The Ultimate Cheapskate’s Book Contest
Friday, 4th January 2008 (by J.D.)This article is about Books, Frugality, Funny Money
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.
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.
January 4th, 2008 at 10:15 am
In September of the worst Winter in Illinois history in 100 years, my father got an electric bill for $200. This was more than double what the electric bill usually was including the usage needed for a small radiator shop he ran out of a garage in the backyard. He was so outraged, he refused to pay it. We went without electricity from September until May of the next year. My father rigged the basement furnace to use an open tank of fuel oil which he fed into the furnace by a copper tube and would light by hand. We used an old metal breadbox on the front porch for our freezer/refrigerator and lived by candle light for all of those months. My mother was in charge of paying the gas bill. The gas was still on so the stove could be used for cooking. That was the quietest the house ever was despite the fact there were 5 children living there. The electric company checked on us periodically to make sure we were not stealing electricity - we weren’t. Midwestern stubborness could have easily backfired and killed us, but we fortunately made it through without having the house burn down around our ears. In all of this madness there are many ironies: besides putting us in harm’s way due to his anger over the bill, my father was unable to run his business without electricity and lost his customer base; and, there was a custom Corvette Stingray in the backyard in perfect condition which he would not sell. Hmmmm. It was a very long winter.
January 4th, 2008 at 10:23 am
My Grandmother is so cheap, she will wait for a once a year sale on 12 packs of pop. The local chain grocery stores will have a sale, where it is 10 (12)packs of pop for $10. The problem is that they limit that to 10 (12) packs per person. She has found a way around that. She will enlist my mother, mothers of others she babysits for, and have them go to the chain store and buy 10 cases for her. Then she herself will go to all of the 20 stores in town, and buy the same deal. Last year she managed to purchase approx 500 cases of pop. That is 6000 pops, that she stores away in a whole room dedicated to her soda storage. I was recently over there for Christmas, and took a peek in there, and I think she still has quite a bit to go thru, but at 8 cents a pop for name brand, I guess thats a deal.
January 4th, 2008 at 10:24 am
It seems to me that children’s lack of income can encourage creative thinking. When I was young and wanted new clothes for my Barbie doll, I went to my sock drawer and pulled out all the kneesocks with holes in the toes and all the little lace ruffle trimmed socks that were too small. By simply cutting off the foot of the sock and two little arm holes in the sides, my doll had a fantastic new wardrobe.
January 4th, 2008 at 10:24 am
So lets talk quantity…
We live in Canada so it snows alot and we need to buy salt to melt the ice on the driveways and sidewalks. Walmart had a sale…
I come home one day to find 2 skids of salt.
2 SKIDS!!!
you are talking 500 bags of road salt!!
We had to to empty our tool shed to store all of it…it was craziness
January 4th, 2008 at 10:25 am
Back around 1999-2000, I ran a directory of free stuff that was available via the internet and free offers from .com companies drumming up business with their stupidly large marketing budgets.
As a result, I was pulling in a little less than $2,000 a month, which for a high school kid is like riches!
You’d think I would have taken my friends out every weekend or bought a car. Instead, I took my girlfriend for a weekend at the beach, and saved the rest.
All of it went toward college.
January 4th, 2008 at 10:27 am
As a poor college student I took a date to an Italian restaurant. We were seated next to two older couples who had been ordering dishes and sharing them. They had hardly touched their angel hair pasta and they were leaving. So after they left I flagged a waiter down and asked him to box up their leftovers for us. The waiter just stared at me as if it was some kid of joke, and I had to convince him it really was okay! He boxed it up and I had leftovers for two days!
January 4th, 2008 at 10:34 am
I already did a story about my Grandma but I came back to read other’s stories and it reminded me of two about my mother. When she was in college they were broke. She and her roommates got food by doing a neighborhood scavenger hunt. They’d knock on doors and say things like “we’re on a scavenger hunt and we need a carrot. Even a small, old one would do.” They’d get old veggies or other small items and then make soup.
One day they had a carrot and a potato and some ketchup packages from McDonalds. They had the packages on the table when the roommate’s mother called. Now, this mother was known for being exasperating and finally, the roommate yelled “Mother!” over something she said, and slammed her hand down on the table in frustration–right on the ketchup packets–which burst and spattered all over her. She started laughing so hard she hung up on her mother.
When my parents were first married they were still very poor. My dad got sent to the hospital and mom would go over and visit with him and watch him eat the hospital food and then when he was finished, casually ask if she could have some if he was done. She didn’t want to tell him that there was no food at home. She had bought some cat food for our siamese but had no food for herself. Couldn’t let the cat go hungry…
January 4th, 2008 at 10:35 am
About 3 years ago, I chanced upon a “Dollar a Bag” sale at our local thrift store and I’ve kept the list of what I got, because I was so amazed that I got all this for $12:
1. Black cotton jumper
2. Navy corduroy jumper
3. Floral dress
4. Jean shirt
5. Floral shorts/vest combo
6. Floral sleeveless top
7. Pink short sleeved cotton sweater
8. White short sleeved cotton sweater
9. Beige cotton GAP sweater
10. Gold cotton ramie sweater
11. White organza blouse
12. Cotton walking shorts
13. Two plaid flannel dress shirts
14. Cotton plaid dress shirt
15. Three mens boxers
16. Five mens underwear
17. Bugle Boy polo shirt
18. Mens sweater
19. Waffle style mens shirt
20. Two cotton dress shirts
21. Mens Umbro shorts
22. Mens plaid cotton walking shorts
23. Mens vest
24. Plaid lounger pants
25. Cowboy had
26. Two long sleeved jerseys
27. One dress for mama
28. Two new knee patches
29. Package of baby safety plug covers
30. One roll of curling ribbon
January 4th, 2008 at 10:41 am
@TheMightyQuinn. And you never saw your date again.
January 4th, 2008 at 10:45 am
We were recently cleaning out my granddads house as he was moving. After cleaning out the attic and the shed, we had about 50-75 containers ranging from cool whip containers to butter containers. He saved every drill bit, and we found literally hundreds of them, most were broken. He told us he was planning on sharpening/fixing them and reusing them.
When cleaning out the fridge, we found cream cheese from 1989, along with other way out of date items. He refused to throw it out, and said it was still fine to eat.
That man is the cheapeast man I’ve ever met, and will save/reuse anything that could possibly be done.
January 4th, 2008 at 10:45 am
I reuse file folders- just turn them around/inside out.
I reuse baggies. I won’t go so far as to wash them out, if the inside isn’t dry I trash them, but the dry ones I reuse until they get messy or worn out. I know they’re about $1 a box but I reuse anyway.
I wash and reuse plastic utensils on occasion, too.
I bought a used car with 140K miles on it back in 2002. I just replaced it (with another used car) because it was about to turn over 300,000 miles. My husband’s going to drive it now!
I have to force myself to get rid of “stuff” or I’ll be like my mother, who still has a closetful of work clothes though she’s been retired 20 years! So when I do buy something new (usually on sale) I get rid of something old, like that t-shirt in a shade of green I hated but it was really cheap when I bought it!
Still, I’ve worked with a couple of people who had me beat. Years ago I worked in a hospital where patients on isloation got their food in styrofoam containers with plastic utensils. One of the nurses would save the utensils in a bag and take them home to wash and reuse! Yuck!
Another person and I would stay at a suite hotel on a fairly regular basis when travelling on business. She not only took home the soap and shampoo, she took the coffee packets (for the little coffeemaker in the kitchen) with the creamer, sugar, etc; she took the one bag of microwave popcorn; the dish liquid in the sink; and the packet of detergent for the little dishwasher!
January 4th, 2008 at 10:55 am
My grandmother used to wash her aluminum foil, plastic wrap, and zip-loc bags for re-use. She’d use the same roll of foil for years. She also put a little water into what most of us would consider empty salad dressing bottles and swish a few times then pour on her salad to get the last bit of dressing out (she used the same technique for most bottled liquids - shampoo, ketchup, etc). She’s also been known to carry her own zip-loc bags to restaurants to take home any food she doesn’t eat at that sitting. It’s worked to her advantage…she’s quite wealthy - with more than enough money saved to take care of her through her old age, which includes round-the-clock sitters and an upscale assisted living center.
