Prepare for a good laugh and some eyebrow-raising moments as we delve into a collection of stories about people who take saving money to the extreme. These tales will make you shake your head in wonder and maybe even chuckle at just how far some folks will go to pinch pennies.
Caught a friend of my husband’s taking tips off our group’s table. He said he forgot his phone on the table and went back as everyone walked out the door. I realized he did this every time and stayed inside and watched him pocket everyone’s tips. I stopped him and asked if he was going to put it back or if I should let everyone know. He put it back.
My great aunt would take us to lunch when we were kids, mostly Wendy’s, but also other fast food places. She’d always get the biggest burger on the menu, eat 3/4 of it, then take it to the front and complain about something. They’d refund her her meal every single time. When I got to be 8-9 y/o I started to skip those lunches as it was just too embarrassing. All the local places were onto her, so she would make a bigger and bigger scene each time. Crazy old lady.
A relative gave my younger sister a birthday card. When she opened it she was thrilled to find $50. He was surprised to see her holding a $50. He asked her to hand the card and $ back to him. He pocketed the $50, put $20 into the card, and handed it back to her. Apparently, he put the $50 in by mistake and couldn’t just roll with it.
I saw a guy take money from the tip jar to pay for a muffin like it was nothing. The poor cashier was in shock I guess because she didn’t say anything.
And this was from a cafeteria in an office building. The guy who did this was wearing an expensive suit.
My grandmother, as she didn’t own a computer, had to mail in all her bill payments. One month she didn’t get her water bill or it was delivered to someone else by accident. Whatever the cause, her next bill was for both that month and the previous month and included a late fee that was less than the cost of a stamp. For the rest of her life, she skipped the bill one month and then paid both the next because she saved a few cents by using just one stamp instead of two. This was a woman who had somewhere around a million dollars in the bank when she died.
I had a friend in elementary school who was moving out of state, between the fifth grade and sixth grade. During that summer, just before they moved, his parents had a birthday party for him. It seemed like a normal kid’s birthday party until the cake came out. His father’s company had held a going away party for him, and they gave him a cake. A cake that when it was brought out to a bunch of 10 and 11-year-olds, had “Good Luck Marshall” sort of scraped off and replaced with “Happy Birthday Brian”. The cake was half-eaten.
My Grandfather had a firmly held belief that any drink served in a restaurant should cost no more than 10 cents per glass.
So if the restaurant charged 1.50 for a sweet tea with free refills, he would sit there until he’d drank at least 15 glasses. Nobody else could leave until he was done.
My boss recently made the decision to start paying me once a month instead of bi-weekly so he could save on the $1.50 fee that the eTransfer cost him.
Going down to McDonald’s for a thingy of sugar for their coffee because they ran out of sugar.
Dad was really broke that week.
When I delivered pizza there was a guy who ordered from us two/three times a week, and the conversations would go like this:
Customer – “How much is that?”
Me – “Um…$18.35 total.”
Customer. “OK. Tell the driver I’m paying with a twenty dollar bill and I want one dollar and sixty-five cents back.”
Never tipped, never smiled, never said thank you. One Friday night his order was the last in a five/six order run, and the previous customers had taken all my coins and loose change. I ended up shorting him a dime and apologized.
By the time I got back to the store, my boss was on the phone trying to calm him down because to quote, “I refused to give him his change.”
My mom and I once went to the cinema with a new friend of hers – as we were leaving, the friend found $5 under one of the seats and then made us stay back in the empty cinema while she checked every row for any more fallen cash.
My grandma would take my brother and sister to a restaurant and instead of buying us milk, she’s make us drink the tiny creamers.
Probably late to the party but my local shopkeep. I made a small purchase and had 20p change so asked him to pop it in the charity box. He goes to put my change back in his till and with a “whoops” swaps it for a 5p coin which he then puts in the charity box for me. Still irks me to this day how someone would scam a charity over 15p.
I worked for a short time as a luxury travel agent, and agents get tons and tons of free stuff all the time. Every day there would be vendors setting up in the conference room for breakfast, lunch and afternoon snacks, which we got for free, we just had to go listen to the vendors’ pitch.
