There was always just one bar of soap for the entire family of nine – we washed our hair with it because my father would not buy shampoo, and he complained if it was used to fast. He shaved with plain water and soap as he would not buy shaving cream, and used the same razor until it rusted. He would not buy milk, eggs, boxed cereal, or anything but flour, oatmeal, and other cheap food staples. Our garden was our only source of fresh food, and since we had no refridgerator or freezer (my father refused to pay for the electricity to run them), we had very little fresh food in winter. We kids survived largely off school lunches, which my mother insisted that he pay for.

I remember when I was in sixth grade, I had not had a new pair of shoes in over a year and the shoes I wore were literally falling to pieces. It was October and I had no coat. We could afford these things, of course, but my father would not even permit my mother to take us kids to the thrift store for clothing, except once a year. One day at school a brand new coat and a new pair of shoes were sitting on my desk after afternoon recess; I am sure they were from the new student teacher. I was so ashamed, and afraid to explain to my father where they came from. He was pleased, it turned out, because it meant he did not have to buy them and they could be passed down to the younger kids when I grew out of them. All three of my younger sisters wore that coat over the next ten years.

My father did not subscribe to the newspaper. He would wait until the other men at the factory where he worked had thrown away their newspapers and then fish one out of the trash, or he would take our neighbors’ papers from the trash. He brought a large thermos to work and filled it with the coffee from the break room on the sly and that would be our family’s coffee for breakfast the next day, with only sugar taken from the break room and no milk.

My father wouldn’t let us have any pets because he refused to buy pet food. He wore the same clothes for decades; in pictures of him taken in 1971 and 1999, he is wearing the shirt. When my brother broke his arm, my father waited two days to take him to a doctor, until my mother threatened to take him herself. My mother died of cancer, and only two weeks before she died did my father finally take her to the hospital. He himself died of untreated cancer. Ironically, he had health insurance throughout this.

When my father died a few years ago, there was over seventy thousand dollars saved in his bank account. He also owed the IRS unpaid taxes.

We grew up pretty poor and my mother worked in a shirt factory that made oxford style shirts. She had access to the shirts that were damaged and shirts really damaged, with say a knife cut down the front, would sell for about 25 cents. A shirt with a knife cut where it would tuck under pants was usually still a few $$. We would wear these with vests and sweaters and no one ever knew that they were sliced up underneath and patched with iron on patches. I had about 70 “expensive” oxford shirts by the time I graduated from college.

- I have a car potty seat that the absorbant bags for which cost $1 ea. I found that a hefty’s scrap bag fit the potty and use a generic maxi pad to absorb the urine – for about 15 cents a go. Although finally getting my daughter to go in the public bathrooms saves me even that

- Since my daughter is still pretty young, I rarely buy her her own meal in restaurants (only when I want something spicy for myself), I always ask for an empty plate and tell the waitress that I am sharing with her – I have never had a problem with this – the wait staff is always happy to oblige.

I love clearance racks too, but have begun to fully realize the value of quality. For instance, I won’t pay more than 3 dollars (which seems to be their bottom clearance price) for any clothes at walmart because the quality is so low. A garment looks years old after just a few washes, and usually doesn’t stay in my closet for more than a few months – so that is not value.

I have to agree that some of these ideas waste too much time for too little payoff to be considered frugal. I have had some of my rubbermaid containers for 15 years so I think I have gotten my money’s worth out of them and try to use them instead of disposable bags most of the time. But I use bags and throw them away when I need to.

And finally, I would like to say to the ramen noodle crowd: Please buy fresh fruits and vegetables as often as possible. What you are saving now will likely cost you in medications later. My husband has diabetes and we have spent thousands on his care. Your health is worth the expense. Love.

[...] January 4th: The ultimate cheapskate’s book contest [...]

One of my most frugal habits is recycling uncanceled postage. The Post Office rarely cancels postage on metered mail, so I salvage the postage and use a glue-stick. If the postage is less than .41, I just glue on 2. Only one time (several years ago) did the PO return a letter to me with a note saying that the PO frowns on this practice. I wish I’d kept track of all the money I’ve saved with my scissors and glue stick…

Took it to the store, they prorated it without a receipt; turns out it was worth half of its original value.

They let me buy a downgraded, 2 year warranty battery for $11 after credit. Also got a “core receipt” worth $10. If you follow me this far I’m still holding an “extra” battery out in my truck. Turned that in for the core (even though I also turned in the dud battery) and had a brand new car battery for $1!!!

Unethical, but a store used to sell cans of soda for $.18 plus .05 deposit, plus .01 tax= 24 cents a can. But they left the six pack rings on. If I bought a sixer they’d invariably scan one can and throw it in the bag. I’d return the cans and “make” 6 cents plus get free soda.