January 4th, 2008 at 11:00 am
I thought I came from a relatively “frugal” family, but after reading some of the previous comments, I’m not so sure anymore.
I grew up in a non-smoking home, so I fortunately never acquired that unhealthy and expensive habit. At one point though, I found out that my mom used to smoke but had given it up in college. Because it was unhealthy? Nope, because she found that too many people were bumming cigarettes off her and weren’t reciprocating. She was too cheap to continue smoking.
January 4th, 2008 at 11:00 am
I had a hard time determining whether or not this was a story of cheapness or wise budgeting, so I have decided to leave that decision up to you: My grandfather is notorious for living by the slogan, “waste not want not “, as his family had lost his entire fortune when he was a child and he was raised in extreme poverty. His favorite story is of when he spent any on a movie or going out to eat, he would fast for the next 3 days to make his money last!
January 4th, 2008 at 11:03 am
I am told by everyone that I am extremely frugal. Among the many frugal things I do, I cut coupons, brown bag my lunch and read discarded newspapers left on the train rather than buying one. But, my favorite frugal thing is to buy monogramed clothes (mostly $40 dress shirts) from a Lands’ End outlet then sit on my couch removing all of the thread with tiny scissors. It is not uncommon for me to by dress oxfords for $3.00. I have bought a down winter coat for $8.00!
January 4th, 2008 at 11:12 am
Ok, during one perticular year our family woke to find our house had been toiet papered,” MY HEAVENS what will we do” my mom said. With the speed of leopard my father grabed my brother and i, told us to roll the toiletpaper back on these rolls” as he handed us 2 empty rolls, yep, he was serious!
we spent 5 hours rolling toiletpaper,saving my father a whopping .99cents that week.
2 years ago i and my son woke to find our home toiletpapered,i did not have the heart to make my son roll it back on a roll, however he took it all off the trees and used it to pack his grandfathers bithday present. My father was so tickled when my son told him why he packed his gift with t.p
he got a tear in his eye (because he remembered what he made my brother and i do)
Adam handed him the toiletpaper and said “here grandpa its still good”!
Quite fitting don’t you think?
January 4th, 2008 at 11:18 am
I don’t have any great stories, but as I’m sitting here reading land laughing, I keep thinking “Wait, that’s a cheapskate move? But we’ve always done that. That’s just normal!” Some examples of this are:
Washing out ziploc bags (but only gallon sized ones)
Reusing paper bags
Reheating cold coffee (though only the day it’s made)
Saving take-out containers and other plastic containers
Cutting up old t-shirts for rags
I love that to me this is just normal and to others, this is extreme frugality.
January 4th, 2008 at 11:19 am
Hi, My Name is Scott and I am cheap. I re-use ziplock bags. I live by the philosophy of “If it’s yellow let it mellow. If it’s brown flush it down” (Well maybe not.)I have a solar charger for my blackberry (work pays for it, not me!). If I don’t have access to the sun I make sure and charge it at work and not to use our house energy. Those things all make me cheap but here is what I consider one of the cheapest things I have done. I work downtown and take the train into work everyday (work pays for our public transportation pass). One day I had a doctor’s appointment in the middle of the day. I didn’t want to take the whole day off and I didn’t want to pay for parking. So I drove to a train station that was near work, parked the car at the free park-n-ride then got on the train and went into work. When it was time to go to the doctor’s I got back on the train. Rode it to my car. Drove to the doctor. Got white gloved. Got back in the car. Drove to the train station. Parked the car and then took the train back into work. Sure it took a little longer but I saved $15 in parking!
January 4th, 2008 at 11:22 am
I had no idea how frugal my grandmother was until she died in 1981. She lined her kitchen cupboards with old newspaper, drank from cleaned out jelly jars (all of which she got on sale or traded). I still use the cast iron cookware she coveted her entire adult life as well her cheese graters and vegetable peelers.
January 4th, 2008 at 11:23 am
I come by cheapness honestly. Growing up in a family of seven on one income, money was tight. Our meals routinely included watered down ketchup, salad dressings and juice. Yum. We also dined on fresh roadkill, one of the deer I personally hit!
Now as a stay-at-home mom of three children, my cheapest accomplishment would have to be my kids’ wardrobes. In the six years that I have had kids, I could probably count on one hand the number of times I have actually purchased clothes for them in a store. With the exception of some shoes, all of their clothes come from community garage sales, relatives and friends. Many of their toys have also been acquired through garage sales and consignment shops. It’s saved us hundreds of dollars, and my kids are too little to notice or even care!
January 4th, 2008 at 11:24 am
Transportation from Brooklyn to Queens: My coworker takes the subway instead of the Long Island Railroad to save $1. The subway on the weekend takes at least 2 hours and results in lots of headaches (delays, cancellations, reroutings, etc). The LIRR, on the other hand, is always right on schedule and takes 20 minutes. But, as she says, a dollar is worth something.
January 4th, 2008 at 11:29 am
My great-grandfather was a successful country doctor but notoriously cheap. He owned one of the few cars in his part of upstate New York. When he made house calls over the mountains, he would turn the engine off at the top of a mountain and coast to the bottom, rarely using his brakes so the car would build up a lot of momentum and let him get as far up the next mountain as possible before restarting the engine.
He also used to take his car to the gas station and ask for a nickel’s worth of gas. Since it was hard for the pump attendant to stop the pump after just a nickel’s worth, he would get a few pennies’ worth of free gas that way. He’d do this at every gas station he passed.
Last story is that he used to save every cigarette butt he found (no matter whose) and peel the remaining tobacco from them into a bowl, which he then used to roll his own cigarettes.
January 4th, 2008 at 11:29 am
Whenever I go to the airport I always collect as many of those red “luggage carts” as possible and return them to the station for the $0.25 refund. I have been known to embarass my friends and family pushing 7-10 of those carts as we say our goodbyes.
I’ve also been known to compete in cheapskate’s contests to avoid paying $10.36 for book.
January 4th, 2008 at 11:31 am
After reading many of these posts, I realize I didn’t bring my A-game to this Miser Death Match. Earlier this morning, I highlighted a man who lives here in my town, a man who lives so cheaply and so simply that he has actually become a local celebrity and guru of sorts. I talked about how this man uses dental floss to mend his loincloth instead of thread, as floss is cheaper … but now I want everyone to picture something else: Imagine this naked man foraging his meals from a cemetery peach tree. Oh, and his beverage of choice to wash those peaches down? HIS OWN FREAKIN’ URINE!! This sounds made-up, I know. Luckily for me, J.D. knows I’m telling the truth.
January 4th, 2008 at 11:44 am
I don’t know if this was done before but my mom leaves buckets in the shower that my parents use. Water is saved in buckets. She uses it to flush her toilet and to water the plants.
I just recently discovered this and thought it was weird. Then, I figured that’s pretty smart but cheap. Is she recycling water??
January 4th, 2008 at 11:46 am
A co-worker of mine (T) was not going to be here on Monday so he gave another co-worker of mine (A) money to get breakfast for the rest of us as a nice gesture over the holidays. So “A” goes and gets some cheap breakfast and everyone thanks her for it because it was a nice little treat. She takes full credit for it and had some money left over. Well she owed for the present we got for our boss so she used the extra money from breakfast and gave it to us for the present.
So in the end, she took credit for a breakfast she didn’t buy and paid for a gift for someone with money that wasn’t hers.
January 4th, 2008 at 11:49 am
A friend of mine was going on several business trips and got a per diem for a hotel, breakfast and dinner. He saved money by camping (in England in the rain), taking excess buffet lunch for his dinner, and going without breakfast.
January 4th, 2008 at 11:51 am
One of my ‘cheaper’ moments was during college. My friends and I would go to taco bell occasionally to treat ourselves, but even that was hard to afford. In order to save money on drinks, we would always swing by the publix next to taco bell and do a little ‘dumpster diving’ for sodas in the back. Seems we could always find a 6 pack of code red that had expired.
