What do you think of someone who has a plug-in electric car, but they refuse to plug it in at their house because they don’t want to pay for the electricity to recharge it? Instead, they put their bike in the back of the car, drive to a nearby Walmart, plug in their car and bike home - without doing any shopping in WalMart.
Does your opinion differ depending on the person’s financial situation?
FWIF, the person is quite well off IMO. Not what I would consider “stupid rich”, but certainly in the top 1%.
I’m certain the person considers themselves quite smart, and taking advantage of what is available to them. I think “freeloader” is about the most polite term I would use.
The Rav4 Prime is a plug-in hybrid with a battery capacity on the larger side. It’s 18.1 kWh according to Google. At our local hydro rates (and my understanding is our hydro rates in Ontario are kind of bad) that’s not even $2 in electricity.
So I don’t think driving to Walmart and biking home to scam them out of $2 is smart. Never mind whatever is wasted in the drive.
I’m not sure about the waste of time. He might consider the biking part of it as getting his exercise in. In which case, he added productivity to his exercise regimen.
Good points on the time involved. The person (my BIL) is retired, so he has plenty of time. He is pretty active, but in his mind, I’m sure he puts the biking (only a mile or 2) in his plus column.
Definitely something else, rather than smart or cheap.
But, it’s not exactly unknown for various people, who have quite a lot of wealth, to be extremely frugal. Every few months/years there’s some story about person XYZ who lived a quiet, modest life, died, and left a fortune to a local school or other cause. Some people just have the habit of living on the cheap, even when they don’t have the need to do so.
My father and step-mother are reasonably wealthy, but they really only spend money on eating out. Sure, they vacation a bit, but normally to other properties they own, and buy newish used cars as their old ones wear out, but never felt like making expensive purchases, and will go out of their way to buy groceries at the cheaper mercado rather than the closer MegaMart.
I do think the BiL described is more on the “cheap” side of things though, as part of the social structure has an implicit (if not explicit, depending on the location) understanding that the chargers are provided for the use of customers. Not to mention, I’m absolutely disgusted because depending, they may be leaving the vehicle in the charger past the point of full charge while others could be in actual need (even if they get an alert it’s charged, they’ll need to bike BACK which they may or may not be doing in a timely manner).
The guy moved from my Chicago burb to Florida after his kids graduated from our fine schools, saying the taxes were too high. Of course, I’m able to easily afford essentially the same taxes… Then, when he got to FL, he said, “The services here are shit!” Well, duh! Sio he proceeded to keep using his old library card to download materials from the library…
He spends plenty when he wishes to. They bought their home for $1mill cash 10 years ago. Now they are moving to a condo that I imagine cost at least as much. They paid cash, and are keeping both homes for a year while they have the condo gutted. They travel quite a bit (always scoping out the cheapest possible flight - even if they are not allowed even a carry-on.). They bought a house in San Diego for one of their kids to live in.
Our building manager’s MIL is worth millions, has no teeth (not even dentures) and dresses in rags. She shows up here from time to time and is easily mistaken for a homeless person.
Why did I buy an electric car to go charge it somewhere else? I mean I have to take my car to go get gas,I thought one of the advantages of an electric car was that I could charge it at home.
Weird but ok.
There’s frugal and there’s pathological cheap. The OP’s BIL is pathological cheap. Well past the point of dishonest. Does he also empty the little basket of sugar packets into his pocket before leaving a restaurant?
What he’s doing is about 1 inch removed from taking tip cash off a table as he walks by on his way out the door.
It sounds to me like he just discovered a regular 110V on the outside of the store that he is able to access, and he’s charging from that.
That said, there are a few free EV chargers around, although like you say I’d be surprised to see one at Wal-Mart. There used to be free EV charging at my office, but they replaced them with paid chargers a few years ago. Back when they were free all the EV owners were fighting to access them. Now that they’re paid they’re much less in demand.
I gt the story from my other sister. I thought she said WalMart. Maybe it was another store. The impression was that he was using a free charger at some store.
I just googled and see that free charging stations apparently do exist in my SIL’s city - at grocery stores, hotels, etc. Please pretend I did not say WalMart and, instead, said “at a commercial location.”
I knew a guy that was pretty well off, nice expensive house in a good neighborhood, mid-seven figure net worth, who refused to pay for garbage service. He owned rental properties (not single family, think 80-100 unit apartment complexes) that had trash dumpsters, so he would rather haul his garbage from his house to his apartment dumpster than pay the $50 or so monthly fee for garbage service at his house. Didn’t even have a truck, he hauled it in the back of his luxury SUV. Nice guy, but odd in this regard.
Exactly my thought. The guy is genuinely neurotic and suffers from a kind of money-related pathology. Someone who is not desperately poor and puts in a lot of time and effort just to be able to think “I just saved $2” needs psychiatric help.
My parents made economizing and saving money a lifelong priority. They retired with a nice nest egg as a result, but even though they loosened their purse strings a bit, in some ways their penny-pinching became more neurotic, to the point of occasionally being detrimental to them and their relationships with friends and family.
I wonder whether your BIL is maybe dealing with similar old-age tendencies toward neurotic behavior.