bottles of Sierra Mist for $10.50.
Share your stories of extraordinary cheapness! You just might win a book.
This article is about Books, Frugality, Funny Money Friday, 4th January 2008 (by J.D. Roth)
January 4th, 2008 at 5:07 am
I had my husband “hack” my Swiffer WetJet refill bottle by drilling a hole in the bottom so I could refill it myself. Refill bottles are upwards of $4 and I hated spending money for soapy water every few weeks.
January 4th, 2008 at 5:30 am
Kind of relax & destreess better than massage
Price war :
Shop a : 10 foot reflexlogy free 1
Shop b: 10 fot refexlogy free 2
So surely we g for shop b
Annversary Cake house (Secret Receipt ..)
Buy one free one , we end up buy 10 , my frige end up load up with 20 cakes
All the best all for 2008,
Tracy ho
wisdomgettingloaded
January 4th, 2008 at 5:47 am
The cheapest thing I have ever seen was a manager for the company I worked for. He directed his outside salespeople to run the tollbooths without paying, figuring it was cheaper in the long run to pay the few tickets than to pay every toll!
January 4th, 2008 at 5:56 am
When my sister and I were traveling in Rome, we saved money on food by eating gelato for dinner nearly every day.
January 4th, 2008 at 6:00 am
My in-laws really overdo Christmas - dozens and dozens of presents for each person. Well, when you spend that kind of money on gifts, you have to be frugal somewhere. For several members of the family, there is no ripping into packages. They very carefully open each one and then fold up the paper to be reused the next year (and often for several years after that). My father-in-law even uses a knife to slice open the tape so that the paper doesn’t rip. I really can’t remember the last time my husbands grandmother used new wrapping paper for Christmas or Birthday. The same goes for boxes. There is a sort of joke every Christmas about “who got the oldest box”. I think last year there was a department store box that it was determined was from the 70’s sometime based on when that store closed. I believe it was finally retired.
January 4th, 2008 at 6:03 am
I have a dear old aunt. She has experienced Second World War and know how to be frugal. It is second nature to her.
At her latest birthday, she got a couple of boxes of chocolate.
A week later I visited her. She had a bowl of hazel nuts sitting on the kitchen table. I thought nothing of it at the time.
During my visit, we had a piece of chocolate. My aunt took one bite of the chocolate and took out the hazel nut inside and placed it in the bowl.
“I don’t like hazel nuts, but it would be a waste just to throw them out”
Realizing what she had just said, I got sick to my stomach, mainly because I had eaten from the bowl.
-Jens
January 4th, 2008 at 6:05 am
My father-in-law was a Depression-era toddler, and saw WWII rationing as a school child. He grew up with a single parent in a working-class poor neighborhood. That sort of thing imprints pretty deeply; he’s notorious for taking a slice of cheese to restaurants to avoid the 50 cent difference between a hamburger and cheeseburger. He also orders Diet Coke with lemon, and wraps the extra lemon in a napkin to bring home. It seems funny to us, but I remember him telling me he’d never tasted steak until they went out to celebrate their fifth anniversary - in his late twenties.
January 4th, 2008 at 6:13 am
My grandma is famous for being frugal. Here are a few things she has done:
seen that neighbors threw away the coupon section and grabbed it out of trash so she could have second set of a coupon or two she was planning on using.
gone to garage sales and taken things from the “free box” and then resold said items at her own garage sale the next month for .25 cents.
driven to three different grocery stores to take advantage of different coupons and sales (you know, bananas are on sale here, but potatos and soda are on sale there, so….)
I can’t buy that, I don’t have a coupon for it.
When playing white elephant food bingo at the senior center (when you bring in canned goods and such in a paper bag and then winner gets to chose a bag), she brought in something she had won in a previous bingo–not realizing until the person won it at our table that the box of coffee creamers she had brought had expired last month.
Clipping neighbor’s flowers and flowers along side of road–in order to have flowers to put on the family graves on Memorial Day. I have no idea if the neighbor’s mind the azaleas being trimmed each year by their 89 year old neighbor, but I’ve seen her do it.
I love my grandma, but her version of frugal can be a bit cheap! She has plenty of money, and will never be in financial trouble, but she remembers the Great Depression and tries to save money however she can.
January 4th, 2008 at 6:16 am
I sure wish I had a fun story like that. The best I can remember from my childhood was my dad pulling up to the McDonalds drive through window after a long car trip. (Three kids, 2 adults, 1 car). He ordered 20 cheeseburgers from because they were $1 each. This was quite a while ago, so surprising the teenager behind the window with an order of 20 cheeseburgers caused quite the panic. Even funnier was that he ordered ONE soda for all 5 of us to share!
January 4th, 2008 at 6:18 am
Let the games begin! And, hey, better bring your best game — you’re gonna need it. Remember who’s judging this Miser Death Match.
You might think you’re cheap because you save your Christmas wrapping paper, put it back on the roll, and use it again next year. Not the Ultimate Cheapskate. I save it, put it back on the roll, and return it to WalMart for a refund. (Nah, I don’t really do that, it would be wrong. But it might not be a bad act of civil disobedience if they bulldoze down the ball field and woodlot where the neighborhood kids have always played to build another WalMart, like they’ve been talking about.)
It’s time to strut your thrift-craft, and don’t be shy.
-Jeff Yeager
The Ultimate Cheapskate, the Titan of Tightwads, the Guru of Greenbacks, the Maestro of Misers, the Commander-in-Cheap….
http://www.UltimateCheapskate.com
January 4th, 2008 at 6:19 am
There was a music store in town offering free CD’s in exchange for 5 used CD’s.
Best Buy just happened to be selling all sorts of crap CD’s for $1.00 a piece.
I bought 15 of those and took them to the other store and got 3 brand new albums.
My friends called me Costansa.
January 4th, 2008 at 6:21 am
Well, we have a man here in Albuquerque who lives so simply that he’s become a local celebrity and guru of sorts. During the warmer months, this man wears nothing more than a loincloth. Now, should that loincloth happen to get a rip in it, this man doesn’t use a needle and thread – he uses a needle and DENTAL FLOSS! You see, dental floss is cheaper per yard than thread.
January 4th, 2008 at 6:22 am
Back in my single days, I was trying to get out of credit card debt. I had resolved to live only on cash and not use any credit (which wasn’t really a problem considering my credit cards were close to maxed anyways).
So I met this girl who was very cute and asked her out for two weeks later. I figured I could have enough in my bank account by then to treat her well to a night on the town. The same time, I had other bills come due, and on date night, I only had $26.00 in my bank account.
We met up at 8:00pm.
Thankfully, my car tank was nearly half full (or half empty if you are one of those people). I looked in the paper and found a Greek Festival that included food and soda for $5/person. I took her there and paid my way inside. After being there for a while, she asked me to get us some beers. So I went and bought us two beers for $5. I drank mine, she drank hers, and she wanted another one. So I go and bought her one, and filled mine up with water so she wouldn’t think she was drinking alone.
As the night progressed, she decided she wanted us to go dancing, I told her I was getting tired and had to be at work in the morning pretty early. We said our good nights, and I dropped her off at her car at 10:00.
While we never went out again, it was actually through finally telling this story to her and some of her friends, that I met my wife. She has since always appreciated the fact that I’ll do just about anything for her, but appreciates it more that I don’t go in to debt in order to do it.
January 4th, 2008 at 6:25 am
Two stories from my ultra-cheap childhood (which has led me to a relatively frugal adulthood):
1. I grew up in the 1970s and begged my mom and dad for a pair of the very fashionable Dr. Scholl sandals with the wooden soles and the single leather strap. Rather than buying these shoes for me, my dad carved the shoes out of a 2X4, stapled tire tread onto the bottoms and used a salvaged piece of leather for the strap. Needless to say, those “Dr. Pops” didn’t get much wear, but he did save almost $10.