Ahh, college days.
January 4th, 2008 at 12:21 pm
I needed new shoes, and I wanted a specific pair of New Balances. I went to the mall, where all of the shoe stores were having a “Buy two for $80″ sale on shoes. For one single pair of shoes, it was over $65, and I didn’t feel like buying two pair of shoes.
As I stood there debating, I heard a mother exclaim to her young son “I am NOT paying $65 for shoes! You can find a pair that’s $40 or less” I approached her, “I hope this isn’t strange, but I’m looking for shoes also. If we buy them together, we can both them them for $40.” She took in shock for a second, and then enthusiastically agreed. Thankfully I had $50 in cash in my pocket, so she put the shoes on her card and I paid her in cash.
While it’s not the most absurd cheapness, I was rather proud of how I kept my eyes open and found a way to get the best deal without spending more than I had intended.
January 4th, 2008 at 12:22 pm
I’m a bookworm who’s also a broke college grad, so the fall before last I joined the book-trading website BookMooch.com. Around the same time I was working an unpaid internship at a children’s book publisher, where one of my duties in the warehouse was removing scuffed dustjackets from returned books and fitting them with clean covers. It seemed like a huge waste to throw away all those dustjackets, especially the colorful, minimally damaged picture-book covers, so I started taking them home in piles instead.
A book jacket turned inside out makes great sturdy package wrap for mailing Bookmooch books! I’ve even used covers from Christmas-themed books as giftwrap. I’ll pad the mail-packaged books with plastic grocery bags, and the only money I spend is on books (cheap at used bookstores, library sales, and giveaway piles), tape (bought on sale at Big Lots), and postage (bargained down to library rate with sympathetic postal clerks). A year and many mooches later, my dustjacket pile has dwindled; while I’ve scrounged much more “trash” to wrap packages in, I’m still almost tempted to ask my old internship publisher if they need help in the warehouse again.
(BONUS: I’m typing this indoors wearing fuzzy gloves, three layers of clothes, and a hoodie with the hood up (and last night slept under six layers of blanket/sheet) because it seems my roommate & I are trying to see how long we can go without a gas bill before we or the hamster freeze to death. But now I’m going to the library, which has free books and free heat!)
January 4th, 2008 at 12:29 pm
I once cut the end off a full vacuum cleaner bag, dumped out the filth, stapled it together, and reused it so that I wouldn’t have to buy new bags. (That only works a couple of times until the bag gets so short that it fills too quickly.)
Also, in an effort to get through Christ-mas as cheaply as possible, my sister once painted light bulbs in a Holstein cow pattern, glued hooks to the tops, and gave them away as Christ-mas tree ornaments.
January 4th, 2008 at 12:32 pm
I have the cheapest parents in the world. We are from central america, and all our family is pretty poor, so when we were living in Germany and my aunt and cousin had the chance to visit (in the winter!), my parents went all out trying to impress them.
We went to Luxembourg/France/Switzerland on a roadtrip, but instead of paying for a hotel (there were 6 of us) my dad thought it would be a good idea to go camping. Well, the first night camping we had a blizzard and found ourselves sleeping in ice water. No kidding. The next morning, since the weather didn’t improve, we figured it’d be best to head back home. But first we had to drive for 2 hours in switzerland to find a good postcard so that my aunt could have bragging rights when she went home. Was it worth it? Probably not.
My dad has also made seat covers for the car out of old bedsheets, and made a computer desk out of a wooden door.
January 4th, 2008 at 12:33 pm
My uncle, quite the cheapskate, was at a softball game when he found a broken pair of very nice Oakley sunglasses on the bleachers. Instinctively, he picked them up. After realizing that they were broken and unwearable, he remembered that Oakley at the time would replace a broken pair of sunglasses for free, as long as the original receipt was provided. Of course, because he’d just found them, he had no receipt.
Resourceful as he is, my uncle devised a solution to this quandary. He went to a sunglass store and purchased a brand new pair of Oakleys that was identical to the model that he found at the softball game. He then sent the broken sunglasses along with the receipt for the new sunglasses to Oakley. The company sent him a brand new pair of identical sunglasses for free. Then he returned the purchased sunglasses to the store for a full refund. All in all, my uncle got a brand new pair of $300 sunglasses for free.
January 4th, 2008 at 12:35 pm
These are pretty funny, but I do have to say, buying crap just because it’s cheap isn’t frugal, it’s still a waste of money. That being said I:
Wash out ziplock baggies
Ride my bike 8 miles each way with one big uphill to work so I don’t have to pay for parking
keep the thermostat at 55
Sewed holes in my boots back together by hand
I look at this as being “green”
Tehe best is my uncle who every year gives money to his neices and nephew for christmas, collects the cards back (they only say “from uncle peter” on the inside), mixes them up and puts them in an envelope with each neice/nephew’s name on it. I think some of the cards have been in use for over 10 years.
January 4th, 2008 at 12:43 pm
I can second Dave’s smoking cessation story! My mom, dad, and all four grandparents gave up cigarettes when my dad left the army and could no longer get them dirt cheap.
January 4th, 2008 at 12:44 pm
Regarding bucket in the shower. Our shower is so far from the hot water heater that at least a gallon goes down the drain before it is hot enough to step into. I have a plastic bucket in the shower because of drought conditions, and the fact that it is environmentally negative to pump so much treated water into the Bay. Instead, I use it to water plants in the garden where it can seep into the ground and be evaporated.
January 4th, 2008 at 12:55 pm
Not really “cheap”, but with paying off debt from school loans, it’s one of the few ways I have found to save consistently: The pennies earned from interest/dividends from my credit union accounts are promptly moved into a savings account I can’t get into. Not much at a time, but it lets me put a few cents away and eventually will lead to riches
This also allows me to not absorb this small amount into my spending! I am also hoping that with slow progress I will have enough to soon open a ING or other high yield account 
Also…there is someone I work with that is one of the cheapest people I have ever met (I try my best, but I have nothing on these):
-He eats other people’s left overs in the fridge at work
-He uses his neighbors garbage cans (unbeknowst to them) to avoid paying for garbage service
-He never drives when we have company functions out of town, yet will “use” the mileage from several people who did drive as a deduction for his taxes, while carpooling with them, and not offering to help fill up the tank.
January 4th, 2008 at 1:00 pm
I rinse and reuse coffee filters. I buy the cheap flat ones (100 for 99 cents) versus the cone shaped (40 for $2). My coffee maker calls for the cone shaped but the flat ones conform just fine. I get about 3-4 days use out of one filter. So a whole year of fresh brewing for less than a buck.
i buy my beans at Big Lots when they have them (3 lbs for $3).
I gots plenty more, but that should tell you something about my frugality.
January 4th, 2008 at 1:03 pm
Kay’s stories about her parents reminded me of something that happened at my parents house.
I live in Michigan, grew up in the country. One year, during the winter, a deer was hit by a car and lay dead at the edge of our front lawn, out by the road. It lay in pretty deep snow for two or three days, and then a man came by and asked if he could take it away for meat! My stepdad let him take it (we had no use for it), and while logically, it seemed okay to eat (cold corpse, just like refrigerated meat), just the idea of it made me feel a little sick. Maybe since the body had been laying out there for days…
January 4th, 2008 at 1:10 pm
In the process of setting up my business, I realized I need some shelving to store spare parts, back up systems, etc. I mentioned this in passing to my father and he immediately chimed in that someone at his work just threw away a whole shelving system and a desk to go along with it. He and I loaded in my truck and headed over to the company’s dumpster.
It turns out that the shelving wasn’t the last thing thrown away and there was a lot of fast food junk from the office’s lunches thrown on top. But these were metal shelves, so I threw caution to the wind, dove in, and claimed my reward. As fate would have it, not only get I get way more shelving than I needed, I also found large quantities of copper wiring that were discarded. So now I not only have shelves, I also have a little pocket change from turning in that copper for recycling!
