I was never cheap until I had kids. I remember being in the store and looking at something that was about 10 bucks. Then it hit me that my $10 meal could instead by a can of formula and the baby could eat for a week. Suddenly, I was a miser. I have expensive tastes, but rarely allow myself the luxury.
I’ll insist that my wife buy a $100 outfit cuz she looks great in it, but will not buy socks for myself unless they are in clearance.
I’ll make a bandaid for myself out of duct tape and TP (my kids might need one and I’d hate to have used the one bandaid that could have made him feel better).
I too will reuse tea bags for myself, to the point where I’ll need 5 bags in a cup to get a decent strength.
I’ll starve rather than eat the leftover dinner in the fridge (someone else might really have plans for it later). But if it was left out overnight, I know that they might get sick from it, so I’ll eat it.
When we lived in the desert, if it was just myself in the car, I would not use the AC to save the half pint of gas.
I did splurge on the gold mesh coffee filter, knowing it would save cash in the long run over paper filters.
I use the same razor until it literally starts pulling hairs out, rather than cutting them. And I haven’t used shaving cream in 10 years. Water does a decent job. And I don’t use after shave, I use rubbing alcohol (same thing but without the aroma).
This week my home town, Philadelphia, has been having a heat wave. With the humidity, most days felt over a hundred degrees. An elderly woman actually died rather than use her air conditioner. She felt that she could not afford it. It would be comical if it wasn’t so sad.
I’m a cheapskate myself. Being resistant to the cold, I leave my apartment around 55 or so in the winter. The real problem with this is that my hands tend to chap rather badly. I walk the 20 blocks from my shrink to the comic book store rather than give SEPTA the $1.90 for a 2 minute ride. I do dumpster dive for some things. I’ve saved a fortune by harvesting electrical components from discarded TV’s and such instead of buying resistors, capacitors and the like from stores. I’m writing this on 133 MHZ with 32 megs of ram. I’ll upgrade when one of my friends uprgades their system and gives me the old parts. I have no long distance provider. When I moved in, I realised that I make so few long doistance calls that using 1010321, 1010220 and the others is actually cheaper than paying a monthly long distance fee.Of course, I can get away with most of this as I’m living on SSI.
They’d probably go STALE after awhile-so what was the point?
Some people…
Silky-just have to ask-was he a lousy tipper, too?
Hey, I always check coin returns on phones when I use them…once found a buck. (I don’t do it obsessively, but just for the hell of it).
Let’s see, Mike-your DAD tried to pull a tooth on you? Um…isn’t that, shall we say, abusive? I don’t want to start something, but that strikes me as downright cruel.
And hey, who DOESN’T bring their own food to the movies…a small popcorn is five bucks. It’s seriously seriously overpriced…why bother?
A guy in our school district-the School lunch program director-resells the milk that isn’t drunk. What the little kids are supposed to do is put it up on a table-where normally it would be thrown out, or taken home by cafeteria staff. No, this asshole takes it, refreezes it and resells it. Which is ILLEGAL. Not only that, he cheats on all the expenses. I’m thinking that he’s not cheap, though, but simply pocketing the difference. I hope he gets caught, the bastard.
Let’s see…I don’t know if being cheap is the reason, but my grandfather washes his hair (what little is left, that is) with regular bar soap…even when he HAD a full head of hair. Ick.
Oh yeah. Horrible. In fact, rarely even left a tip. If he did deign to tip, it was always a dollar.
One time he left two dollars because he knew the waitress from school.
Mostly he avoided places where he had to tip. Fast food places and the like were where he preferred to go.
Also, if we DID happen to go somewhere decent, and he left nothing or his usual crappy buck, I always left more money out of my own purse. But I had to do it after he’d walked away, or he’d pick it up and put it in his wallet.
Now wait just a minute; I might agree with you if the roadkill in question was a possum or a tortoise sqaushed on the interstate. But a full grown deer? Abandoning that is just wasteful! Here in Alaska, moose/auto interaction is common, and a freshly killed moose can yield 500-100 pounds of very good meat. Read this to see how this meat is put to a good use.
I would like to turn this thread a bit, and make a comment-what IS WRONG about using an asset for the whole of its useful design life? I am an engineer by trade, and I am constantly amazed by how well most products are made today-yet people only use them for a small fraction of their designed lifetime. For example, a good quaity medium-priced car will last for 20 years (if given good care). The average TV set should last 11-12 years, radios at least 30 years. Your house, if maintained, should last indefinitely! So why do people waste so much money, by throwing away products that are still good? Here’s a sample of my inventory of goods:
-wristwatch (Waltham, 1928)-works great!
-vaccuum cleaner-ca 1965, works great (I had to replace the cord)
-dining room set-ca 1920’s
-TV-1976 model (color is beginning to fade)
-my forks and spoons and kniives-1930’s
I say this because it seems that Americans love to discard products that have many years of service remaining-why??
I agree, buddy1. I think people either don’t realize that something old still can be very useful, or they don’t care because they like getting new stuff (North Americans are uber-consumers, you know). There’s also the factor that stuff made recently was never built with the idea of lasting.
I think because some things shouldn’t be used that long-such as old cribs (some of them have lead paint on them), and old microwaves. Not everything is exactly safe.
Still, I LIKE old things, like old furniture and jewelry and old clothes. But it should be stuff that is BUILT to last, not falling apart!