2. As you can already tell, my dad was CHEAP and when it came to heating our little house in Michigan, he was extra cheap. We had a “wood burning” stove on our back porch, but rather than buying cord wood we would burn rolled up newspapers and lumber salvaged from broken pallets. Many a summer day was spent rolling those newspapers into tight logs or pulling apart broken pallets that my dad would bring home by the van load. That back porch would get to almost 80 degrees, but the rest of the house stayed at 55 degrees from November until April.
January 4th, 2008 at 6:26 am
My Dad is so cheap… (how cheap is he?)
Well I’m not going to mention about how he doesn’t turn the air conditioning on until August and he lives in Phoenix.
No, I’m going to mention this instead.
One day I saw him rubbing something on his disposable razors. I asked him what he was doing and he showed me.
Apparently he had taken the striker portion of a matchbook and was using it to sharpen the blades on his Bic disposable razors. He told me he got an extra week of use out of them by resharpening them.
January 4th, 2008 at 6:34 am
My wife’s best friend (J) and her husband (D) were shopping at the grocery store for a party they were having. D picked out Helluva good dip for the generic chips they bought. While at the check out line J is watching the price of every item that is being scanned in and see’s the price of the Helluva good dip and proclaims “D we are in no position to be buying Helluva good dip” and promptly removes the item, goes and finds a nice generic dip to save $0.25. After hearing this story I decided to take an old coffee can, print out a picture of Helluva good dip with a note “Helluva Good Dip Fund”, cut a slot in the top of the plastic lid, and taped the sign to the coffee can. My wife proceeded to fill it with 25 pennies and we took the can to the party and placed it on the dining room table next to the generic dip. J should be nominated for the ultimate cheapskate because I could tell stories like this for hours.
On a nice side note.. since a comment above was about how Christmas wrapping paper didn’t count.. is that even if you received wrapping paper you know was from 10 years ago? My mom wrapped one of my presents this year in such wrapping paper. It is actually a sin in our family to destroy good wrapping paper, and boy was it entertaining trying to explain that to my 2 year old this year during Christmas.
January 4th, 2008 at 6:36 am
My friend Daniel and I were discussing what we were going to do on a Sat night, and he said he and his wife wanted to drink Margaritas. I asked if he had a blender, and he said “I will just go to Wal-Mart and pick one up, then we can return it tomorrow. I’ve done that like three times this year.”
Yikes.
January 4th, 2008 at 6:49 am
I went with a friend to a dinner his company was providing on a riverboat casino. After dinner we were on the deck and I asked for a soda while walking over to a bar. He immediately said “no, don’t get it there, they’re free inside”. And this was after he had won quite a bit of money. His fellow employees never let him live that down.
January 4th, 2008 at 6:54 am
Mind if I offer two somewhat macabre tales about my dear parents?
As an urban-dwelling, educated professional whose childhood home looks like a typical 1970s suburban split level, I can stop a conversation cold by revealing that I was raised on roadkill. Everyone in the neighborhood knew that my dad was a deer hunter — in the years that he got one, we’d pull the minivan out of the garage, hang up the deer, and the butcher who lived next door would come over and cut it up for us. Venison filled our freezer. However, not everyone realized that sometimes, that deer had come to us by way of a timely phone call from a friend or relative who had been traveling a dark country road. “Hey Ben! I just hit a buck on Route 20. Naw, I’m fine; truck’s a little dented. Want the animal? Come get it.” As long as it was a fresh carcass on a cold day, that deer ended up in our garage — some choice cuts reserved for the finder and butcher, but the rest of the meat (and the hide) was ours, free.
Nowadays, my retired parents are graverobbers, but of the most benign sort. They go past or through the town cemetery on their daily walk, diligently noting who maintains the family graves and who doesn’t. A couple of years ago, they commented on the pretty geraniums that the cemetery caretakers had planted on each grave. The geraniums were removed in the Fall and my parents found them in a pile behind the maintenance shed. True to form, my dad snuck back at night and hauled the pile of discarded flowers home. He carefully repotted the geraniums and wintered them in the basement. Come Spring, he separated the survivors. He had more than twenty healthy, beautiful plants as a result… although the family makes jokes about their hardiness being the result of the unusual fertilizer they sucked up before they were pulled from the graveyard.
January 4th, 2008 at 6:55 am
When trying to save money one of my friends would buy the cheapest loaf of bread (usually the day old, half-price, store brand bread), then raid fast food places for ketchup, mustard, mayo, and on lucky days, barbecue sauce to make condiment sandwiches. Sure, they were cheap calories, but I don’t think i could ever do that.
January 4th, 2008 at 6:55 am
Dryer sheets! I cut mine in half for each load, and they work just as well. What, is there some kind of law that says dryer sheets need to be a certain size?
January 4th, 2008 at 7:01 am
Whenever I used to visit a friend of mine, he would go to an indian restaurant and take out buffet. He would pile his plate with just chicken or any other meat. He would bring home that and I would cook rice to eat that with. For US6 we get close to 8 drumsticks and some 5 naan bread. This will last both of us for 2 meals at least. That means we are paying close to US3 per meal for both of us. The irony is that we both can afford it but rather be cheapskates!
In the office where I work, there is always celebration one day or another and alot of pop is always available. I used to pile up the pop in my cabinet and take them home. You would be surprised how many you can collect in a month.
January 4th, 2008 at 7:02 am
My friend just gave me a good story yesterday! Her mom is the most frugal person I know. When my friend was in 4th grade, her mom used to make her wear plastic baggies over her shoes on rainy days, so her shoes would last longer.
(my friend says she took them off as soon as she was out of her mom’s sight)
January 4th, 2008 at 7:05 am
A past job and my current one both have a very large fridge in which they provide various soda’s, water, and snacks for their employees.
While telling everyone it was for the environment, I would grab people’s empty cans of their desks - and occasionally out of the trash -to be returned. I’d even volunteer to clean up meeting rooms so that I could get my hands on the empties.
Once a week I’d ride the subway home with a huge bag, annoying all the other folks on the train.
In reality it was to use the refund to create a laundry fund - not because I needed it, but because it was like doing your laundry for free.
January 4th, 2008 at 7:08 am
A few years ago my friend Jason found out that his girlfriend was pregnant with the couple’s first child. Being unwed twenty year olds, Jason felt the appropriate thing was to propose. He immediately left the home and went shopping, and felt compelled to call me after making his big purchase.
On the phone he relayed the following story, “Dude, I just got a great deal at Costco. I bought a box of granola bars and a ring for $900.” I mentioned that the “deal” didn’t seem like a great discount for any ring of substance. Jason shot back that the great deal was actually on the granola bars. “The ring was just an afterthought. I decided to get married as I browsed through the cereal aisle. I figured that she could help split the cost of my Costco membership.”
January 4th, 2008 at 7:11 am
My girlfriend loves to embarass me with this story of meal-preparing cheapness.
I was making dinner for us; eating in, of course! The plan involved taco seasoning, and I had 1/2 packet in the cupboard. (Use only half the spices to save money!)
It had a been a month since I opened the packet. A mealmoth maggot had wormed its way inside. Now, I could have run across the street to spend a buck on another packet. Or substituted other spices. But I figured “It’s OK, when it cooks, any grossness will be nullified, and who wants to waste fine spices?” So I plucked the maggot out and stirred to the spices in.
Of course, my girlfriend saw this, became immediately grossed out, and refused to eat it. I went ahead, cooked the meal, and ate dinner.
She married me.
January 4th, 2008 at 7:12 am
My dad has no qualms about looking like a kook in order to save money. This leads to some interesting sights for the neighbors.
My mother enjoys gardening, and their house is surrounded by a split-rail fence covered in meticulously kept climbing roses.
My dad grumbled about the cost of bug sprays, and he refused to even consider those pricey bug bags on stakes. So, each year her roses got chewed up when the Japanese beetles started to feed. Then one year, suddenly, the roses looked immaculate.