January 4th, 2008 at 1:19 pm
I’ll skip right over the 12 large bottles of ketchup which eventually got sold to friends and family (here, wanna buy some ketchup, I’ll give you a discount, thanks much) and talk about the time I bought two amps for my hifi system. During the time, I was living in a city with nice public transport systems, but there was just no way I was going to spend 75 cents when I could easily walk the 5 miles to the hifi store. I also got the amps I had had my eye on. However, even though have just spend close to $1000 on amplifiers, there was no way I was going to pay 75 cents for a bus ticket if it could be avoided even if the amps turned out to be a bit heavier than I had anticipated. I weighed them when I got home: 61 pounds in total which barely fit into the two sports bags I had brought. I walked about 100 yards interrupted by a 1 minute break all the 5 miles back home and it took more than 2 hours. Being empirically stupid, I repeated the same stunt later on with two speakers. My biceps were sore for a couple of days after that. Not the one to be discouraged, I found a couple of door buster microwaves (after getting up at 5am) with a total weight of 85 lbs. I figured I could bear hug carry them home since it was only two miles. This showed me my limit though. I only managed to carry them out of the mall until I had to admit defeat and have my girl friend come and get me (by foot of course) so we would have a coin (I didn’t have any change on me) to release a shopping cart and push them home.
January 4th, 2008 at 1:30 pm
My (now)ex-girlfriend and I went shopping for groceries at wal-mart. She has always been focused on having only name-brand clothing and my cheapness has embarrassed her on several occasions. Tonight she would be furious with me. All I needed was a few cans of tomato soup while I waited for it to go down to 50 cents a can so I could buy bulk again. There was a display that had Campbell’s soup for 60 cents per can. When I brought a few cans to the register only two cans rang up correctly and the others rang up at 64 cents. I tried to tell the cashier that the price was wrong, but she told me that the display must have been for a different kind of soup. After arguing with her for a moment she finally agreed to give me the soup for 60 cents. But, I finally remembered that Bashas had tomato soup for 55 cents per can that week. Of course wal-mart has a price-matching policy and as I was about to say something my ex-girlfriend decided that we had already spent far to much time in there.
January 4th, 2008 at 1:41 pm
I’m a second generation tightwad and I learned from the best. One of our favorite family stories is about the time our family went to Disneyland. My father owned a swimming pool and spa business. He was shipped a defective spa that needed to be returned to the manufacturer, who happened to be located in LA. The manufacturer would pay for the return shipping, but my father decided to return the spa himself, that way he could take the tax deduction for our family vacation to Disneyland. He loaded the spa onto an open trailer, loaded all 8 of us kids and both of his parents into our 15 person surplus military van and drove us 3 states away to LA. Needless to say we were quite a sight and people stared at us the whole drive. He wasn’t totally cheap, he did actually pay for us to go on the rides at Disneyland.
January 4th, 2008 at 1:44 pm
When I was 30 I quit my job to care for my mother who was severely disabled by a brain aneurysm. Between me being unemployed and her medical expenses the budget was tight. When my then boyfriend’s (now spouse) birthday was approaching I knew there was no money available to purchase a gift. As luck would have it I was walking near a college campus one day and saw several tables set up promoting various credit cards. After filling out various applications I was able to present my beloved with 3 different T-shirts on his special day.
The car I owned at the time was 7 or 8 years old and rather dinged up. One evening some intoxicated individual decided to jump on the roof - denting it in rather significantly. I reported the incident to my insurance company but decided to keep the money for my own use. One of my friends used brute force to pound out most of the roof - at least to the point where a normal sized person could sit upright in the seats. Unfortunately, there was a minute gap between the windshield and the roof - almost imperceptible except when it was raining at a certain angle and then the drops would hit you in the face while driving. Despite this minor inconvenience, I continued driving the car until it was 11 years old - had over 100,000 miles - and I was able to purchase a different vehicle with cash.
One more story…during a rather bleak period in my life I was somewhat destitute and a kind individual decided to “gift” me a used mattress so I would have something soft to sleep on. I kept the mattress for many years - long after I obtained a decent job and other possessions. When at last I decided to purchase a new mattress & box springs I contacted Good Will to donate my used mattress. I left it outside my apartment as they requested, but when I returned home there was a note on it stating it was “too used” and in such poor condition they couldn’t accept it for their agency.
January 4th, 2008 at 1:49 pm
I have a great story that my friend told me in the past.
During the holidays seasons, his Grandma would love to bake cookies. Instead of giving you a plate of cookies, she would take old tissue boxes and put the cookies in there and proceed to wrap them with plastic wrap. I found it to be very amusing and VERY cheap.
January 4th, 2008 at 1:49 pm
Wow excellent stories!
My vote goes for number 6 and 40 and 45
Growing up my Dad always drove by the Sunoco gas station that my neighbours would go to and went to the no name station. I always thought we were poor becuase we couldn’t afford the good gas!
January 4th, 2008 at 1:50 pm
We were planning our frugal wedding and were catering it ourselves. One challenge was buying enough soda for 200+ people. Lucky for us, a grocery store in our area was offering 2 liter bottles for $0.25 each, but there was a limit of 4 per customer. I would go in with a couple family members and we would each buy 4, and then we would go home and stash them in the basement. We did this daily and sometimes twice a day. We went a little overboard and we still had enough soda to last us a year after the wedding! The funniest part was all the work that we did carrying them down and back up the stairs and all the trips we made to the store (luckily it was a short trip!)
January 4th, 2008 at 1:52 pm
Waste Not, Want Not–A philosophy I live by.
My husband and I are both grad students, and are trying to work as little as possible without going into debt. Over the last few months there have been some incidents that have prompted him to nickname me “The Depression-Era Wife”.
It all started with some bookcases we were getting rid of. I had been getting annoyed with my wire shelves in my pantry because we eat a lot of rice and beans to save money. When the rice or beans leak out of their containers they fall onto the floor and create a mess. So when we were getting rid of those bookshelves, I thought for a few minutes about how I could possibly reuse the shelves that were perfectly good. I found that they fit perfectly into my pantry and make great shelf liners! I haven’t had a problem with supplies dropping on the floor since.
Then my husband found me reorganizing my closets and throwing things out because we live in such a small, cluttered apartment. We have just recently started using only natural products for house and body. But I had a bunch of lotions, shampoo/conditioner, and household cleaning supplies left to use up. Rather than throw any of these out, I organized it in order of which is least full and have started finishing off all of these products. Only when it is all gone will I go buy the new supplies. This amounts to a bag full of lotion that I haven’t finished in over 2 years…likewise with chap sticks! I only like Burt’s Bees now, but I have 12 other chap sticks that I am determined to finish before I go buy a new one!
And for my most notable depression-era wifism? Well I learned that stinky armpits comes from bacteria on your skin. So instead of using deoderant and antipersperant (which can also cause breast cancer), we have switched to rubbing alcohol 1 or 2 times each day, which works very well and is MUCH cheaper since rubbing alcohol is less than $1 per bottle and is easy to apply with a spray bottle.
Waste not, want not!
January 4th, 2008 at 1:53 pm
My grandparents take the extra condiment (ketchup, mayonaise,mustard etc.) packets they get from fast food restaurants and squeeze them into there own bottles. They haven’t had to buy a bottle of ketchup in years!
January 4th, 2008 at 1:54 pm
My uncle had an old pickup truck that he drove into the ground. For years he carried a screwdriver to start it. When he finally broke down and purchased a new car a couple of years ago (because the floorboards and rear window were gone, plus the lights stopped working) he kept telling us about the amazing new features they had on cars now, like rear window defrost.
Even he, however, is not as cheap as the woman I knew in college who worked in a store that received boxes packed with the new recyclable peanuts made from cornstarch instead of the old styrofoam peanuts. She determined that cornstarch is technically food, brought in a bottle of soy sauce, and claimed she ate packing peanuts with soy sauce for most of her meals.
January 4th, 2008 at 1:55 pm
My cute little grandmother grew up during the Great Depression. She has two giant freezers and they are always packed to the gills. She throws NOTHING away.
I went to visit her one summer when I was 17, and when she offered some cake, I took her up on that offer. She pulled a couple of slices out of the freezer, and thawed them in the microwave. It tasted a little off, but I thought nothing of it. As I was finishing up my slice, she mentioned, “You know, that’s your parents wedding cake?!” That cake was 24 years old!!! Blech!