This would totally go to some of the old-school agent’s heads. The agents in the office next to mine were notoriously cheap, especially the sixty-something-year-old boss. They would push their way into the conference room, throw their business card in the general director of the poor vendors, and take as much food as possible. Multiple plates piled high. I’d pass their office and the food would be just sitting out on the desks uneaten. The boss was known for showing up at vendor-sponsored dinners and events with his wife (uninvited), and they’d bring plastic ziplock bags and fill them with food from the buffet to take home. He made a ton of money, so it wasn’t out of necessity, he was just insanely cheap and entitled.
My favorite story about him was that our company used to go around the offices some Friday afternoons in the summer with an ice cream cart, and everyone would grab something. One each because we’re f*cking adults in a professional workplace. Not this guy. He filled a manila envelope with like 20 ice creams, labeled in PROPERTY OF [NAME] DO NOT TOUCH!!!! and put it in the office freezer. My sassy coworker used to go steal ice creams from the envelope all the time for our office just to spite him. Tasted so good.
My grandmother used to save the ice cubes in the empty drinks for reuse later. Apparently, it was the acceptable thing to do during the great depression. My grandfather went through the great depression as well, but it affected him differently. He’d always dump as much ice in his drink as possible like ice were the bees knees.
I’m part of a friend group of 3. We’ve all been buds since countless after-school detentions in high school and now we’re in our late 20s.
Well one of us, let’s call him L is a cheap b*stard. One fine afternoon we walk into a bar and L’s girlfriend approaches the bartender to order a drink. L sees his opportunity and slides over to his lady to ask if she’ll order him something and is quickly denied. L then proceeds to approach me and ask the same question only to be denied once more, rinse and repeat on our other 4 friends. Finally, L lets out an audible sigh and pulls out his wallet and buys himself a $1 Pabst blue ribbon, then proceeds to complain to us that he is trying to save for a new video card so his computer can run 2 at once. The bartender bought his GF’s drink and said to dump his a**.
My dad and I were driving home on a Saturday after going out for lunch. His car was low on gas, and we passed a gas station advertising gas for something like $1.50/gallon. He says “The other gas station down the road is usually cheaper”, so we skip that one to go to the next one.
The next gas station is advertising at $1.52/gallon. Dad swings around and makes a U-turn to go back to the first one. We get stuck in about 35 minutes of traffic on this short 2-mile road, due to an accident that just happened. By the time we get back to the first gas station, they’ve changed their price to $1.55/gallon.
He cursed and we went home without getting more gas that day. The pointer was at empty by the time we got home.
When we go to my in-laws home for dinner, afterwards we sit there at night in their large living room with only a 15-watt bulb dimly glowing in one lamp.
It’s all shadows and darkness – we can’t see each other or read anything. They have plenty of money, but won’t allow more than one 15-w bulb to be on in this very large space.
This is my dad’s story. He went for a site visit (he’s in the swimming pool industry) and he saw the owners of the house gather all those itty bitty pieces of soap left over from showers. Just all these various colored, scented scraps and clump them into one and hand it over to the workers who were in charge of setting up the swimming pool to wash their hands. This was a MASSIVE pool and the owners were too cheap to even buy a new bar of soap.
One of my good friends from college was dating a real piece of sh*t. Emotionally abusive, self-righteous, totally full of himself, and the list goes on.
We were at a state college, so tuition was very reasonable, but this guy thought he was the cream of the crop and that he was doing his parents a favor by choosing a less expensive school. More than a favor actually, because when he was about to graduate, he actually sat his parents down and explained to them that they should give him the difference in cash. He actually figured out what the most expensive school he was accepted to was and compared that tuition to what his parents paid to go to a state school, and very seriously asked them to give him the $90k or so IN CASH. He felt he had earned it by getting accepted but not going.
It didn’t work out.
This is my favorite cheap Scot story:
This was back in the 60s. People bought new cars every other year, but not my grandfather. There were annual inspections for vehicles. Too much rust, broken or loose parts, you had to get them fixed.
Well, my grandfather knew his 66′ Volkswagen was not going to pass inspection due to his windshield having a couple of huge cracks. His inspection date was coming up and he devised a plan. Rather than having to pay to get the windshield replaced, he spent a weekend concocting a mix of flour, pepper and water. He then dripped it on the windshield. The perfect cover before going in for his inspection: Bird sh*t all over the windshield.