I was wondering how they had accomplished this, until one Sunday afternoon when I dropped by unannounced. My dad was in the yard with a 500-foot extension cord and his wet/dry shop vac, vaccuuming the beetles off the roses.
January 4th, 2008 at 7:13 am
My grandfather haunts auctions — he claims that’s the best place to find deals. One of the best deals he ever found was on church pews. He got an entire church’s worth of solid oak church pews for just a bit more than the cost of hauling them off.
He proceeded to very carefully take each pew apart and stored the wood. Since then, he’s built oak desks and other furniture from scratch for family members, making sure that the family doesn’t have to go out and purchase furniture.
Even better, my grandmother bought rolls and rolls of a patterned fabric sometime in the late 80s. All of their kids’ and grandkids’ furniture, curtains and bedspreads match, because she’s made all of them by hand (including the cushions on my grandfather’s oak furniture). She’s down to the last roll, though, and we’re all scared to think if we’ll have to try to match a new pattern now.
January 4th, 2008 at 7:16 am
i don’t know if this is more funny or sad:
my father grew up in post-WWII Soviet Union, which turned him into an extreme miser/pack rat. one of his famous traits over the years has been never throwing out food, no matter what condition it’s in.
with a big family, you have a lot of leftovers, not all of which are finished up in time. so, every-so-often, he would go through the fridge, pull out the leftovers in various stages of decay, dump them in a frying pan (frying makes anything taste better), then dump that into a huge pot, along with whatever vegetables, fresh or not, were available. after cooking the funny-smelling concoction for several hours, he would then serve that at dinner, topping each bowl off with various bread, cereal and/or potato chips crumbs.
we lovingly refer to this as “dad-soup-surprise,” and gag a little, every time we think about it.
January 4th, 2008 at 7:17 am
A few brief cheapo anecdotes, most related to my mother but one related to my wife, and another to my father. I’d encourage you to read the below as a body of work committed by my lunatic family.
My father used to look for combs in parking lots, and would pick them up, wash and use them when he found one. I mean he would constantly be on the lookout for a freaking comb.
My mother
- washed plastic bread bags for reuse
- “waterproofed” her kids’ snow boots with said plastic bread bags (foot in bag, bag in boot)
- bought shoes for her kids two sizes too big and rolled socks up in the toe to make them fit
- instead of buying proper tea, made tea from the dried leaves of various random plants
My wife not only uses half a paper towel at a time, but also washes them for reuse.
January 4th, 2008 at 7:18 am
My old boss, Brad, was so cheap, he would search through all the newspaper ads to find a furniture or car sale where they gave a way free hot dogs so he could take his family out to lunch there.
January 4th, 2008 at 7:20 am
My grandfather haunts auctions — he claims that’s the best place to find deals. One of the best deals he ever found was on church pews. He got an entire church’s worth of solid oak church pews for just a bit more than the cost of hauling them off.
He proceeded to very carefully take each pew apart and stored the wood. Since then, he’s built oak desks and other furniture from scratch for family members, making sure that the family doesn’t have to go out and purchase furniture.
Even better, my grandmother bought rolls and rolls of a patterned fabric sometime in the late 80s. All of their kids’ and grandkids’ furniture, curtains and bedspreads match, because she’s made all of them by hand (including the cushions on my grandfather’s oak furniture). She’s down to the last roll, though, and we’re all scared to think if we’ll have to try to match a new pattern now.
January 4th, 2008 at 7:21 am
It’s interesting that this contest came along. I just blogged about one of the “cheap” things my father did back when I was a kid. Here’s a summary of the story, with a link to my blog entry (which is probably much more entertaining.)
When I was a kid, we were very poor. When I joined Cub Scouts, my parents bought my uniform at the thrift store, but there was no official, shiny metal Cub Scout slide at the thrift store, so I was told I would have to make do by tying my neckerchief or figuring something else out.
I was devastated. Once again, I was going to stand out as the poor kid of the pack, all because my parents couldn’t afford to buy me a shiny metal Cub Scout slide.
My Dad saw my disappointment, and being the handyman he is, fashioned a Cub Scout slide for me out of a block of wood he had laying around. He drilled a hole through the center, sanded it down, wrapped it with a leather thong and glued the ends down. Finally, he colored the wood with a dark blue magic marker to match the color of my uniform.
When he called me out to the shed to give it to me, I was even more devastated. In my shallow mindset, it was even worse to have a “fake” slide than not to have one at all.
Now, of course, I cherish that slide and the work my father did to make it. It was unique, and it was a great example to me of how “making do” is sometimes better than the accepted norm.
Here’s the link to the full post (complete with picture of me as a Cub Scout wearing the slide):
Of Laptops and Cub Scout Slides
January 4th, 2008 at 7:22 am
Back around 2000 (the days of free stuff on the internet) I was an intern in an IT department. My 3 co-workers and I decided to hold a contest to see who could put together the best free-stuff date. The object was to use as little of our own money as possible to finance a complete PG date (dinner and entertainment) within 3 months. We came up with a point system based on our savings and the value. We received bonus points for accessories, and other free items. The winner received a $20. We weren’t allowed to use our positions as Government employees to get discounts or free items; we could ask for discounts but couldn’t refer to the contest, we couldn’t use pre-existing rewards points, tips weren’t counted and had to be 15% or more.
I ended up winning, I used 2 free movie tickets, I got a 50% off a coffee coupon in the newspaper which I used to buy my date coffee after the movie, I asked to sample one of their teas and since bags only come in one size I got a free cup of the tea. I got a free watch from Cisco, a free hat from Redhat and a Microsoft t-shirt (my date just loved how I dressed). I purchased gift cards for dinner cutting costs by using AAA to buy the gift cards and at a restaurant that I had a buy one get one half off. We went to dinner at 6:00 so the restaurant would be busy. When I spoke with the hostess I asked if I ordered take out (my initial plan) would they through in a free appetizer or dessert. She talked with the manager and I walked out with 2 meals and a free appetizer for about $12 (the value was around $35). We went to the local park and ate on a blanket I received for completing a survey online. I think in total I spent $15 on a value that was around $55.
My folks have to pay per trashcan the put out on trash day. At $3 a can my father decided years ago that an extra can on Christmas was to much. So a few days after Christmas he went out and purchased the cheapest Christmas fabric money can buy and made my mother sew draw string bags. To this day all the gifts my folks give me come in fabric bags. To prevent buying wrapping paper I occasionally receive birthday gifts in Christmas bags.
January 4th, 2008 at 7:23 am
Coming out of college I was broke and heavily in debt. Now I’m 30 and doing fairly well for myself. However I am proud to say that I have never bought a condiment in my life!! To this day whenever I am in fastfood restuaraunts, gas stations etc… I make sure to fill my pockets with all the free condiments I can fit. My refrigerator looks like the counter at McDonald’s.
January 4th, 2008 at 7:27 am
My wife’s grandfather was known for doing anything he could to save money. My favorite story is that he bought a book that demonstrated how to do dentistry at home on his five kids. His wife, who is a very quiet, old-fashioned woman, put a loud stop to that immediately. I guess you have to draw the line at amateur dentistry on your children.
My wife’s father picked up a lot of his father’s traits as well. When the Tylenol runs out, he refills the bottle with generic brand and doesn’t tell my wife’s mother; she claims that the generic Tylenol don’t work as well (which is ridiculous of course).
January 4th, 2008 at 7:29 am
Well, my father was so cheap that he continued to drive our station wagon for over a year after a hole developed in the passenger-side floor. Before he finally traded it in, the hole was about 4″x 8″ - large enough that a neighbor’s kid dropped a shoe out the hole “just to see what would happen”.
But my dad thought he wasn’t being too cheap, because HE had a friend who had kept a car for so long that when he jumped over the seat to deal with a misbehaving child, he found himself standing in the street…
My parents not only collected soda cans for the deposit, but they also saved up all our glass (could be reused) and cans (flattened and sold as scrap). Coffee cans would be reused as pans for my mom to bake special loaves of bread. Even plastic juice bottles (a luxury!) would get reused over and over as a container for lemonade or juice made from frozen concentrate.