January 4th, 2008 at 1:55 pm
Well, I dated a man for a while. The cheapest of the cheap among men. Every time I was at his home he’d have a new appliance. Food Dehydrating machines, Specialty mixers, and great new gadgets also; the first person I knew who had a laptop. He loved to cook. When I’d go back over to his home one or more of his new gadgets would be missing. He would tell me that he had to take it back to the store for a refund because it didn’t work correctly. After a while this became clear to me that this was a hobby of his. He’d buy these neat things and take them back before the 30 days refund limit and get his cash back. He would buy things to impress his friends and me, then take the stuff back. I thought once, twice ok, but after he did this continuously throughout our relationship, I grew tired of him and his habit and returned him to the single life. What a joke. How many laptops can you have in a year anyway?
January 4th, 2008 at 2:05 pm
I’ve always kept my eyes peeled in parking lots and stores for loose change on the ground. When I worked for US Airways as a customer service agent, I discovered that the airport is a goldmine of dropped money. I became obsessed with it even going into the pilots’ breakroom and getting down on the floor to collect change from underneath the vending machines (to the humiliation of my then boyfriend now husband). I kept track for awhile to prove my point - I found between $10 - $35 every month!
Also, on Sundays I watched my boarding areas like a hawk so I could collect newspapers with the coupon sections intact that were left behind by passengers. (I have also nabbed these from my neighbors’ recycle bin). Sometimes I would have 5 or 6 of the same coupons which I would save up and then go into Wal-mart or somewhere that was having a sale on those particular items and stock up.
Finally, although I swear that I always returned left behind items if possible, I frequently found books left by passengers. I love to read so if they were any good I would read them first and then sell them on Amazon.com’s used book area. Made about $50 doing that.
January 4th, 2008 at 2:10 pm
Xmas shopping was done at thrift stores this year where there’s an amazing amount of new items. I take medication which requires a monthly refill and I transfer the prescription to a new pharmacy each month to take advantage of gift card offers (we haven’t paid for detergent or paper products in about 2 years!) We are sure to be at the local grocery store on Tuesday mornings to get the “clearance” meat and we purchase coupons and gift cards on eBay at deeply discounted prices to save more. These are just a few examples of how cheap we are. We love our money and keep as much of it as we can!
January 4th, 2008 at 2:10 pm
In high school there was a band t-shirt I wanted but I was broke. So I asked all my friends if they would “donate to the Holly’s cheap and wants to buy a t-shirt fund.” I actually got enough loose change to cover almost 100% of the price…but never got around to going to the mall to get the shirt (something I’m not that proud of).
January 4th, 2008 at 2:13 pm
My senior year of high school I took my lunch in the same paper bag all year. I didn’t do it because it was necessary; rather, the bag said “TRASH” on the side and I thought it was too cool to throw away after one use. I didn’t think I was being cheap, but maybe others did. Oh well, I had fun.
January 4th, 2008 at 2:22 pm
Oh dear, I just remember a friend of mine who came to visit me when I was still living with my parents. He was going to stay as a guest some nights and he brought me a videocassette of a nice film as a present (we both love cinema).
One night we went to have dinner with friends, we had to pay alla romana but since he had yet to get some cash at the teller, I paid for him in advance. Later he told me: “Erm, the videocassette is my payment for the dinner, ok?” Nice present indeed.
And I remember a girl who used to steal the whole selection of tea bags brought with the pot at the tea room…
January 4th, 2008 at 2:31 pm
I’m not sure if this is cheap so much as just being stubborn, but I once turned a penny into $20. I had to buy a stack of CD-Rs and stopped at a computer store on the way home. Their price was about $2 more than for the same product at a competitor who was out of my way. I had the competitor’s ad with me, and they had a large sign at the front entrance announcing their price-beating guarantee. When I went to the register, the cashier informed me that they would match the price, not beat it. I paid, but went home, looked up the name of the head of customer service on the web, and fired off an email describing how they had cheated me out of a penny (in nice terms, of course). A few days later I got an envelope from the manager of the local store with a note apolgizing, promising a training session for their cashiers, and a $20 gift certificate for my trouble.
January 4th, 2008 at 2:36 pm
Sometimes when my mom goes to the movies, she splurges to get the extra large bag of popcorn, which they will refill for you. So, she’ll eat the entire bag during the show and then have it refilled on her way out to enjoy for a meal (or two) the next day. She then carefully saves the bag to take in for another free refill the next time she sees a film. Of course, she is always at the matinee show with her senior discount.
Mom is also famous for taking all the complimentary toiletries from any hotel room in which she stays. She also tries to persuade my sister and me to do the same and mail the shampoo, soap, shower caps, etc. to her through the mail. What does she do with all this booty? She uses it as her donation to her church’s “homeless” boxes. I haven’t had the nerve to ask her if she takes a tax write-off for all this charity.
January 4th, 2008 at 2:41 pm
My coworker and I have cheapskate contests where we try and “outcheap” the other with stories of our cheapness.
One day he admitted that at the end of the day he routinely uses the restroom at work, so he can save a flush’s worth of water at home. I couldn’t beat that.
January 4th, 2008 at 2:46 pm
My parents were horridly cheap – not frugal… truly cheap. We were required to re-use Kleenexes because they were so “expensive”.
So cheap it cost us at times…
The farm I grew up on had about 7 or 8 black walnut trees in the yard. We had no squirrels (our dogs weren’t very squirrel friendly) and my Mom didn’t bake so my Dad would go around with a wheel barrow and pick up the walnuts before mowing. To save on gravel for our driveway he would dump all the walnuts in the driveway. The only gravel in the long driveway was from 30+ years ago before my parents had bought the farm. Our half mile driveway that climbed the tallest hill in about a 30 mile radius (we had a great view by the way) was a quagmire of mud when ever it rained to the point people wouldn’t come over if it was muddy out because they couldn’t get up the driveway. Our driveway emptied out on to a highway so people couldn’t just park on the road.
Now this part many of you may find sad/tragic however 15 years after the fact I find it kinda funny and it taught my Dad a horrid lesson. It also taught me a life long lesson in frugality gone too far that I still practice today. And also positive events that followed the tragedy have given me a deep faith that all things happen for a reason.
The fan had been sticking on our furnace all winter. The repair person recommended replacement of the unit as some part was beyond repair on the 20-30 year old furnace. It was scaring my Mom & I but my Dad wanted to wait till the end of winter when furnaces went on sale to replace it. Finally it got to the point we could hear it sticking all the time and the fan finally kicking in at the last moment. My father decided foohy on waiting till the end of winter & @ the end of January he had all 3 furnace people in the area come out & quote for a new furnace. Then he put a rush order on one. The new furnace came in to town on February 11th & was to be installed the day after. I was going to junior high in town by that time & I would go to the library after school for my father to pick me up there on his way home from his job. As we were driving home our hill came into sight & there was a slew of emergency vehicles at the foot of our driveway. The driveway being blind to highway traffic we thought my brother had a car accident on his way to work (night job). Then as we sat in the backed up traffic (the highway had been shutdown due to the emergency vehicles) we noticed smoke coming through the small forest that was our yard. As you’ve probably guessed by now it was the house. Dad had forgotten to shut off the furnace on his way out that day & the fire trucks were unable to go up the driveway due to the mud so they devised a swimming pool type thing on the road to pump water up to the house. No one was home when it started & no one was hurt – the only casualties were the fish & hamster in my bedroom.
A lighter hearted story – an old friend loved sales so much that when I went to help him clean/excavate his basement in 2004 I found 20 boxes of unopened cereal that had expired in 1996 and a couple dozen bottles of detergent so covered in dust they had to be washed off to read the label (detergent does apparently expire). This taught me that buying in bulk does have it’s down side.
January 4th, 2008 at 2:48 pm
My grandfather was a millionaire, but got there by being cheap. He wanted to give treats to his grandchildren but did not want to pay for them. He made friends with a man who worked for a vending machine company. When snacks in the vending machine expired, they would be removed and my grandfather would ask his friend if he could take them. He then gave these as gifts to us grandchildren. I ate a lot of stale Fritos as a kid!