Came home later that week with his passing grade and washed his car. Totally worth the effort.
The Japanese practice this awesome policy where you take only what you need, e.g. at the vending machine the 8oz and 13oz cans of Coke cost the same, and you choose the one you can finish.
Or you pay a flat rate for a bowl of ramen (which comes with, for example, 1 ajitama, 2 slices of charsiu, etc.), but the ramen itself is “all-you-can-eat”.
The cheapest thing I’ve seen is at my local Isetan departmental store (outside Japan) — a family of four ordering and eating off the same bowl of ramen, and then hoarding the bigger cans of Coke because they are cheaper.
Isetan has since stopped both practices in my country!
I was standing in line at a Walmart once, around Christmas time. Painful as that already sounds, the lady in front of me started arguing about the price of a bottle of shampoo. She says it is on sale for $1 less than the price it rang up as.
After 2 or 3 phone calls to the department and at least 5 minutes, I spoke up and said “Lady, I’ll give you a dollar if we can just move on here.”
She looked at me with a straight face and said “OK.”
I was not expecting that. Neither was the manager who was there by then and ended up just giving her the $1 discount.
There’s a guy I know who owns several businesses, a very large house and multiple cars. He also shops at the thrift food mart/foodbank. The kind of place that runs off of donations and tries to feed the poor. One day, he told me that he was really upset because he saw the person who sold him his house in the same store. Complaining how awful it was that they were taking advantage of the ‘system’. I’m like uhhh, you’re doing the exact same thing. He was so clueless.
Grand Uncle, who still lives in his parents’ house, worked until he was 65 and saved everything he could. No kids, no known partner/relationship.
He would piss in a bucket beside the toilet. Once the bucket was full enough he put it all in the toilet so it would flush itself and he would save money on the water bill.
Neither me nor any person in the family below the age of 50 has ever recalled receiving and gift or even a happy birthday from this guy. No one knows how much but the closest estimate is he likely has about 4-5 million.
My first job was at a DQ. The guy who owned it was very wealthy and very…unique. I was cleaning something and was on the floor so I noticed his shoes. One was a brown leather loafer, the other was a snow boot. I had to ask why. “The other boot wore out.” I always checked when he came to the store. Never had matching shoes.
A friend hired a new babysitter without establishing a rate of pay until after their first night out. when he asked the sitter her hourly rate she told him $10/hr. he balked and said he didn’t know she was so expensive, and asked if she would take $6/hr instead.
Back when I used to go to bars/clubs regularly, I had gotten a table with bottle service with another friend. We were waiting for a couple more friends to arrive before we started drinking our bottle of vodka.
There was this well-known moocher at the club who used to make the rounds trying to score free drinks. I’ve never seen him pay for drinks. He made his way to our table and tried to pour himself a drink, but we stopped him and told him we were waiting on some people before we did.
He says “Cool” and then grabs the leftover beer that I had sitting on the table. It was pretty much just back-wash…I was too disgusted to even stop him.
At least he got his free drink.
My dad is one of those people who is “idiot cheap” – i.e., will buy something extra to get free shipping but will spend $10 more than if he’d just paid for shipping instead, and be very proud of himself the whole time for “saving so much money”. Anyway, his most recent idiot-cheap moment was when he realized he needed a chainsaw because the one that he had wasn’t big enough to cut the logs he was cutting. When he went to the store to buy one, they were having a sale on a particular brand and size of chainsaws. The chainsaw in question was smaller than the one he currently had, but it was ONLY $250. So he bought it, took it back to the woods and the logs he was trying to cut, and realized it was far too small to do the job. So he went back to the store and bought another, bigger chainsaw for something like $700.
He was telling me this story and I was like “Well did you return the other one?” He told me no because he got that one on sale and had saved a lot of money on it.
My SO’s roommate is crazy.
She’s always trying to get free sh*t.
‘uhm you stained my Pyrex and I need a new one”
Not even a minute of scrubbing removed that stain. Whatever I needed new cookware so I took the old one and got her a cheaper new one.
Then she says that my gf stained the curtain with her hair color and needs a new one.