January 4th, 2008 at 7:31 am
I grew up fairly poor - and bless my parents - they have worked incredibly hard to get our family to a better place. But the first ‘toy’ I remember was my first slide. We were driving home one evening, and all of a sudden, my dad swerves to the shoulder of a pretty big highway, slams the brakes, and jumps out. He runs around the truck, picks up a piece of sheet metal on the side of the road, and throws it in the truck. When we got home, he nailed the sheet to the side of the house, picked me up, and helped me slide right down. I still have pictures of him holding me on top of my first “slide”.
January 4th, 2008 at 7:32 am
Back in undergrad, I studied abroad in
Wales for a semester. Four of my fellow study-abroad students planned to backpack through Europe the month after the semester ended, and spent the last few weeks *practicing not eating* so they wouldn’t have to spend as much money on food.
January 4th, 2008 at 7:34 am
Ha! These stories are great!
In my family, you NEVER get a new car. Ever.
When I was in college I was driving an old Geo Storm. They have huge, long doors for some reason. Well, one day the latch on the drivers side started not to catch so well. It would fling open every time I went around a right hand turn! And I don’t just mean pop open - fling open all the way and I had to reach out over the road to close it!
So I happened to tell my dad about this right before my mom and I were headed to the mall for the afternoon. I should have known better. When I got back I found my car problem fixed! My dad had drilled a hole in the side of my door and in my middle console with a bungee cord hooking the two together.
Try explaining that one to your friends.
January 4th, 2008 at 7:35 am
While I don’t remember of this story taking place my parents and Grandparents enjoy telling it once a year. When I was young my grandparents would take me to the store with my cousin of the same age to purchase toys or anything else that struck our fancy. Once in the store we were given our money and let loose like a Barbarian hoard and we would meet up with our grandparents at the checkout after they had completed their shopping. At which time we were to place our items on the check out and purchase our toys. Well due to my intense love of money or just being cheep I would sneak my item into my grandparent’s pile of items and wait for the checker to scan it. At which time I would grab my toy and head to the car with it, a pocket full of money, and a large smile. I guess this a common occurrence.
January 4th, 2008 at 7:40 am
I interviewed for a job last year and was determined to do it as cheaply as I possibly could. Here were a few of my cheapskate methods for traveling to the interviews across the country:
1) Used couchsurfing.com and stayed on kind strangers’ couches. I would show up at night, leave in the morning, and never see the stranger again. Some people say that neighborliness is a thing of the past, but if you try couchsurfing I think you’ll find a world of neighbors out there willing to take you in for free.
2) Pricelined a hotel for $23 a night, then for dinner to avoid eating out, I cooked a package of ramen noodles in the complimentary coffee maker pot. Ramen only needs to get hot to cook, it doesn’t need to actually boil.
3) At the pre-interview dinner, I’d ask the other applicants and employees “are you going to eat the rest of that?” if the answer was no, I’d gather up a stack of take-home boxes and bring all the leftovers with me. Note: do not try to keep leftovers at room temp in a hotel room overnight. The smell when you wake up will be enough to make you ill.
4) Surreptitiously snuck back to where free breakfasts and lunches had been offered at the interviews so I could sneak old croissants and bagels into my bag. Not only that, I took the empty cans and took them back to my home state for the refund (even though they were bought in a state with no can refund). Mwahaha!
January 4th, 2008 at 7:41 am
My mom is very cheap. We are first generation here from Mexico so she feels it’s wasteful to spend on frivolous things. For one she always has her heater set at 58 degrees in the winter…and never turns it on in the summer unless its over 90 degrees. She buys her clothes with her store discount and sales no matter what conditon as long as its cheap. She sews up old jeans, blankets, etc. to prolong their life. she use to reuse the grease from hamburger meat to use cooking something else when i was living with her.
January 4th, 2008 at 7:45 am
I’m pretty frugal, but not nearly as much as my father.
Growing up, my sister and I would sort through aluminum cans and plastic bottles he brought home from work. He raided all the trash cans in his office building to bring these home. When I was younger, we would bring in about $20 a week through this.
Now he works at a tech company where the soda is free and everyone provides him with their bottles at the end of the day. He even set up a deal with the building manager so that he could be the official recycling point for the entire facility! The machines only provided plastic bottles, so very little sorting was necessary, and each one was worth a nickel. Soon enough he was bringing home two big bags of bottles a night and we were making trips to the recycling center every few days.
Each of us could redeem up to $25 worth of bottles at any one point. He would regularly have us go into the recycling center in different groups and wearing different hooded sweatshirts or coats to disguise the fact that we were getting more than our daily allotment of redemption. I stopped him short of taping a fake mustache onto my face.
He’s still redeeming cans and bottles to this day and bringing in at least $75/week to the family through his efforts.
To add to this, he will input the codes under the caps on all the different sodas to their respective websites. After several years of this, I own more than my share of branded clothing, towels, blankets, duffel bags, video games, sports equipment, magazine subscriptions, video game systems and, this Christmas, wireless headphones.
The money I earned through my work with those recyclables throughout my childhood paid for a significant chunk of my college education, saving me from the dreaded student loans.
I’ve asked him if he would stop like he does on the street to pick up a bottle if it were a nickel instead, but without all the work. He says it’s worth much more because he gets more satisfaction out of the work and environmental impact involved in picking up that bottle, but that he would definitely stop for a nickel as well.
January 4th, 2008 at 7:52 am
For me, all cheapskate stories begin and end with my Grandmother. Like many mentioned above, she was a Depression-era child, raised dirt poor on a farm in Illinois. She’s never given up the mentality and saves money every chance she gets. This mindset manifests itself most memorably in the “gifts” she has given us grandchildren over the years. She never really understood the idea of buying things for others, so typically she gives things like free food collected from senior support groups or trinkets given away by local politicians during election campaigns. However, she topped herself the Christmas she gave my sister a tiny jewelry box containing a present she’d saved for 40+ years…all my mother’s baby teeth.
We’ve never forgotten the look on my sister’s face that year!
January 4th, 2008 at 7:58 am
The home that I grew up in was near the bottom of a long hill and had a full basement which was prone to flooding. Our sump pump would run constantly during heavy rains. One day the switch that activated the sump pump stopped working which resulted in a couple of inches of water in the basement.
My grandfather took the switch apart and ‘fixed’ it instead of spending a couple of bucks for a new one. It worked for a few months, then failed again with a couple of inches of water in the basement.
The switch was repaired two more times before being replaced.
January 4th, 2008 at 8:00 am
My friend’s sister is so cheap that when her father died she insisted that the whole family work on his house to remodel it, even though most of them have full time jobs which pay more than contractors make. She insisted that painter’s tape was too expensive and now the walls look crazy. It’s been almost 2 years since they started and the house isn’t done and it’s dropped 25% in value and they’ve lost the 2k a month it was worth in rent. My friend’s relationship with her sister has deteriorated over this.
I got rid of two bathrobes because they were so big that they took up a whole load at the laundry mat. My mom said she’d like them so I gave them to her. We were going to a wedding and I found out last minute that she was planning on giving them as wedding gifts. She was so shocked when I told her that was completely inappropriate.
My friend lives with her mom and when she threw out a stretched out tank top (in the bottom of her trash can!) she found her mom wearing it next week.
January 4th, 2008 at 8:02 am
Let me tell you my story, which happened to me just a second ago. I was sitting and reading some blogs through Google Reader, and saw a contest - “Ultimate Cheapskate’s book contest!”. I read further and saw a great price too. So I figured - I will write about my cheapness: I would never buy that book, because I’m very frugal, and I would rather try to win it here.