January 4th, 2008 at 2:48 pm
My Mother raised 8 children (and sent us all to college) first on a draftsman salary and after my father died on her beginning teacher’s salary. To save on groceries, she bought generics, items in bulk, and day old items from the bread store, etc. One day I asked her why she bought some particularly unappealing – but definitely cheap – cookies. She didn’t skip a beat when she replied, “They are the only kind that last all week.”
One of the more unusual things that we did to save money was refilling fountain pen cartridges (our parochial school required fountain pens) using ink from a bottle and a syringe.
And when our cousins sent a pair of used ice skates we took turns wearing them, filling the toes with newspapers for those with smaller feet, until Mom was convinced that we liked skating enough and she could find skates on sale. While one child would skate, the others would slide around the pond in our boots.
January 4th, 2008 at 2:55 pm
We use to have a neighborhood Marie Callenders that I’d go to a lot. As a poor college student, I would save money by ordering a dinner entree which comes with free all you can eat soup and salad buffet. Instead of eating the entree for dinner, I would fill up a the all you can eat soup, salad, bread, and fruit. Then I would doggy bag the untouched entree and save it for later. Thats 2 (maybe 3 if I’m not that hungry) dinners for the price of one!
January 4th, 2008 at 2:57 pm
Here’s a story from my childhood:
- We went to see a recreated old ship that was at port downtown, but they were having a wedding at the boat so they told us to go away. In the public bathrooms nearby they had put fancy paper towels & napkins at, which my mom loaded up in her backpack and every bag she had on her.
At my house we reuse plastic bags (all types), have a compost bucket next to the trash for food scraps, my wife made pads & nursing pads out of extra material to save money, we keep the TP cardboard rolls to use in the spring as plant starters, make our own broth and skim the fat for cooking other dishes. Bread ends are in the freezer for crutons, 80 lbs of potatoes picked up for $0.10/lb in our basement. Some of our dates consist of mystery shopping where we get paid. My wife made cloth diapers to save us money buying them. When I worked at fast food, I took tons of food home they were throwing out, I’m tempted to visit fast food places before they close to see if I can get some of it.
January 4th, 2008 at 3:07 pm
Okay…several of my personal thrift-centricities have already been posted here (cutting dryer sheets/paper towels in half, etc.). I’m fanatical about turning off lights. My husband teases me for showering in the dark. But after reading some of the stories here, I was reminded a then-horrifying but now-hilarious story from my childhood. When I was in the fourth grade, we had an “Easter Bonnet” contest. The winner would be awarded an enormous, glorious basket filled with treats. Ohhhh I wanted to win that contest. My stay-at-home mother, always trying to creatively save money, decided to make my bonnet. Now, keep in mind that the other girls all had beautiful spring hats decorated with flowers, etc. My hat was a fashionable pink tupperware bowl, upside down on my head, with paper bunny ears attached!!! Needless to say, I didn’t win that contest. My face turns red just thinking about it!!!
January 4th, 2008 at 3:17 pm
I went to my former mother-in-law’s home for a large family chicken dinner. When I was helping to clean up after we ate, I threw out a bowl of chicken bones that had been collected from each person’s plate. My mother-in-law said, “Oh no! I was saving those to make soup for tomorrow!” She probably got them out of the trash after I left. I did NOT show up for the next night’s dinner! I realize that boiling the bones would kill all “cooties”, but still….
January 4th, 2008 at 3:25 pm
A close friend of mine built all of his living room furniture out of USPS Priority Mail cardboard boxes because “he could get them from the post office for free.” He built shelves, a coffee table and a chair.
January 4th, 2008 at 3:29 pm
In my story the cheapness was rather necessary due to circumstances. In fact I quite admire the willpower of the friend who carried it out.
In my final year at university we had a new house-mate in our house. He was a mature student and as a result he was a few years old than the other three of us. He also had a bit more life experience, and life circumstances.
He lived a pretty frugal existence. The main dilemma he had was (as he explained it) that he couldn’t get another job in that tax year for tax purposes (something I never asked why about, but that’s not the point).
Towards the end of the tax year the rest of us headed home for the Easter break. Our friend remained, having a jacket potato and baked beans for dinner every night. He was so diligent with his spending that he would swap between the local Kwik-Save and Tesco, depending on who was selling baked beans for a lower price at the time.
(N.B. He told us this after we had returned from our holidays. Had he explained this before we left I’m sure we would have done something to help him enjoy more variety.)
January 4th, 2008 at 3:29 pm
I can’t believe somebody already said this, but my mother used to save all the tinsel off our Christmas trees as I was growing up.
When I told my mother-in-law about that she burst out laughing, and she was a missionary with no income.
My grandfather used to collect scrap wood out of people’s trash cans and bang the nails out. He saved the wood, of course, but he also banged the nails straight again and saved them too.
By the way… not that it matters, but number 69 here has my vote. That’s great…
January 4th, 2008 at 3:48 pm
I’m not very cheap to be honest (which is why I need to win this book), but I do cut my own hair and do my own manicures and pedicures. I know that some women would never stoop so low just to save money, but I like saving the couple hundred dollars every year!
January 4th, 2008 at 4:00 pm
Growing up, my mom was a single parent and a disabled vet going back to college. There wasn’t a lot of food in the house so my sister and I learned how to get by.
We used to pick up all the loose change on our way home from school (we walked), search the house, then check the parking lots and sidewalks on our way to the convenience store. This store had a streak going on free Mountain Dews - every other time we went in, one of us won a free soda off the bottlecap. We’d go in, redeem them, then win another free soda off our free soda. The change was for our 5 cent deposits and 35 cent apple pies.
When we refined our art we moved on to eating the local grocery store out of free samples. We’d haunt the bakery and grab a good 5 free samples each, and that was our lunch.
We’ve kept in the habit; recently my sister and I wanted to go out for lunch and a movie. We gathered all the loose change we could find, went to Coinstar (we’d have to buy the change rolls anyway, plus tax, and it was a shorter trip to the Coinstar than to the bank), got dollar menu cheeseburgers and used our student IDs with the dates scratched off to get into our matinee cheaper.
Here’s how I eat free and save face:
1. Free continental breakfast at a local Days Inn or similar. I dress professionally, get coffee and a bagel, and leave. I use the same chain whenever I’m actually traveling - which is often - to balance out my karma.
2. Realtor open houses. I’ve treated my boyfriend to lunch courtesy of leftovers from a free realtor luncheon.
But I’ve reached a new height of frugality recently… I bought said boyfriend a wedding ring, the exact one he wanted. Found the dress used on ebay for 10 bucks (white satin prom dress, worn once, looks great). And I paid about the same for his ring.
It was an auction ending at 6am EST on Christmas morning… I just happened to be up and caught it!
January 4th, 2008 at 4:12 pm
My friend grew up in a New York City apartment where his father, famous for cheapness, forced the family to make toast in the gas stove rather than the toaster. Why? Gas, not electricity, was included in the rent.
January 4th, 2008 at 4:14 pm
There are some great stories here! Here’s mine:
My mom lives in a 4-bedroom house and is so frugal with her water use that the water company has come out three times to see if the meter is working. Her water bill is less than $5 per month.
Also while traveling on an airline, she saved the butter packet that came with her meal (and the roll, salt, pepper, plastic utensils). The butter melted in her jacket pocket.
She still sends me presents using the same wrapping paper that we had when I was a kid.
January 4th, 2008 at 4:20 pm
Here’s a bit of corporate cheapness for you.
Many years ago, I worked for a small twice-weekly newspaper, which was owned by a certain national newspaper chain. The corporate HQ types seldom came around, so the general manager of the paper pretty much had free reign in the operations of our local offices.
The cheapness showed up in some unusual ways, such as once when the GM tried to persuade me to use an empty wire newspaper rack as a shelf. “Yeah, just turn it upside down and you can put your scanner (or hard drive, or whatever) on it.” Never mind that the shelves collapsed inward when it was turned upside down, or that it really wasn’t strong enough to hold anything substantial. I politely declined his suggestion.