I however, don’t steal condiments or other unethical things to save a dollar. If I have to lie or steal then I don’t need that item.
Frugality is just a vehicle I use to help my family stretch our dollars.

His knickname was “Boots” by the way!

[...] partner blogger J.D. Roth at Get Rich Slowly recently asked his readers to share accounts of downright cheapness they had witnessed, and readers responded with gusto. Some of the stories are grotesque. Jens [...]

When she takes a shower, she keeps the water so that she can wash her socks with it.

When I was little, for dinner, my grand-mother often served us bread soaking in milk ! Cost almost nothing since she had everything from the farm next to her place.

When she drives, she has no problem taking a rotary the other way around (we have a lot in France)… she always takes the shorter way in order to save on gas (while you are praying for your life sitting next to her).

I’m not judging you. I’m pointing out that what you’re doing is not cheap, it’s actually costly. “Being Cheap” is the ability to gain or accomplish something for nothing or little cost. For example, the person who used dental floss instead of thread for stitches because dental floss is cheaper. That’s being cheap. Standing in line for 20
minutes for a less-than $3 gain isn’t cheap, it’s actually very expensive if you value your time in any way greater than the monetary gain derived from your investment.

Now, there may be perfectly good reasons for doing what you did, but
a) you did not mention them in the initial post, and b) having other
motives moves them out of the realm of “Being Cheap” into the realm of
“Making a Point”. Those are two completely orthogonal planes of
thought.

I do judge you for your actions. It’s your time to do with what you
want. I’m merely pointing out that you weren’t being cheap, you were,
from a financial perspective, being costly.

BTW – $9 an hour is a lot for some people (thankfully not me).

So, you earned $3 for 20 minutes of waiting, which equates to a rate of $9/hour.
That doesn’t sound cheap, that sounds dumb. Evidently your time is worth a lot less than mine.

[...] of myself as frugal until i finished reading entries for getrichslowly’s contest for the ultimate chepskates. the entries make for fun reading and if you are also frugal minded, good brainstorming. January [...]

The first story is about my college roommate. We were going on a weekend trip to the beach and at the store buying some basic supplies for the trip. The assumption was that we would probably go 50/50 on the stuff for the trip that we would be sharing. When I asked her about going 50/50 on the $3.00 bottle of suntan lotion – she was indecisive. Her concern? What if there was some left when we got back from the trip? Who would get to keep it? (I told her she could have it!!) The true moral of this story however is that she was the ONE person that I knew who graduated from college with money in the bank.

Second story is about my mom. She’s notoriously cheap – e.g. she likes to give the free gifts from the cosmetic counter as “real” gifts. The funniest thrift story is about the recycled birthday cake. It probably started about ten years ago – for someone’s birthday she had purchased a cheap grocery store sheet cake in a metal pan. Dinner must have been filling that night and so no one wanted cake. So the cake went in to the freezer. My mom continued to take out that cake for each birthday that we celebrated at her house and then re-freeze it for at least the next five years! Needless to say, it was up to the kids in our family to tell any guests that NO they did not want a piece of cake even if my mom offered them a slice.

consider the time wasted washing out baggies and other nonsense. get a freaking grip.

there’s obviously nothing wrong with being frugal, but being a cheap bastard is just that.

My parents live less than a mile from their community dump. My Mom has to plan things for my Dad to do on dump “open” days, just to keep him away. Here are some things he has brought home:

TV
Lamps
Electrical cords
Picture frames
Shoes
Dog collar
Mini Blinds
Bar stools
Unopened cans of soda
Envelopes (used)
Car parts
A Bathroom cabinet
Broken Ladder
Remote Controls

and this is just a little taste.

He rides by construction site dumpsters after hours and pulls out scrap wood, and my personal favorite… strips of nail gun nails, which he then makes us seperate and put into packs of 100, for him to store for later use.

My dad is the king of Buy 1 get 1. Doesnt matter what it is, as long as he gets one free. has has come home with bags of stuff, like 20 padlocks, those cheap travel weber grills, cases of candles.

He will siphon gas from his truck to the lawn mower on an expensive gas day.

and my all time number one favorite-

in 1992 my dad was driving home from pennsylvania, and stopped at an outlet mall to stretch his legs. he wandered into a paper outlet and inquired about buying some christmas paper in bulk. He was shown a roll of paper that they just couldnt get rid of. The sales girl told him that she had no idea how much paper was on it, but she would sell it to him for $10. My family has been using that wrapping paper since. It is ugly!!! It has been through years where the ink ran and it looked psycadelic, through years where the main color changed completely from blue to green, then red, and back to blue. we have 4 kids in our family, all married, 2 with kids of their own, and we all wrap in this paper. it is used (inside out) for birthday paper. other family and neighbors have used it as well. This year we wrapped a 4 foot by 4 foot by 8 foot gift for my dad. In 2004 it finally got small enough that one person could maneuver it alone. While few in our family can actually lift it, it does get moved around some now.