I dye her hair at my house so I call b*llsh*t.
There was some red in the curtain that looked like wine (my gf and I aren’t big drinkers). Whatever. Some peroxide took it right out. I heard her come in the front door so I started muttering quite loudly about the b*llsht and how. She just wanted a free curtain. She slammed her bedroom door and has been ignoring us ever since.
It’s an improvement over the passive-aggressive notes (the method she told us this with, by the way) on the fridge.
Tore a dollar bill in half, gave half to his wife, and they each dropped their “cleverly” folded bill halves in the donation box so that they could enter a “VIP” section of a show that was simply asking for donations for admittance in an attempt at fundraising for a charity.
My stepsister was living in Australia a few years back. She used to text her father (my stepfather) a couple of times a week, as well as Skype call him once or twice a month. When she got married and moved back home, my stepfather asked her to compensate him for the call credit it cost him to receive her text messages and phone calls. The cheapest guy I have ever come across in my entire life.
Growing up I lived across the street from a lovely park that had this huge sprinkler running all summer for the kids to enjoy. I also had this cheap-a** neighbor that everyone hated (we’ll call him Mr Zelinski) who would come down every morning in his swimming trunks with a bar of soap, a bottle of shampoo and a towel to wash there so he could save money on the water at home.
Ugh, everyone hated that guy. I always remember my grandpa joking that old Mr Zelinski hung out in the parking lot at the farmer’s market to pick up all the produce people dropped because he was too cheap to buy his own.
One time my boyfriend and I were making pancakes at my parents’ house and we noticed a bottle of sugar-free syrup that only had an eighth of an inch left and was a year expired. We threw it away.
A few hours later my mom was IRATE that someone threw the “perfectly good” syrup away. My parents are upper-middle class, so they aren’t hurting for money or food. She does the same thing with shampoo/conditioner bottles, so the showers are full of mostly empty bottles.
Double date to a restaurant with a buy one get one $1 coupon.
My wife and I shared one big fajita entree. Our friends did the same. They also bought a large margarita. We drank water.
When the bill came our friend put down a dollar and said something like “Ah so, you bought an entree and here’s my $1”
I was in shock. Luckily her fiancée gave her a nasty look and offered to pay half and for their drink.
They eventually divorced.
My piano teacher’s husband was so stingy it was unreal. For their anniversaries, he would buy her flowers from a supermarket that had a 5-day guarantee, keep them out of the water so that they died within a couple of days and then take the dead flowers back for a full refund.
I used to work at a dealership with a salesman who was in his 60s and the #1 guy there. He made $125,000+ every year. Received a veteran pension form the Navy. The dude was fine, money-wise. He also never bought lunch or contributed to office pools. He was known to be very tight.
Anyways, one day, some of the lot attendants bought pizza and offered him a slice. He goes, “Well I brought a sandwich but I will take some home for later” and takes 3 slices. The guy taking handouts from the minimum wage workers was disgusting
Once our phone was out (landline, before cell phones were as common as they are today. We were among the many who didn’t own a cell phone). I do not recall the reason. Either it was shut off due to non-payment or it needed a repair.
Mother needed to make an important phone call and wanted me to drive her to where there was a payphone. But she wanted to use a payphone that charged only 25 cents for a call. This was around the time that many payphones had increased their prices from 25 cents to 50 cents.
I warned Mother that while I knew the locations of many payphones in town (the closest one was at a gas station which was a short two-minute drive away), I didn’t know which phones charged 50 cents and which ones still charged at the old cheaper price of 25 cents. Mother had me drive her all over town looking for that elusive payphone that charged only 25 cents for a call. I took her to several gas stations (including the one closest to us), the mall, the library, the train station, a couple of mini-malls, etc, etc.
Each and every time I took her to a phone, she’d get out of the car, go to the phone, see that it charged 50 cents, and come back to the car full of piss and vinegar, yelling at me how the phone charged 50 cents. I would remind her that I already told her that I didn’t know which payphones in town still charged only 25 cents.
Geez, I just wanted to go home! So halfway through this nonsense, I offered to give her the additional quarter out of my own pocket so that she could make her call. Heck, I even offered to give her the full 50 cents. Instead, she just barked at me, “I’m NOT PAYING 50 CENTS FOR A PHONE CALL!!!”
