WEll, I wouldn’t want to imagine what’s in their food…
I saw an American talk show once where they featured really cheap, mean people. Usually it was the father of the house and his long suffering kids’ stories. One guy used to buy large packs of double ply toilet paper and then have his kids unravel each rol l then re-roll them as single rolls. Two for the price of one (and the occasional ‘breakthrough’)
When I was 15, I worked for a large patisserie over Christmas. One day, I walked past a tub of pureed strawberries and saw lines of ants scurrying over th e top of the fruit. I picked up the lot and dropped it into a dumpster. The boss saw this, dragged me back to the bin by the ear (seriously!), hauled the tub out and told me to pay attention as he skimmed the ants off with a pastry knife.
Moral of the s tory: stay away from the pastries on Lufthansa flights out of Melbourne. I’m afraid I can’t remember any of our other customers.lM
I don’t see that as the issue here. But there’s a difference between extending the life of your living room sofa by reupholstering it periodically compared to taking a discarded sofa set out for the trash, propping up the legless corner with a brick, spraying it to hide the smell and tossing an old sheet over the stained fabric… Everything has a finite lifespan - real cheapos don’t seem to recognize the end.
Again, the difference between using something that’s perfectly serviceable, tho old, vice stealing plasticware from fast food restaurants instead of buying flatware.
I’m frugal, but I don’t think I’m whacko about it. When the lost leftovers from the back of the fridge emerge fuzzy and unidentifiable, they get tossed, regardless of what they cost when new. And when it’s more expensive to fix the VCR than a new one would cost, seems to me there’s no contest there.
But when you come right down to it, it’s only money, right??
I once had a summer job working in the kitchen of an office canteen; the maintenance guy was so cheap he used to fill a thermos of near boiling water from the water heater and take it home to make tea, rather than waste the gas and boil water when he arrived. He was cheap in a whole lot of other ways too, but that one was a real eye opener.
In a book I read awhile ago, this guy talking about his razor said, “You know, they just don’t get any duller after a certain point.” I use men’s razors and blades, and after reading this, I gave it a try. I now throw the blades out after a couple of months of use. No nicks, no ingrowns. I am curious about this subject, though, so I think I’ll go ask a General Question about it, if someone hasn’t already. [/razor hijack]
Hokay, I posted a thread in GQ regarding razor blade usage here.
I never turn on my AC either and I live in SC. I also never turn the heater on in the winter. Why should I pay SCE&G all that money? Hey, I run in this weather, why can’t I just sit around and sweat?
I once had a coworker, years ago, who bought a pair of pliers from Sears. Sears guarantees that if a tool is defective, they will replace it or give your money back, no matter how old it is. Well, this guy had the pliers for 20 years and brought it back to Sears. The clerk complained at first how old it was, etc. He insisted, so finally he was offered a new pair. The ex-coworker didn’t want a new pair. He wanted his money back, and the clerk finally relented, gave him his money and discarded the pliers. So, my ex-coworker said that as long as he was throwing the old pliers away, he’d like it back.
But that’s nothing. This same coworker used Sears paint to paint a bare brickwall, which didn’t work so well. So, he wanted his money back.
BTW, I never take a shower at home. I use the one at the gym.
I use an appliance called a Silk-Epil. Please don’t confuse it with the Epilady: it doesn’t cause the same problems, and it works anytime, not just for ten minutes after being charged for 16 hours. Anyway, it cost $100, but I’ll never have to buy any other shaving equipment.
It yanks the hairs out, safely and cleanly; yes, that is possible. It hurts like hell, but only during the procedure: no aftereffects. The problem I had with razor burn and oozing cuts is what drove me to this.
The objective is to get the hairs out by the roots, so the skin is smoother than if the hairs were level with its surface. I can see already that about 1/4 of my leg hairs have been discouraged and aren’t growing back. I can see little black dots that appear to be level with the dermis but barely touch the epidermis. My hope is that if I use it long enough, all the hairs will be vanquished. For an Italian, that is like hoping to grow wings. But it may happen. I bet most people don’t stick with it long enough for this effect to begin, but I’ve had this since Xmas '99, and I’ve used it exclusively ever since: no razors, not even once.
And now for a thread-within-my-thread:
Do you know any people who are extravagant in one way but very cheap in another, and you just can’t reconcile the two?