I like everyone else’s stories very much. But I found mine is the youngest one;)
Look! I’m about to save $10.36 on that great deal. I’m not even counting price of shipping:)
January 4th, 2008 at 8:05 am
One Saturday, when I was in my high school days, Dave an acquaintance of mine, invited me and a mutual friend to go for a car ride with him to a used record store. We didn’t really want any records but Dave talked us into going with him.
He picked the two of us up at my friend’s house, drove to a gas station to top off, then headed over to the store. After about an hour only Dave bought any records.
We then left and headed back to the same gas station and topped off again. The gas attendant had a priceless look on his face when the nozzle clicked so soon after putting it in the tank. Dave asked the attendant to make sure the tank was topped off as much as possible. The cost was about 75 cents, which Dave insisted we split three ways. It was then clear to us that he only wanted people along to split the cost of gas.
January 4th, 2008 at 8:06 am
Here’s the cheapest thing I do and I even get weird looks from my super-frugal boyfriend…
When I get a run in my nylons in one leg, I just cut that leg off and then when I get a run in another pair I do the same and then wear both good sides.
Just avoid getting dressed in the dark if you have different colors/styles of nylons. You’ll end up getting weird looks from everyone:-)
January 4th, 2008 at 8:11 am
My father is a black belt in frugality. He grew up in abject poverty during the depression, and though it drove me nuts growing up, I respect the hell out of it now. Below are a sample of “A.C.isms”
When I was sweeping the kitchen floor:
“Dustpan? When I was a boy, we couldn’t afford a dustpan, we would wet a newspaper and put it on the floor. And that was after everyone read it.”
When I tried to borrow twenty dollars to go to a school dance: “Ten dollars? What do you need five dollars for?”
When I asked for a puppy for my sixth birthday: “Puppy? Puppy!? When I was a boy, we did’nt have pets, we had jobs.”
January 4th, 2008 at 8:12 am
Lol, love the idea for the content - can’t wait to read the winners’ stories! Much prefer this to just commenting for a chance to win, it’s more entertaining, and the winners are going to feel like they earnt the prize too.
January 4th, 2008 at 8:13 am
A good friend of mine has a notoriously cheap father. A few years ago his refrigerator broke and he was forced to buy a new one. Instead of paying $50 in extra garbage stickers that it would take to have the old fridge hauled off, he borrowed a friend’s saw and cut up the giant appliance into garbage-bag-sized pieces. It took him nearly 2 months to completely dispose of the darn thing by putting out one piece at a time with his household trash.
January 4th, 2008 at 8:14 am
This is a story I heard from a YMOYLer.
A happy couple were at a Stationery store around Valentines Day. They were browsing through the preprinted cards, and on occasion would exchange their cards so the other could read. Then they would hug, and put the cards back. How sweet.
January 4th, 2008 at 8:14 am
During a period of time where both my wife and I were unemployed and our savings had run out we went to a grocery store together to pick up something cheap to eat. As we walked in the door we saw a shopping cart full of single-serving cereal boxes of a new kind of diet cereal. The cart had a poster board sign taped to it that said something to the effect of “Try our NEW flavor! 10 cents each.” The “10″ had been crossed out and replaced with “FREE.”
My wife, to my great embarrassment, grabbed the entire cart, wheeled it into the first checkout stand, and asked “Is there a limit on these?”
We left with the lot of them in about a dozen plastic bags. We didn’t pay a cent. The cereal was TERRIBLE. My wife ate most of it anyway.
January 4th, 2008 at 8:16 am
No frugal stories from me, but I’m enjoying the posts.
January 4th, 2008 at 8:17 am
I once worked in a J.C. Penney’s men’s department. One Sunday a man came to return a suit. The suit had already been altered (free with the purchase), and it stunk of curry. Apparently this man “bought” this suit to wear at a wedding and returned it the next day.
January 4th, 2008 at 8:18 am
Carl Pohlad, a billionaire from Minnesota and owner of the Twins, still brings a banana when eating out for breakfast because he can’t see paying the 75 cents at the restaurant.
Perhaps that explains a bit about the Twins!
January 4th, 2008 at 8:23 am
My area has a ‘no-tag day’ for garbage a few times a year where everyone can put out as much garbage as they want. We go to all the areas around our house on no-tag days and pick up things we can still use. My niece has gotten a number of toys and books this way and loves them!
These salvaged materials come in handy for us too! We got rid of cable and used a piece of a 2×4 (found on no-tag day), a cardboard box (grocery store), aluminum foil, coat hangers (no-tag day), old power cords, screws & washers (no-tag day) to create our own antenna in the attic. We still get a lot of channels, and now we get HD as well! Total cost for the antenna… ~ $0.60. We got the instructions for the antenna at this site: http://uhfhdtvantenna.blogspot.com/
January 4th, 2008 at 8:26 am
My mother’s friend (we will call her Sarah)is by far the CHEAPEST woman I know! She is the type that washed out her ziploc bags, saves aluminum foil, and forced her kids to wear hand-me-downs all through their childhood. It’s this last tactic of hers that leads to my story…
My sister and I grew up with Sarah’s two girls. We were three years apart, and they were two, which can lead to some lighthearted sibling rivalry. Well one day, we four got together to play board games, and we decided to play Aggravation. You know where this is going…One person would knock another persons marble off the board only to be punched in the arm, etc…Well, the game climaxed when Sarah’s youngest stopped my sister from almost winning. My sister gave Sarah’s youngest the biggest wedgie I have ever seen! The problem was, that the underwear were soooo old (hand-me-down) and sooo thin, that my sister ripped the underwear right off of Sarah’s youngest. Sarah promptly took the game away from us and banned us from playing it again. Apparently, she didn’t want to have to increase her clothing budget!
January 4th, 2008 at 8:28 am
My grandmother, through years of penny pinching has become a rather wealthy woman. However, she has allowed her penny pinching ways to take over her life completely. For Christmas instead of “real” gifts (by real, I mean thoughtful purchases/handicrafts for the recipient as commonly accepted as a “Christmas gift”) she rummages through her house and gives us cheap and tacky ornaments from yard sales, old costume jewelry or even recycled knitted things she has made over the years. She presents them in recycled boxes that must have been new sometime in the 50’s, wrapped with the same ratty recycled paper we’ve seen on our gifts for the past three years. She proudly announces how little she paid for that item 5 years ago at a resale shop.
Our families value recycling and the environment and we are all cost-conscious, but you have to wonder if my grandmother has just gone too far in trying to save money. By giving us clearly recycled gifts that have no meaning just to conform with the Christmas spirit, she really kills the whole idea. Come on, Granny, loosen those purse strings already! How much does new yarn cost these days?
January 4th, 2008 at 8:34 am
1. My wife wraps all the Christmas Presents in brown packaging paper and ribbon to save money, I think it actually looks better than wrapping paper.
2. Once, while on a temporary assignment with the Air Force, I lived off bread and a jar of peanut butter for a week to pocket the $25 daily perdium.
3. Finally, a natural food wearhouse went out of business and cleared its inventory by selling big empty boxes for $40, whatever you could fit in the box you walked out with. I spent over $200 on enough non-perishable food to last a decade, went home and sold $200 worth on ebay and kept the rest. That was 2 years ago and I’m still not out of some of that stuff.
January 4th, 2008 at 8:35 am
My little brother is currently a poor college student, and he has chosen to save money by rarely buying food. His workaround is to accept the kindness of semi-strangers:
–He has a motherly co-worker who brings him a sack lunch every day.
–He has a classmate who brings extra eggrolls to class because he knows my brother likes them.
–He makes mac and cheese, but he doesn’t put butter or milk in it. He just leaves a little water in the pan and mixes in the cheese sauce.
–He was visiting us over New Years, and even though we have lots of real food in the house, he chose to eat a sandwich that consisted of bread, mayo, mustard, sliced cold hot dogs, cheese, and pepperoni. I think he has forgotten how to eat real food.
Oh, and he also once ate sushi from a vending machine.