Anyways, we were still driving around when Mother spotted a payphone in the parking lot of a fast food joint. She pointed to it and told me to pull in so that she could see what the payphone charged. It charged only 25 cents for a call. Hallelujah, our search was over. Mother made her call and returned to the car triumphantly telling me, “See? I told you there was a phone that charged only 25 cents!”
I didn’t tell her this, but in her quest to find that 25-cents-a-call payphone, we burned up several dollars worth of gas (this was when gas was around 1.50 a gallon). And the drive back home from that fast food place was going to cost about an additional 50 cents worth of gas, easy. All to save a lousy twenty-five cents on a payphone.
Dad gave me $50 one night when I was headed to town to hang with some friends. I refused it but he insisted. Fine, I took it. Used it. Then 2 days later on the way to take me to the airport, he stopped at the bank. I said, “Why are we stopping here?” He said, “To get back the $50 I lent you.”
My first boyfriend, many many many years ago, took me on a date to Red Lobster. He insisted that I fill up on their biscuits for dinner and save my actual dinner for later.
…What?
My best friend’s mom would not buy us pumpkins to carve for Halloween… keep in mind this is a woman who, when she found out about a building in town that was up for sale for $80,000 said “Oh wow. I could buy that.” But couldn’t give us 10 bucks for pumpkins. She’s the single richest person I’ve ever met. Just blew my d*mn mind. My mom, who maybe had a total of $50 to her name, bought us the pumpkins.
Two friends of mine were dating, but are no longer. They were having lunch at a sandwich shop. The girl pays for her sandwich- it must have been between $5 and $7. The guy had something similar. I don’t know if he thought she was paying or something, but he didn’t have any money, and she was using the last of her cash.
So naturally, he goes to the manager, this cool hipster type guy takes out a five-piece (half a gram of weed) and gives it to him. The manager looks at him, looks down at the five-piece, back up at him, takes it and says “Thanks?” My friend says “So are we cool?” The manager gets confused for a moment and says “No. What, you don’t have money?” The girlfriend cuts in and says “Just wait here, I’ll go home and get more money.” I can only imagine my friend awkwardly waiting there while his girlfriend went to get money to pay for his sandwich. After they left, my friend was annoyed that the manager kept his weed, and wanted to go back to get it.
Mom used to switch price tags. I mean, we were shopping on the clearance rack, and she would STILL switch the $2 tag from the shirt she didn’t want to the $3 shirt she did want.
Uh, mom? That’s stealing.
Well, now that I think about it, I remember some people from my lifeguarding days. If you ever look through my post history, you can see some of the crazy sh*t I’ve dealt with.
It was not uncommon for teenagers to sneak into the park in the early hour or minutes before opening, and they would hide in bathroom stalls until there were enough people in the park that nobody ever noticed. The stupid ones would jump in line for a ride that took five minutes to walk from the entrance, and we would escort them out.
But there was one family that perplexed us. They were caught sneaking into the park with such frequency that we charged them with trespassing. They still came in. We discovered the family drove a Cadillac Escalade, last year’s model. It baffled me that people that well-off could not buy tickets or season passes.
When I was 16 and worked at Starbucks I was working a closing shift and I was alone on the floor (my super idiotic assistant manager was in the back d*cking around). This guy comes in and orders a doppio espresso, I ring him in and go over to the bar to make it. Super simple drink, 2 shots of espresso. I put it up on the bar and this guy starts FLIPPING OUT! “What the f*ck is this?”
I explain to him, that it’s what he ordered, a doppio espresso is just two shots of espresso. He continues to flip out for a good 2 minutes, my assistant manager comes out at this point but doesn’t intervene. So I offer to make the man another drink, and he goes, calmly and quickly “Okay I’ll take a venti latte”
And that’s how a middle-aged man gets a $6 drink for the price of $2 at the expense of a teenage girl’s dignity.
I used to work at a hotel as a cook. The owner of this place was an old man named Dr. James. Every so often he would come into the restaurant and order random off-menu items, usually, it was a tomato and cheese sandwich. Something ridiculously cheap.
He owned the place and could have just gotten it for free, but he would have them ring it up with the “manager’s discount”, and take the receipt so that he could claim it as a business expense.