But the real kicker for me was what I encountered in the ladies’ room (and, from talking to my male co-workers, the men’s room as well): instead of real, actual paper towels, we had to use blank sheets of newsprint to dry our hands with. It didn’t really dry my hands - just got rid of the largest droplets of water while irritating my skin, so in many cases, it was just best to let them air dry.
This was the normal state of affairs for at least a couple years, then one month, the corporate HQ made their rounds to all the papers in our state. Somewhere along the line, they discovered our improvised paper towels, were suitably outraged, and literally the next DAY, we had real, actual paper towels. The GM got himself raked over the coals but good, and that was the end of that little episode.
(Oh, and yes, we DID have real toilet paper, mercifully)
January 4th, 2008 at 4:26 pm
In early 2004 I was in my second year of law school, and thus still eating on a student’s budget. My local grocery put a particular brand of ramen-noodle soup (the blocks wrapped in plastic) on sale for 6¢ each, which was a whopping 50% off the regular price. I virtually filled my cart, and when I took my horde home and put it away, I had a two-foot stack of about 8 different flavors in my pantry.
Being pretty health conscious, I didn’t eat the noodles quickly. After graduation, I moved out of my buddy’s condo and back to my hometown for a few months to await my JAG Officer Basic Course. Thinking I would never eat the noodles that were left (about half), I left them in the pantry for my roommate.
Several months later I saw him and his girlfriend at a Christmas party. She told me she’d brought a box with some of my stuff I’d left at the house. In the box were around 30 blocks of ramen.
Long story short, somehow, that box was always included when I moved–from Tennessee to Virginia, then to California. Even though there was less than a couple dollars’ of food in that box, I never threw it out.
About a month ago, I ate the last pack of noodles, that had stayed by my side for nearly three years and 3000 miles. There was no discernable difference in taste.
January 4th, 2008 at 4:40 pm
Well I couldn’t read them all, but it’s going to be hard to compete with the hazelnut candy.
But here goes: my friend has to go to the hospital regularly, and whenever he does he refills a little Prell bottle with sanitizer they now have in every lobby.
January 4th, 2008 at 4:40 pm
This sounds untrue but really happened. . . . . I have a friend who attended college in the 70s. She and her roommates would occasionally buy the cheap, store-brand of dog food (canned) to eat. I asked how she could do that. She said that it was the cheapest “edible” thing at the store. Then, they would have a little money left to go out on Saturday night. Gross!!!
January 4th, 2008 at 4:50 pm
You call that cheap?????
Cold snap today here in the East. I’m loath to turn on the furnace. My poooor wife say’s she can see her breath in the kitchen this morning.
“Great!” I said, “Now I can unplug the refrigerator!”
-Jeff Yeager
The Ultimate Cheapskate
http://www.UltimateCheapskate.com
PS - Kidding aside, you folks are pretty darn cheap! Keep ‘er going!
January 4th, 2008 at 5:12 pm
I remember Star Wars as being the first movie we went to see as a whole family - 2 adults, 6 kids. My mom brought in a bag that contained Pringles potato chips, because they didn’t take up too much room. It was also our first time for those. When I go to movies (mostly the cheaps) I bring some hard candy or licorice to snack on, and always make sure my waterbottle is full!
January 4th, 2008 at 5:25 pm
My friend and I were arguing about who was more “ghetto” growing up and sharing our cheapskate stories.
My story was about how I started to cut my own hair in an effort to save the $8 I had heterto spent on haircuts. I was terrible, and ended up coming to school with a shaved head for the next several months until I realized that saving $10 wasn’t worth the demolition of my social status.
But my friend beat me with his story. He said that growing up, his family was so cheap, that when McDonalds had their $.29 hamburger deal, they would buy about a hundered of them and freeze them to thaw out and eat for meals in the future. He also told me about how his mother would sneak in tupperware to the buffet and steal enough food to last a couple of days for his family of 3.
He was glad, but embarassed, to have won the argument.
January 4th, 2008 at 5:29 pm
[...] Frugality gone wild! By Jeff The Ultimate Cheapskate’s Book Contest ? Get Rich Slowly [...]
January 4th, 2008 at 5:40 pm
This one is on the border line of ethical, but it works for my uncle. Every year before the holidays he buys saws, drills, and whatever tools he needs to manufacture projects for Christmas gifts.(This year it was bird houses.) He then returns the power tools to the various stores and gets his money back.
They say he built his house that way, but I don’t know if you can get a full refund on used cement mixers!
Anyway, my uncle doesn’t even pay for most of the lumber, he retrieves it from other peoples remodeling projects, with permission, of coarse.
January 4th, 2008 at 6:02 pm
I remember a story about my friend’s dad. He was the parent who always did the grocery shopping and he always used coupons. On day he came home with a box of dog biscuits that he had had a coupon for. It was hysterical because they didn’t have a dog! But he had to buy it because he had a coupon for it. He ended up given them to my friend’s grandmother who also didn’t have a dog. But she apparently fed the biscuits to her several cats!
January 4th, 2008 at 6:02 pm
In 2002, my husband and I moved to Orlando. After a couple of days in our new home, I decided I needed a few things from Walmart. I had no idea where the nearest one was, so I looked it up online and struck out to find it. The driving directions told me to get on a toll road for about 2 miles, and it cost me seventy-five cents. I was furious, and decided I could find my way home without that stinking toll road. I normally pride myself on my excellent sense of direction but, Orlando was the first place I had ever lived without mountains or water as landmarks, and it was high noon, so there weren’t even any shadows. Two hours later, I still hadn’t found home. I had wasted the better part of a day and a tank of gas, my groceries were getting hot. I decided to ask directions. Since no one is actually FROM Orlando, no one could help me (it didn’t help that I had gotten about 30 miles off track). I wound up filling up with gas and buying a map, all to save 75 cents. My attempt at extreme frugality cost me about $40.00.
January 4th, 2008 at 6:34 pm
Love the stories.
I’m so cheap, I took a 24 cent PVC part to Home Depot today to return it. The amazing thing is that the two people helping me at the return register gave me great customer service and didn’t even question it, or laugh and point (at least while I was present). I held a penny out for the woman to give me a quarter, and the guy assisting said, “We don’t need a penny. You’re getting a penny. Remember… sales tax!”
My uncle is so cheap, he put a jar above the toilet saying “flush fund” for guests to contribute financially whenever they had to go.
January 4th, 2008 at 7:09 pm
OK, here are some cheap things a relative has done. Goes to McDonalds near her home and buys a double cheeseburger to go ($1). Takes it home, removes 1 burger and puts it on a bun she had at home and voila! Two cheeseburgers for a dollar!
Also, family of 4 goes to dinner. All order water with lemon. Everybody gives their lemon to the dad who squeezes them into his water, adds a packet of splenda and has lemonade for free!
January 4th, 2008 at 7:26 pm
Judging from the above, it sounds like I’m among friends.
I think the cheapest things I do currently is use used coffee grounds as a body scrub.I read an article on coffee infused products and figured that grounds would probably make a great body exfoliator and rejuvenate my skin, as described in the article. Better than spending $20 on a product that might not work!
Oh, and the article was in a magazine that I bought (and sold back to) my favorite used magazine store!
January 4th, 2008 at 8:03 pm
My fishing buddy was so cheap that when he broke the inside door handle off his truck, he replaced it by attaching a pair of vise-grips to the door spindle. He reasoned that the pliers were in the truck anyway and they ought to be put to use.
January 4th, 2008 at 8:17 pm
Re: 159 - The church I attended in my old city actually asked us to bring home soaps and shampoos for the homeless shelter they ran. The small sizes were perfect “one use” sizes.
January 4th, 2008 at 9:04 pm
When I was a kid I remember seeing my granddad drinking out of shampoo bottles! I used to think he was cheap or just crazy, but now I think he was trying to be frugal.