January 4th, 2008 at 8:41 am
The van my parents had when I was a kid (four kids) had a hole in the floor (rusted through) just behind the sliding door–where you stepped to get into the middle back seat. Dad found some sheet metal to cover the hold, attached it, and we drove the van for another few years, until it really died.
His truck had the wheel wells completely rusted out, so he couldn’t haul anything small. He only gave up that truck when the water pump broke off and there was nothing to re-attach it to–everything was rusted off.
I don’t know if he’s every had a car that lasted less than 200,000 miles. I don’t know if he’s ever bought a vehicle with less than 50,000 miles.
January 4th, 2008 at 8:44 am
I grew up a military brat, my dad was in the army from the mid 70’s till around 98 / 99 when Clinton politely asked him to retire.
I can remember eating MRE’s for days when he would come home from exercises - we thought they were a treat at the time, but now I realize now they were free.
The best story I can remember my dad telling me was how the Army Quarter Master would take guys out of the ‘potato peelers union and bring them into his area. The QM’s were on a restrictive budget, and they would have guys split a two ply roll of toilet paper into two individual rolls.
I’m not sure it actually saved them any toilet paper, but it certainly is an exercise in frugality!
January 4th, 2008 at 8:46 am
I work in New York City where subway maps are free. They make great wrapping paper. One year I stopped by the token booth on the way to work every day and picked up a new map. By the time X-Mas came around I had no need to buy wrapping paper.
January 4th, 2008 at 8:49 am
My dad was the cheapest EVER. When we first moved to New York, we had no health insurance. One evening, my 12 year old brother slammed his shin into a metal post while running (playing hide and go seek). My dad put him up on the dining room table, and he and my uncle held him down and stitched it up with dental floss. Mind you, Dad was depression era and a Vietnam vet, so I’m sure he didn’t view this episode as abuse or neglect, but egads! There were 6 of us kids still at home at the time, and we all looked on in horror. Now dude, THAT is cheap- especially since he could have afforded the doctor bill, especially with that military pension rolling in in addition to his full time job!
January 4th, 2008 at 8:49 am
A few examples of my grandmother’s extreme frugalness:
1. She goes to other people’s garage sales and buys things for the sole purpose of selling them at her own garage sale for a profit.
2. When my dad was a kid, he was given hand-me-down shoes from his older sister and a black marker to cover up all the pink.
3. When she receives cards in the mail (Christmas, birthday, etc.), if the backside of the front of the card where the picture is wasn’t written on, she cuts off the front of the card and re-uses it.
January 4th, 2008 at 8:49 am
In the checkout queue at the supermarket (your normal supermarket, not Wal-Mart or Costco or any of the bulk-buying places) one day, I was standing behind a man who had the most bizarre collection of items in his shopping cart. I’m talking eight or ten boxes of cake mix, twelve boxes of cereal, and other huge quantities of assorted foods that really bore no resemblance to any sane person’s shopping list, even for a large family. No milk, no eggs or produce, just the packaged foods. The clerk dutifully checked out all the items, and the total came out to somewhere in the realm of $300.
And then the man pulled out a wad — almost a double handful — of coupons.
Several minutes later, after the increasingly baffled clerk had finished scanning all of the coupons and double rebate discounts, the man’s final total was something like $35. He had collected all of those coupons and waited until everything on those coupons went on sale before going on a single massive shopping spree and knocking more than two-thirds of the cost off his total bill. I have never seen anyone coupon-clip on that scale before, and I doubt I ever will again.
January 4th, 2008 at 8:50 am
I remember when I was a kid, and we went to Vegas as a family, the casinos would give you free rolls of nickels to play the slots. Well, my mom would get her roll, and then she’d have my father get a roll, and that’s what we used to pay for dinner in the buffet line!
January 4th, 2008 at 8:52 am
I used to work with a guy that we’ll call Mike, because that was his name. He logged coupons in a spreadsheet that was sorted by date, to make sure he didn’t accidentally miss out on an opportunity to save a buck. He would invite you to lunch by saying he had a buy one get one free coupon for Big Macs, or whatever. The assumption a normal person makes is that you and Mike will split the cost evenly of two Big Macs, thus both saving a little money. That is not how Mike worked. His expectation was that you would buy lunch at full price so he could use his coupon for a freebie. This worked exactly once on each person in the office. After that, you learned to control the transaction at the register to make sure you got the benefit of Mike’s coupon obsession at lunch.
January 4th, 2008 at 8:57 am
When my Dad was first driving he used to to stop off at gas stations after they were closed and drain the gas hoses. It was hardly much gas at all, but done regularly at a few stations was enough to keep him driving.
January 4th, 2008 at 8:59 am
My friend “J” would always make it a point to not turn down the cup by a cash register with a “take a penny leave a penny offer”. He would simply reach in and say thank you I will and pocket the penny as he walked out.
January 4th, 2008 at 9:00 am
My grandmother was a true child of the Depression. Thanks to her, I didn’t realize the Depression was over until the 1990s.
My grandma’s favorite store was called the Bargaineer. They sold salvage lots of odd items for a steep discount. She trawled the store on a biweekly basis.
Once when my sisters were in high school, my mom stopped at grandma’s to say hello, but said she couldn’t stay for long. She had to go to the store to buy a badmitton set for a backyard barbeque my sister was hosting. My grandma told my mother to wait just a minute. She shuffled to the basement. (Grandma had leg trouble which limited her mobility for years.) She shuffled back with not one, not two, but THREE unopened badmitton sets she’d bought just because they were a good value.
And then there was the time my sister had a cough. Grandma gave her a CASE of cough drops she’d picked up at Bargaineer.
About a year after Grandma died, the Bargaineer closed down.
My grandma’s thriftiness was not limited to the Bargaineer. She once found a knitted blanket in the dumpster of the apartment building next to her house. It had a hole in it, but otherwise was in good shape. She washed it, unraveled it, and used it to knit a new blanket. (This weekend I’m using the last bits of that yarn to crochet a border on another knitted blanket for my grandpa’s 90th birthday. I think Grandma would enjoy that.)
January 4th, 2008 at 9:05 am
I have totally enjoyed reading these entries. I come from a very frugal family. My father would fix things rather then replace them. He fixed our kitchen blender motor and it worked after that but only on one speed, low. When the blender pitcher fell to the floor and broke he glued it back together using the silicone we had purchased to reseal the aquarium. It was ugly but lasted a couple more years.
When my sister and I were in college she used to bring her own tea bag to the cafeteria and buy a cup of hot water for 3 cents to make hot tea. A friend of ours used to make “tomato soup” with a ketcup packet from a fast food restaurant and hot water. The same friend would take all the toilet paper from the fast food restaurants for home use because she couldn’t afford to buy toilet paper.
Later when I had graduated college one of my work mates would keep the salad plate from the salad bar at Carl’s Junior and go back for more day after day, he also kept his soda cup and refilled that too.
January 4th, 2008 at 9:05 am
Hmmm … It appears that my blog has stopped responding, as has the control panel app for my web host. I hope it’s not because of the link I posted earlier.
If so, I guess that’s what I get for being a cheapskate and going with a low-price hosting company.
January 4th, 2008 at 9:06 am
Jeff Brown ran a frugality suggestion contest in the Philadelphia Inquirer a few years back. The winner had the following tip: when you floss your teeth, save the floss and rinse it in rubbing alcohol to sterilize it. Reuse!
January 4th, 2008 at 9:10 am
i used to think i was a pretty frugal guy, but reading these stories has really inspired me to really stretch my pennies during this next year.
i have a few stories i would like to add to the mix though.
i purchased getting things done by david allen. after paying full price for the book (yeah, i know i could have got it for a few bucks but i like to support the publishers and authors of media that i consider worthwhile), i decided that i would recoup that money by saving on the instruments i’ld need to implement the system. i permanent markered out the names on obsolete folders from my work, fixed a broken labeler i got on the free section of craigslist, and made an inbox out of cardboard and duct tape. the inbox actually ended up looking pretty cool, but my girlfriend was somewhat unimpressed by my handiwork during the construction process at midnight-thirty.
i decorated my new home with the help of a high school art teacher who asked for donations for me from his more gifted students.
i saved money of an unproductive fishing trip by cooking up the frozen calamari we were using as bait instead of buying a lunch.