My brother not buying his wife a birthday present is probably the cheapest thing I can think of.
A few years ago, my brother (at the time he was in his early 30s) asked me if I was going to buy his wife a birthday present. I told him that I already got her a gift and showed it to him. My brother then proceeded to steal my gift and give it to her as his own gift.
The joke was on him. I bought her a cheap $10 plastic Irish necklace from a local store. And when she “found” the receipt, I was told that my brother slept on the couch for quite some time.
When I was in the third grade our teacher challenged us all to turn it homework in for a month straight in return for a pizza party. Anyway for weeks she pumped us up to skit this pizza party mostly because I think she thought she wouldn’t have to go through with it. Day arrives she orders like 3 pizzas for a class of like 35 kids and cuts all the pieces in half and thirds. We had all skipped lunch at her behest.
My wife’s grandmother was an insanely cheap woman—she did a lot of crazy things to save money, but this one takes the cake:
In 2010, she and her husband (my wife’s grandpa) were heading out on a European cruise. The cruise departed from southern Spain, so, to save money, she and Grandpa had bought separate tickets, with entirely different itineraries to get to Spain. Grandpa had the beginning stages of Alzheimer’s.
In the middle of all this, that volcano in Iceland erupts, causing hundreds of flights to get delayed and thousands to get cancelled. Somehow, Grandma got out on one of the last flights—delayed, of course, but she got out.
Grandpa, not so much.
So Grandpa is stuck in Atlanta and Grandma gets to Europe late, missing the start of her cruise. Because Grandma was a very large woman and Grandpa was strong as heck still, they had switched luggage when traveling. So grandma arrives in Spain with zero clothes…and without any of her insulin. Grandpa, with early onset Alzheimer’s, is stuck, trying to figure out how to get home and not knowing where he was or why he was there. (It took a lot of phone calls, but eventually, they got him home alright)
Meanwhile, in Spain, Grandma is determined to catch her cruise, so she buys a bus ticket to meet the boat at the next harbor. Since she had no clothing, she splurged on two pairs of $2 tights and one t-shirt. So here is this very large woman, wearing white tights and a matching shirt, on a bus, heading to catch her cruise.
Grandma refuses to spend money because the cruise is all-inclusive, so she buys absolutely zero food or even water for this 18-hour bus trip to get her to the next harbor. Some poor girl took pity on her and gave her water and snacks and was able to find out my Aunt’s phone number from grandma and called her and told her: “I seriously think she could die, she looks horrible and hasn’t eaten anything and drank all my water.” My aunt found a way to wire this girl some money and asked her to take care of grandma and to help her find a doctor to get some insulin and to manage her diabetes. The girl was a champ and kept grandma alive long enough to get her to the boat.
Grandma then had the time of her life on that cruise, rocking her white tights and one shirt.
Let a friend and his wife stay with us on their way through town to save money…they got up before me and read the paper, refolded it nicely, and left as soon as I came out to the living room. Sat down to read my paper, unfolded it and found that EVERY coupon in my Sunday paper had been cut out, to the point that much of it was unreadable.
Set up a date with this girl, she asked me to meet her at Starbucks. I arrive early and wait for her. As soon as she showed up she went and asked for two hot water before I could get up to ask her what she wanted.
The staff give her two hot waters, and she goes to the self-serve area and gets a bunch of honey packets. And then takes the honey packets and water over to me. She’s like “This is even better than coffee” It’s free and we can chill here for free wifi. I brushed it off as OK you’re a bit quirky, I can deal with that thought not much of it even though deep down I feel like I was ripping off the store by proxy.
Later we go out to dinner at a nice sit down place, my treat. The service was nice, food was great. Time for the bill, I pay and tip the 20%. She freaks out and yells “Don’t be a sucker, you don’t need to tip”. I’m like “Don’t worry about it, it’s on me”. She screams “NO IT IS BULLSH*T, I DIDN’T GET TIPS WHEN I WORKED AT MCDs, DON’T TIP, IF YOU DO I WON’T GO OUT WITH YOU AGAIN.”
I’m glad that a 20% tip brought out the worst of her, at least I didn’t waste another date with this person.