I could go on and on with the stuff my Dad does.

That bit of frugality continues to this day, as we now use cloth napkins and the rag drawer in place of paper products.

Of course, my wife is almost as bad as I am, and the following are common events at my house.

1. Date nite #1: go to CostCo, buy a hot dog and soda to share for 1.50, walk around the store and have samples for dessert.

2. Date nite #2: buy group tickets to the local movie theater – sneak in snacks and bottled water.

3. We recycle everything – food scraps either go into the compost bin or the bowl for the chickens. Plastic containers get recycled and the money goes into my daughter’s college fund. old clothes go from ‘outside’ clothes, to ‘inside’ clothes, to the rag drawer to be used as napkins, and end up in the compost bin when they are falling apart.

4. Cleaning products are no longer purchased other than baking powder and vinegar – according to a book my wife read, anything can be cleaned with these two mystical substances.

5. Clothing exchanges for the kids – they grow up so fast – I don’t think we’ve ever bought an outfit for our daughter, when she was born we were given several bags of clothes and these just continue to make the rounds as each kid grows out of them and we swap bags with others.

6. The vacuum cleaner has a paper bag to collect dust. I regularly empty it out to reuse it and look for lost change as I’m pulling out the dirt. My wife recently suggested purchasing a new one because costco has a coupon for Feb. for a new vacuum – “What’s wrong with the old one?” I said, thinking about how even though the plastic parts are missing, the cord loop has broken 4 times and can’t be JB welded again, and the electrical cord itself has 3 sections of duct tape on it at least it still sucks like it is supposed to.

7. I’ve never bought firewood in 8 years of living at my house. When I first moved in i hired some day labor to clear the back slope. rather than haul away the wood i had them cut and stack it in the side yard. I still have about a cord left. And rather than just burn the wood, I stack up junk mail and flyers for those cold nights and use those to get the fire going.

8. The old Ford F-150 had a bad starter, the brushes would stick and so it wouldn’t turn the motor. The solution of course was not to buy a new starter for $30 but instead carry a hammer in the car – when it didn’t start, crawl under, whack the starter a couple of times to knock the brushes loose, and voila! it would start.

9. Before the Ford, I had a nissan pathfinder and the power window switch broke, rather than spend the 70 bucks for a new nissan factory switch, i fashioned my own with a paperclip, a piece of cardboard and some speaker wire.

10. My wife will not print paper on just one side, we have stacks of ‘used’ paper that she will print out things on the back side of – despite my offering to go out and purchase a package of 500 sheets for 99 cents.

Well, the list could go on for a while, but it’s nice to know I’m in good company.

He rises very early and goes for a walk and on the way back, picks up the neighbour’s newspaper, reads it, carefully refolds it, and puts it back before they wake up.

To my mother’s dismay, he’ll wear clothes until they are threadbare (sometimes embarrassingly so), before he’ll wear something new. He has socks and shirts in his drawers (gifts) from 30 years ago that are still in the wrapper – waiting for their turn.

He does much of the cooking and my mother says he can make a piece of meat go further than anyone. First dinner–meat or chicken sliced so thin you could read a newspaper through it (this is a family joke). Next day–left overs for lunch, with the bones or scraps into the crock pot to make something for dinner.

When we were kids, they would buy milk in the plastic bags and the bags would be washed out to use for lunch or leftovers (I still do this). Wax paper cereal box liners & plastic oatmeal bags were also used for lunch storage.

Cookies were always home made (I still do this–my daughter grew up never knowing what a store bought cookie tastes like); note: my mom & dad both worked fulltime throughout my childhood. We also always sat down to a full meal every night–mom would leave something thawing in the morning and one of us kids would be assigned to make dinner. We all knew how to cook and learned based on the instant feedback of critical siblings and parents (I well remember my dad’s tactful, ‘very nice dear but don’t make it again’).

There was a pea farm behind us and after the harvest, we kids would be sent over to pick up the peas in the field missed by the machinery–we literally got bushels.

Paper towels were rationed; the quicker-picker-upper was a dishcloth. We had a drawerful that were washed after a day’s use. Nowadays there’s a balance realized between the laundry cost to the environment, but I still think a week’s worth of cloths doesn’t take up much room in a load of laundry.

Rather than buy a gas bbq my dad dug a hole in the ground, lined it with gravel and sand and put a truck rim over it with an old stove rack as the grill. In the winter, he’d bbq on a hibachi grill in the fireplace. He’d use wood and make his own charcoal. I swear he could start a fire with lint.