AND finally,
after reading a story about dumpster diving in an english lit class, i decided to give it a try. i went out with a friend behind the best buy and in less then 15 minutes pulled out a projector that had a broken bulb. the replacement cost of the bulb was about $300, but the projector was worth much more. and it scored me major cool points when i returned to the dorm (and the guys who had laughed at me when i left) with a $1500 projector to replace our tv with.
January 4th, 2008 at 9:16 am
One summer in grad school I chose to live in the one dorm that didn’t require a food contract so that I could save money. The day I moved in, I asked where the kitchen was. The answer was, “Well, some people cook in the laundry room.”
It was just a normal laundry room. So could you boil pasta in the washer on the hot cycle? Pop popcorn in the dryer? Fry an egg on an iron? I don’t think so.
Microwaves and toaster ovens (and candles) were not allowed in the dorm. So I cooked everything in a hot pot which was a small container with a heating element inside intended for boiling water. You could only cook half a box of macaroni and cheese in one of these or half a packet of ramen noodles, and then you’d have to scrub a while to clean off the food that had stuck to the heating element. I also had a lot of cereal and sandwiches.
January 4th, 2008 at 9:17 am
I’ve been forced to do some pretty cheap things in my life, like grift off rail transportation systems (ride for free and jump off at the next stop if I suspected someone official was checking tickets), or use sour milk as a sour cream substitute in recipes (you cannot really tell the difference when old milk gets really bad).
But the cheapest experience came from a non-profit company I worked for. Us employees were given not just donated but left-over frozen Thanksgiving turkeys as our Christmas bonus.
The turkeys were initially intended to be given to the mentally-challenged volunteers. We must have had extras, so our CEO figured this was a great way to save money while rewarding our hard work. It gets a little worse …
You had to have a ticket to claim your Christmas bonus. I had lost my ticket, and when I tried to claim my bonus anyway, my turkey was withheld.
January 4th, 2008 at 9:20 am
I’ve always had this theory, If you wait long enough you’ll get it for free. This has worked over and over again for entertainment, clothing, food and even big items. Two that come to mind, I really wanted a carpet shampooer, but didn’t want to spend the $. My in-laws built a house with all hard wood floors. I got their carpet shampooer. Woohoo! Best one, we were driving down a neighborhood street and saw a car that said “Free”. We stopped to ask. Sure enough, my son got a ‘62 oldsmobile with title. It sure needs a lot of work. Even if it only results in talks, dreams and hopes of a running car, it was worth the effort. Maybe it will get me your book for free.
January 4th, 2008 at 9:21 am
My dad bought a used Toyota 4×4 when I was 6.
I am now 31 - he still drives it!
He’s had to replace the seat with one he found in a junk yard because the towels he would put over the hole he wore through eventually couldn’t make up for the drop. He once got in an accident (not his fault) and he pounded out the smashed front end from the inside with a hammer and replaced the front headlight with a junk yard find so he could pocket the insurance money. He also has a lovely tape player that he installed on the dashboard with duct tape. Also I believe pulled from a junk car.
But - I buy used Toyotas whenever I can now! That thing has got to have like 300,000 miles on it at least!
January 4th, 2008 at 9:22 am
My father’s friend bought a brand-new, beautiful 17′ aluminum canoe for about $1200. He didn’t have any room to store it indoors, so he locked it to a tree. Well, someone got jealous and tried to steal the canoe, only to be foiled by the lock. They came back and punched four giant holes (about 1′ diameter each) out of the bottom of the canoe with a Dremel tool.
My father bought the canoe from his friend for $20 and patched it up with scrap metal and spare plumbers’ putty. We had to keep a repurposed mop bucket in the canoe to bail it out, and I remember putting a lot of bubble gum over the putty seams. We took it out every temperate weekend for about three straight years, and for many vacations after that. We must’ve gotten at least 200 hours of use out of that $20 canoe.
January 4th, 2008 at 9:25 am
Awesome!
There are some great ideas / stories on here!
I come from a pretty frugal family–for years we had only one car and my father and I and my two sisters all rode bicycles (my mom worked the farthest away–about 30 miles, so she got the car–but my dad worked about 15 miles away some days and school was about 4 miles away)that my dad had put together from random spare parts of our neighbors and from the local dump. Someone at my dad’s workplace gave him a car and he kept it for about a year and a half before it needed a repair he couldn’t do himself (it was a 12 or 13 year old ford)and then he donated it to a local church group, who sold it for parts i think, and went back to bicycling. We never threw out any tinfoil and always washed out our plastic bags. There were always coffee can tomato plants and chiles on our screened in porch or in our living room too–even when the weather was bad my parents were growing some of their own food.
My sister and I have a standing date once a year for “big trash week” in our city–its the week where you can put anything out on the curb and the trashmen will take it–unless we get to it first! most of my furniture has come from this great event–last year I even got a very nice oak wine rack for all of my $3.99 and below discount wine finds!
January 4th, 2008 at 9:26 am
October 2006-January 2007 I lived on a friend’s couch. He charged $300/month rent + half of utilities, but the rent was paid for by a different friend who bet that I wouldn’t actually do it. This is an area where one bedrooms are typcially 1200/month and 2 bedrooms are 1400+.
January 4th, 2008 at 9:26 am
My cheapness or my dad’s? In the fall when everyone in the neighborhood would put bags of leaves out for the garbage, my dad would pay me 10 cents a bag to carry them home. Once shredded, they were great compost for his garden. I walked 3/4 mile home from school and so some of those bags were carried quite a distance. I’m still not sure why I participated in this scheme - 10 cents in the 80s was not a lot of money and even with quantity, didn’t add up very quickly.
January 4th, 2008 at 9:27 am
I buy cheap diapers. In the beginning I figured they’d be uncomfortable for my 2-year-old and make him want to use the toilet. No good. He still poops his pants and now it sometimes smears all down his leg too. Even still, I can’t bring myself to spend the extra 27 cents a pop on Huggies.
January 4th, 2008 at 9:28 am
So I’m about 17 and my Dad and I are driving to pick up my grandmother for a long-distance trip to visit some other relatives.
On the way, we decide to grab breakfast at a fast food place. My grandmother forcefully tells my Dad to ask for her “senior citizen’s discount”. My Dad not wanting to confuse an already large order over a 10 cent discount disregards her request.
While we’re still at the drive though speaker, my grandmother leans over (right beside my Dad’s ear) and lets loose a sonic boom of “WE’LL NEED A SENIOR CITIZENS DISCOUNT!”. Seeing my Dad’s eyes as his eardrums were nearly burst was priceless. It was dang loud from the back of the car…I can’t imagine getting that blast right in the ear.
Needless to say, my grandmother was the most frugal person I’ve ever encountered (often violently so)…I learned alot from her.
January 4th, 2008 at 9:28 am
These are all true stories about my mother:
1) We used to wash every single ziploc bag that came into our house and reuse it. The same goes for all aluminum foil. We also reused our brown paper lunch bags.
2) She saves every container that anything comes in (butter, sour cream, take out) so that she doesn’t have to buy Tupperware
3) She has 2 giant boxes under her bed full of nothing buy pantyhose that she bought on sale…most of them are tan in color
4) She has returned my bras to the store b/c they did not last long enough and was given new ones at no cost. Same goes for shoes.
5) She returns light bulbs b/c they burnt out too quickly
6) She heats up the remaining coffee in the coffeepot in the microwave and will not throw any of it out.
7) She orders drinks with no ice so that she gets more drink for her nickel.
8 ) She has made my younger brother wear my hand me downs. (I am a woman)
9) T-shirts and old underwear are never thrown away. They disappear into the “rag bag” and are used for cleaning.