First, it wasn’t a moose. Second, I didn’t abandon it; it wasn’t mine to abandon. Third, we had enough to eat, so it would have been wasteful for us to have taken the deer when we didn’t need it. Fourth, it didn’t go to waste, it was picked up within a few hours. Fifth, my stepfather seemed most upset about it being an “eleven point buck”, not a food source for the family.
But most important, and I thought I made this clear, I would have had to skip school (Chemistry first hour, and probably second hour Calculus) to go find my stepfather and show him where the deer was. He considered his trophy, a trophy he did nothing to earn, more imortant than my education. I maintain that this is cheap.
By the way, the farmer who did retrieve the deer butchered it himself, and offered my mom half the meat as a reward for having found the deer. My mom thanked him for his generous offer, then suggested that he give the meat to a family that needed it, which he did.
Once when I was a prep cook, my boss made me go through an entire box of rotten green peppers so I could cut tiny pieces off of each one. Any sliver he thought he could pass off as unspoiled. This is the same guy who underpaid us on each paycheque, had my wage subsidized as an apprentice cook (but only paid me a dishwashers salary), got in trouble with the labour board for working us too long without pay, and passed off Chef Boyardee ravioli as homemade (and charged a lot for it). Pity the chefs who worked for a set salary. One chef quit when he figured out that he was working for less than $2 an hour. Did I mention this boss also used to feel me up everytime he passed by?
I did not feel bad when his partner cleaned out all the money, ran back to Greece, and left him with all the bills.
i vote for the dad who burned off his cancerous mole with a cigarette. wow.
on the roadkill thing, my dad, when he hit a rabbit or squirrel, would stop the car, get out and check the meat, and if it was good, take it home and eat it. partly cuz it was cheap, partly cuz he HATES wasting food (roadkill=food to him, what can i say), and partly, and this is the most disgusting part, cuz he prefers rabbit and squirrel to steak and lobster and such. i swear. if he didnt grow it, shoot it, or catch it, its just fuel.
I cannot even fathom how one could spend that much money at the movie theatre. How much junk do you get from the concession stand?
Also, I hope, for your sake, that your girlfriend pays sometimes. Even if you have a cushy job or rich parents, spending $50 for a movie date is outrageous. Does she always expect you to pay? It also seems odd to me that you spent $150 on a ring for her and you are only 16. I’m 17, and if I had a boyfriend :mad: and he spent that much money on me, I would make him return it. But that’s just me: the would-be best girlfriend in the world.
There are people that are just the opposite. My secretary was talking about shaving her legs and said that to keep from cutting herself, she always uses a new razor. In the first place that is dumb reasoning, but in truth I think she was too good for a used one.
Also on Guinastasia’s question about stale crackers, I sometimes get soup and bring it back to the office to eat. I like lots of crackers and keep some in a drawer from past lunches. As long as the wrapper is still sealed, I can use them if I run out.
My mother used to tear napkins in half. My folks were from back in the Depression (at least in their minds, it was always capitalized).
Depending on how long it’s been since one shaved one’s legs last (last date, shorts weather, other factors) it’s a good idea in terms of time saving to just use the razor and throw it away before you use it a second time and butcher your legs. Remember the legs are probably a square yard of skin or so…and you’re doing this with a 2" razor.
Razors…the good ones I buy are 2.32 for 10, the cheap ones are 1.50 for 10 at Target. If you’d throw away your McDonald’s cup a quarter full, why scrimp to save a 23 cent razor? Besides, saving a 12 cent shave for a greatly increased chance of cutting yourself seems like a false economy to me, since Band-Aids are about 10 cents each.
Corr, who hasn’t cut her toes off yet, but believes in new razors
We lived with her for a short while before we found our own place. We got along fine before I moved in, and we get along fine now I’ve moved out, but we didn’t get along real well while we lived together. Her way of thinking was so totally different from the way my family* thinks. Luckily, her son (my fiance) takes after his father, and is generous and considerate when it comes to all things financial.
*I did think of an example from my father before. Here in Australia, we stopped making and using 1 and 2 cent coins a few years ago. The smallest coin in current Australian currency is 5 cents. Despite this, most places still price things at an uneven amount (example $9.99). Therefore, when you go to pay for your shopping, if the amount comes to 3,4, 8 or 9 cents, it’s rounded up. If it comes to 1, 2, 6 or 7 cents, it’s rounded down. My father once tried to get me to take the few items we had through in two trips so the total would be rounded down instead of up, saving us a whopping 5 cents. I refused. Dad is quite generous in day to day life, but sometimes this frugal streak raises its ugly head, and needs to be scoffed back into submission.
Um, Kniz, you should ALWAYS throw away a razor after only a couple uses-other wise you can cause major cuts and ingrown hairs. That’s just common sense!
Am I the only one here who uses a razor where I can change the blades? And I considered it a cheap-ass move when I decided it would save me money to buy new blades instead of disposable razors.
And here I was thinking that everyone just bought new blades and kept the old razor–like me and Motorgirl. Well, what do I know?
Here’s another Depression-era leftover which I have observed in my Dad (but not Mom) and my friends’ dads who are in their 70s-80s: These guys think that “a dollar or two” should be enough for any tip when they’re dining out. The total tab or quality of service doesn’t matter to them.