My uncle, a man of considerable means, is a high roller who thinks nothing of dropping a few thousand at the craps tables. But he will NOT shell out a few bucks for the valet or the bell captain; he insists on parking his own car and walking a long way, and on toting his bags everywhere.
Hmmmm?
Well, that doesn’t sound too bad-after all, he’s carrying his own bags and parking his own car-can’t complain if anyone screws things up.
Oh, man, don’t you think all these people should get together for a day? What a laugh watching them trying to outmaneuver each other for cheapness! My dad, another GD child, and WWII vet, does many of these, and more. He takes a shower, turning on the water long enough to get wet, turning it off, sudsing up (yep, shampooing with soap), turns it on to rinse off. Then, while bathroom mirror is marginally fogged up, uses a roll of t.p. to clean it. Reuses same towel for a week, and only the one, mind you.
Sprays vinegar on paper towels to clean in the kitchen, then lets dry, thinking that dampening later with water will rejuvenate (rehydrate?) the vinegar for another go. I don’t know if that really works, either. Sleeps in a sleeping bag on the bedroom floor (does have long standing back problems, so I don’t bother with this), and has one loveseat in his livingroom for guests. He sits on a kitchen chair. Checks out magazines from the library to save subscription fees, tips 10% of the pretax meal price, and scoops up all “freebies” on restaurant tables - you know, sugar packets, saltines, jelly packets. All of it. He does use them though. He’s really a good dad, so I would never give his name or anything. But I have a question for everyone here - are these cheapo’s really money ahead as a result? Are they all closet millionaires? (I know my dad isn’t, which makes it rather…quietly sad)
To be fair, I believe this is called a “Navy shower.” When you’re on a boat with a limited supply of fresh water, you have to be conscious of every little bit you use. No sense turning a bunch of it into graywater if all you’re doing is soaping up and rinsing off. The fact that he’s a WWII vet makes this explanation more likely, in my mind.
Now to my own stories:
My wife, when we were first dating, thought I was a cheapskate. At the grocery store, I would carefully look over the milk and buy the cheapest half-gallon, even though the difference was maybe a dime. I’d also get the store-brand macaroni and cheese box instead of Kraft, similarly saving a dime or so. She razzed me mercilessly about it.
But then she spent time with my family. She’d met them already, but the first opportunity to spend an extended amount of time with them happened when my grandfather sprung for a family trip to Cabo San Lucas.
First off, all eleven of us (me and her, grandparents, parents, uncle/aunt and kid, etc., etc.) were crammed into two condo units – people sleeping on couches, and so on. Second, even though they were on vacation, and the devalued Mexican currency made things really affordable, not a single person in my family went out to eat the whole week, except for one group dinner. Instead, they brought an ice chest and a couple boxes of canned goods, and made breakfast, lunch, and dinner in the room’s tiny kitchen.
After a couple of nights of this, my future wife and I bid them farewell and went out to dinner ourselves the rest of the trip. Over one meal, she admitted, “And I thought you were cheap…”
At the moment, my parents are really into golf, and they keep their eyes peeled for lost and abandoned balls around the course. They have, in the garage, five – count 'em – five large wallpaper-paste buckets full of golf balls (organized by type, no less), plus a huge cardboard tube/container four feet tall and eighteen inches wide (I think it used to hold linoleum) full of “substandard” balls that don’t go in the regular buckets. I wouldn’t be surprised if their collection numbers in the high four figures.
My father was even worse. (“Parents” above refers to mom and stepdad.) He would honestly have us put plastic bags in our jacket pockets and collect food off midday social-event buffet tables for dinner later. He would take us to amusement parks and tell us it was just as much fun to watch the people go on rides. He did all of his own carpentry and automotive work, and most of it was utter shit; I remember a half-assed deck he put behind his house that was constructed with leftover lumber, plus a “roof” that used clear Visqueen rolled out and stapled on a frame. Plus there was a pool or pond or something that he never finished; the idea was to sculpt it with chicken wire and pour cement over it, but he was too cheap to buy all the necessary cement so he filled in the space under the wire with wood chips and dirt. It never did hold together long enough to be called “done” – the weight of the water cracked it. He didn’t have a sense of humor about it, either; his failures made him angrier and angrier. He was a bastard, pretty much.
So, yeah, I’m still kind of a skinflint, but given my upbringing, you’d think I was Ben Affleck flinging cash around the casino.