10) I have had to open individual packets of ketchup and squeeze them into a large ketchup bottle. (was this worth my time??)
11) Washes and reuses plastic forks and plates
12) Each year we had to pick each individual strand of tinsel off of the Christmas tree so that we could use it the next year. (savings…$.25)
13) Only shops the 75% off racks
14) Before there were Altoid tins we had to save all Sucrets tins and film canisters so that we could carry small items in our purse/backpack.
15) We went to business and state fairs so that we could get free pens, pencils, & rulers so that she didn’t have to buy school supplies
16) She will take anything that is free. I think we still have a sun/tanning lamp from the late 70’s that she was given at a yard sale. Mind you…most of the things she takes do not work.
17) we grew a lot of our own food which I am actually very proud of
18) we made our own pickels, jams, & relishes
I’m sure I could continue but now my childhood is hurting my brain
January 4th, 2008 at 9:31 am
I had a coworker that refused to eat anything but the cheapest frozen burritos for lunch. He hated them but could not get himself to pay more that 30 cents for lunch.
We live in North Dakota so during the winter time he would hang a grocery bag in his garage to hold his groceries and unplug his fridge.
January 4th, 2008 at 9:35 am
My mother was wellknown for her cheapness - - heck, she raised nine kids on a shoestring. A few years ago, I visited my mom and dad while they were renting a resort condo in Florida. My mother was eyeing me one day while I was cleaning up the lunch dishes. She waited until I was done and out of the kitchen to dig a potato chip bag out of the garbage. She washed and dried it and turned it inside out to use as foil for our leftovers at dinnertime.
January 4th, 2008 at 9:37 am
My dad is obsessed with wood and other building materials, and he generally refuses to pay for any. Growing up, he refused to buy charcoal for the grill, so he would have us rip apart pallets by van load to burn in the grill. He also used the crappy pallet wood to build stuff.
Since my mom lost her tolerance for my dad’s scrap wood pile, his tastes have changed. Now, he collects hardwood leftover from his neighbor’s remodeling projects and uses it to make beautiful scroll saw masterpieces.
January 4th, 2008 at 9:41 am
I like to lead a pretty luxurious lifestyle… I just don’t like paying for it. What kind of car do I drive? A Mercedes… a beautiful 1988 300SE with 240,000 miles on it. This is actually my third Mercedes, all of which I’ve purchased on Ebay in great condition, never paying more than $1,700. I estimate this car has cost me $190/month to drive (including the purchase price and insurance coverage), and I look forward to seeing that number drop each month as I drive it for at least another two years.
I also enjoy eating out frequently. I wait until Restaurant.com has an end-of-month promotion, then buy $25 restaurant gift certificates for $3 each, and only redeem that at restaurants with low minimum expenditure requirements. An evening at my favorite neighborhood pizza joint will usually run me $18 out of pocket for cheese bread, two beers each, and the super large gourmet pizza (always with lunch leftovers!).
Now that I work full-time it’s hard to find the time for a side business (I’m with a demanding consulting firm), but I still take a day off in May when the dorms close at my alma mater 50 miles away. Students ‘throw away’ all of the area rugs, microwaves, mini fridges, lamps, desk chairs, and even TVs that won’t fit in their cars for the drive home! I rent a Uhaul for the day, pack it as tightly as possible, and then store the stuff in my garage through the summer, when I sell it back to the students in the fall! Anything left over goes into a garage sale to benefit the United Way. Last year I netted almost $3,500 from this :-).
Great contest- I’m enjoying the stories!
January 4th, 2008 at 9:45 am
These are fabulous stories!
What a great idea!
My favorite story about Grandma Julie [depression era young mother] was when we [adult grandchildren] had brought takeout chinese food over for a treat.
She tapped me and said ‘Please pass the darkness!’
Um, huh?
Apparently Grandma hated to see all those packets go to waste from the chinese restaurants [they never ordered - but we brought it over on occassion since we knew how much they liked it - and of course we knew to get her tons of chinese tea and a calendar if they were there!]
She would empty ALL the packets into a reused butter tub. Not just the soy sauce - the mustard, the duck sauce - all of it. It was disgusting in there! She couldn’t remember the name of ’soy sauce’ ever though so she called it ‘the darkness’
Sigh - I miss her! She was adorable.
January 4th, 2008 at 9:48 am
My friend picked a dollar out of a trough-style urinal at a bar.
January 4th, 2008 at 9:53 am
When I moved into my new home I got a lot of coupons for local businesses, mostly the standard “welcome to the neighborhood” type of thing. One of them was a $10 off coupon for a local grocery store, $10 minimum purchase. I used self checkout for about $11 worth of groceries, use self check-out, keep the coupon and go back the next day and use it. Unethical, yes, cheap, very.
I’ve also gone to the post office for the “I’m moving” packet, which is crammed full of mostly not-so-needed coupons, but there is a hidden gem. A pre-paid postcard was included for Home Depot, fill it out, drop it in a mailbox and in 3-6 weeks a $10 gift card appears. I think I “moved” about a dozen times in the first 3 months of buying my home. Again, unethical but cheap.
January 4th, 2008 at 9:53 am
These are great!
I’m definately not as bad as some of these stories… yet! I have, however, been known to:
1. Save the funny papers to wrap presents in.
2. Look in garbage cans at work for soda caps with point codes. I save up to get free video rentals.
3. Get board games from local Thrift Store for $0.35 - $0.75. Planning to resell at yard sale for $2 - $3.
4. Get movies, books and magazines from library. Cancelled magazine and movie subsriptions.
5. Force family to eat left-overs in chronological order so stuff won’t go bad.
6. Always split food at restaurants with wife.
I have a feeling that my family could recall some even worse offences.
January 4th, 2008 at 10:05 am
This might not seem that cheap to any of my buddies since we all just graduated from college a little less than a year ago, but everyone else I know says it is extremely frugal and riduculous.
Every time I see a movie at the AMC movie theatres by our house (probably at least 2 or 3 times per month), I can’t help to get a large soda which costs $4.50, but comes with one free refill. I wised up a couple years ago and realized that there are tons of people who don’t capitalize on their free refill, thus throwing away their initial large soda cup. Since they use a completely different large refill cup which states that it is a refill cup, I started fishing in the garbage to find any initial large soda cup. I then bring it up to the concession stand and enjoy a free large diet coke.
As you can imagine this has amounted to quite a savings and has become a source of pride in my movie going ventures. My wife is extremely embarassed so we get our seats and then I go and find a trash with an eligible large soda.
It is perfect, quite delicious and pretty frugal.
January 4th, 2008 at 10:06 am
when i was younger, I would go with my parents to visit my grandparent in West Palm Beach and we would go out to eat. My grandparents would want to go a restaurant known for its early bird specials. you had to be seated by 4:30p to get the specials. One time, on our way there, it was raining. I remember some old ladies hitting the maitre d’ with their umbrellas demanding to be seated.
i started joking with my grandma that i was going to get her a big wax-lined purse so she could just dump the basket of rolls and bread into it without having to wrap them in napkins first.
January 4th, 2008 at 10:08 am
I am famously cheap. In graduate school, I was so broke I did anything to get by. I volunteered in a food pantry and was thrilled because we got to take home the leftover donated baked goods the homeless people didn’t want. Even though my husband and I are now professionals, I work hard to live way below our means. I buy all of my clothes, and my son’s, at goodwill. I once bought 38 rolls of paper towels at goodwill because they were so cheap. They were sent there from Target loose after their packaging was detroyed. My husband was disgusted until I pointed out, how do you know the ones still in packaging weren’t dropped on the factory floor? My coworkers bring in the extra vegetables from their gardens for me, and I always take them and find a way to use them. And now even my husband’s co-workers know I’ll take any offer of free food. He works for a big company and his department got tons of gift baskets for Christmas, so they salvaged all of the uneaten fruit, cake, and cheese for me.