January 4th, 2008 at 9:07 pm
I don’t pay for movie theater tickets. Instead, I give blood at my local hospital, where they give blood donors gift cards to local movie theaters. My area has a critical need for blood (thus the nice gifts to blood donors) and I like free movies! (Of course I don’t give blood more often than recommended.)
January 4th, 2008 at 9:21 pm
My grandfather is so cheap…
He stole advertising from his neighbor who took out an ad in the local paper for his garage sale. Upon hearing the news, my grandpa dragged some of his own crap out on the driveway just to steal the walk-by traffic. This resulted in a feud because it turns out grandpa sold a bush trimmer that the same neighbor had lent him…
While in his car, my grandpa will only “lift” or “push” his turn signal while making a turn, if you “click” the lever, it may need replacing in 10 years…
In order to save electricity, my grandpa puts a cold water filled tea pot on top of the pilot light in his stove before going to bed. This way, he can wash his hair in the sink with warm water instead of heating the hot water tank to shower. On top of that, the tea pot he uses was purchased at a garage sale for a quarter and leaks so he puts the pot on a plate to collect the leaking water. The water that collects on the plate is used for his cup of tea in the morning and he only uses one tea bag a week…
My grandpa collects the water out of the faucet before it gets warm in Cool Whip containers so as to not waste water if he needs it hot. His kitchen is full of the containers and he doesn’t need to buy or use electricity to run a humidifier…
Seeing as I am a descendant of my grandpa, I can be cheap too. One time my mother offered me a free, used blender for my apartment. I declined. When she asked me why I wouldn’t want a free blender, I replied that I didn’t want to spend money on the things I’d need to put in the blender.
January 4th, 2008 at 10:12 pm
hahaha… this is more postings than i’ve seen here before. am going to read some of these first before i post a story my dad would get upset with. ;S
January 4th, 2008 at 10:20 pm
I’m going to put a different spin on this. Yes, I grew up in a family of 6 where we re-used aluminum foil, washed plastic bags, used old margarine tubs, etc., etc., and I’ve also done the pantyhose trick (cutting off the leg with the run and wearing two of them), and I can’t throw away a teabag unless I’ve gotten two cups of tea from it. What makes my family interesting is the creativity added to frugality.
For all my life, my father has drawn us birthday cards and my mother anniversary cards. He likes to draw, and we might get Mickey Mouse, Bugs Bunny, or another cartoon character wishing us a Happy Birthday. I don’t believe my father has ever bought a card. There have been many years when I’ve made cards myself, inspired by my father, and so have my siblings.
We didn’t get fancy birthday cakes from the store. Instead, my mother would make two flat, round cakes. One would become the “head” of a cartoon character, and the other would be cut up into smaller pieces for ears, or a hat, or whatever was appropriate. She’d “glue” the pieces together with frosting, then cover the whole thing with chocolate frosting, giving my father a blank slate to draw on. He’d use colored frosting and create a Mickey Mouse cake, Donald Duck cake, Goofy cake, train cake, - whatever you wanted for your birthday cake, my parents figured out how to make it! Later, as an adult, I made a heart shaped “valentine” cake using the same technique - impressed my friends and spent very little.
One year my mother needed to come up with Easter dinner using only the food that was already in the house (not much). She defrosted ground beef from the freezer, added some rice and canned milk and made a meatloaf, formed with one large oval and a smaller oval, creating the body of an easter bunny. She covered it with mashed potatoes, and added an extra dollop of mashed potatoes at the opposite end of the large oval for the bunny’s tail. Then she cut a carrot in half to make ears, and used part of another carrot for whiskers, eyes, and nose. She put broccoli around him for “grass.” We loved this so much we asked her to make it year after year (even when my mother wanted to, and could afford to, cook a turkey or a ham instead).
On the wrapping paper front: we not only used the funny papers for wrapping (and often still do), but I came up with a way to make bows out of the funny papers, too, by folding, cutting, and twisting just so.
When my parents needed a new refrigerator, they saved the box it came in, cut out holes for “windows” and had us kids draw shutters and flowers on the outside. We had an instant playhouse.
One of the years when I was putting myself through graduate school, I put on a cabaret concert (I’m a singer) and sent out invitations to my friends and acquaintances, asking for donations to help with school. I raised $900 in one evening, enough for the tuition for two classes!
January 4th, 2008 at 10:27 pm
I’m not sure if it was so much cheapness as it was tradition, but I’m sure my great-grandparents saved a load of money by having one meal a week made solely out of left-overs. I’m not talking about just re-heating each plate of left-overs and picking and choosing – they poured everything into a big pot, added water, and cooked it to make an extremely unique stew. No matter what it was, the meal from Monday through Saturday became part of Sunday’s dinner.
January 4th, 2008 at 10:47 pm
I went to a family reunion a few years back where the hostess actually dug the plastic sectioned party plates (not dishwasher safe) out of the trash and washed them in her kitchen sink - pastic silverware too. This seemed even cheaper when you considered we were in her probably 2 million home (filled with memenots from world travel) that overlooks an expensive mountain village and that their house was paid for in cash when the built it. . . unfortunately, this was a fairly distant relative so we don’t exactly benefit from their riches; but still that was odd.
My dad once drove us from Colorado to South Dakota over the summer. When a fan belt broke on our car, he pulled over, pulled out two milk jugs full of tap water to cool the engine, (it wasn’t enough) then produced a brand new fan belt from the back of the station wagon. He KNEW the fan belt would break, but he had to get every last mile from it. So we sat in the middle of WY in 90 degree heat waiting for the engine to cool down enough to switch the fan belt.
One time, in my mom’s Caravan, my dad replaced a broken piece of the steering column with a plastic drinking straw from McDonalds. It lasted 7 years (it actually outlived my dad). The mechanic that found it told my mom my dad had been a genious! I think he saved about $400 in parts doing that back in the early 90s. I miss my dad.
Oh, our basement bathroom floor was completely uneven because my dad used two completely different types of used tile that he bought at a garage sale to tile it. The side by the bathtub was almost a half inch higher than the side by the toilet - and the tile did NOT match.
My grandma would NEVER throw away a tin of any sort, she used those popcorn tins as waste paper baskets - inventive, but she had SERIOUSLY 27 of them in her tiny trailer house when she died last year. She would NOT let me get rid of them while she was alive.
When I was a kid we had one black and white tv that had picture and one black and white tv next to it that had sound. Later my other grandma lost sound on her big old fashioned console tv, so she put a cheap little tv on top of it and would turn them both on so she could watch the bigger screen but still hear it from the little one - so she had two tvs running at the same time.
Those grandparents had only one bathroom in their little house, but in the crawl space my grandfather had about 6 used toilets that he “collected” so he would always have one should theirs break - they lived in that house for over 30 years and the toilet never broke.
I can’t think of anything else right now - except that my husband cleaned out the 25 cent mouse traps when we had visitors in our first house. Fine if he wanted to do it, but if I had to find the dead mice myself, the whole trap would have gone in the trash.
January 4th, 2008 at 10:49 pm
During my junior year of highschool, I worked at Rax (an Arby’s-like fast-food place for those unfamiliar). At some point during my tenure, Rax rolled back the price on their Large Curly Fries to $.05 for some sort of sales promotion. My friends and I, needing food in volumes that only skinny highschool boys can really understad, pulled up to the drive-through and ordered 30 Large Curly Fries for $1.50.
The stunt alone had us laughing (and eating) all night long, but the real fit of cheapness came when I made them apply my 10% employee discount to the “meal.” I mean, that 15 cents could have been three more boxes of fries the next day…
As a side note, I haven’t been able to eat Curly Fries since.
January 4th, 2008 at 11:05 pm
Forgot one - about the lights - my husband has our 3 and 4 year olds trained. When I put my makeup on in the morning, my son walks in, turns off the light, and says, “Mommy, it’s daytime, you don’t need a lights on in the daytime.” They also close cabinet doors and drawers if I’m not fast enough.
January 4th, 2008 at 11:14 pm
My Grandmother was so frugal that if there was left over oatmeal, she would fry, bake, salt, boil and otherwise manipulate the gray mass for EVERY meal until it was finished. I believe that the oatmeal could last up to 3 days, even though there were 7 children.