What's the most extreme example of effort to save a few pennies you have heard of?

The tights one is like something from Viz.

Some of these read like Viz Top Tips!

Elderly relatives used to watch lottery results on TV and work out how much they'd saved by not buying a ticket for their chosen jackpot numbers!!! We never heard if they'd missed out on a fortune ....

As for tights, I used to wear them daily at work. If I laddered or damaged a pair, I'd cut out that leg and keep the body and "good" leg. Then when I had a pair of "half" tights, I'd put them on, one over the other, so I would be wearing 2 body sections and 2 separate legs. It basically means your tights last twice as long!

That is just bonkers!

PIL refused to come to DD's 3rd birthday lunch on Sunday. They had googled and didn't want to spend £5 each on the lunch menu.

We were paying, I wouldn't invite someone for lunch then expect them to pay.

Not stopping them going on a £7000 week holiday in a villa in Spain with SIL and DN in a few weeks though.....

I was also told off for not reusing a teabag at breakfast as they told us they weren't coming for lunch.

Tight fuckers.

I had a friend at school who returned a pack of hair grips because the pack said it contained approx. 100. There were 98.

I think the stalk is the best part of broccoli misses the point of the thread

I love this thread. I often look at Mean Queen's blog and she does a lot of what's listed here. She's been mortgage free for a number of years, retired at 60.

Fantastic thread

Why are coupons not a thing anymore?

for I think someone did post about knowing someone who had one bulb and moved it around - I could imagine someone doing that.

swirl what do they do with it? We try and reuse foil on holiday for picnics as we have a limited supply, but I only get a couple of times out of it as it tends to go very crinkly and creased and then just rips. I have learnt though and after goodness how many years I will just take a longer one this year.

My Mum and Dad recycle cards to each other. Instead of picking one from the shop they will pick one from the little supply in the cupboard and send it again. The sentiment is the same in the card.

My ex from about 20 years ago would never use his windscreen wipers when it was pouring it down because he didn't want to wear them.out & have to buy new ones!! He'd drive with rain running down the windscreen, struggling to see but never switched them on.

I have known my PiLs for more than 15 years. They have a piece of foil (I think it maybe started life as the tray from a quiche) that they have been using since I first met them. The thought of the grease that has built up in its creases makes my stomach churn, but I guess we have all survived.

The light bulb stories though shock surely it must be burning hot if you try to remove it.

Gone as in the bulb has blown not physically gone.

Pirate - what does he use to cut up his dinner in the kitchen then?

I asked my mother for a cotton bud, she gave me a used yellow one.

When I was a student I lived on the same street as the train station for our town. We used to go in regularly and steal the toilet roll from the toilets on the platforms because they were massive and then cart them back to our student house. We saved a fortune in loo roll!

When my friend and I were in our early 20's we used to gatecrash private functions in the upstairs room at our local pub and help ourselves to the buffet .......... it was a long time before I realised this was dishonest rather than 'cheeky'. Likewise nicking the loo roll - from work/pub etc.

Not about money but DP will insist on cutting up his dinner in the kitchen so he only has to eat with a fork .... to save on the washing up.

It's a knife!! I laugh at him every single time he says this. And also point out that 9/10 I do the sodding dishes anyway.

A bloody knife. Well that's four gallons of hot water and half an hour saved eh? :o

I reuse wrapping paper. Seems a shame to throw it away.

I come from a family line of wrapping paper re-users. I tend to only do it for Christmas presents and for the presents that go into the dc's stockings now.

I have been known to re-use birthday paper, but that generally ends up in a bag for my youngest now as she likes wrapping up 'presents' and playing pass the parcel.

Certainly for my Mum it comes from a time of post war rationing and then years of money shortages, so everything had a (re-)use. Strangely enough my mil who is about 10yrs older (so was a child in war time) isn't the same at all (she stock piles though) and when 'caught' me saving paper the first year tried to give me a roll of paper.

For me it is a bit of saving money and a bit of saving paper.

The light bulb stories though surely it must be burning hot if you try to remove it.

Ha Starryillusion, just seen your post!

This is true.......

Someone I knew had a bed that was so old it eventually had springs poking through the mattress. As they were in the traumatic to them process of buying a new carpet as the present one was threadbare, a new mattress was out of the question.

However, on visiting them a few weeks later, they were beaming from ear to ear, and just couldn't wait to tell me of their clever idea.

On taking up the old, mouldy, worn out carpet they cut a square out from the middle of it you all know where I'm going with this don't you , stripped the bed, placed the carpet square on the mattress, and remade the bedding.

They insisted on showing me the bed to see how you couldn't tell about the poky springs too!

Even now, 25 years later, my ears are burning with mortificado !

Just remembered the extreme cheapskates when the family drove around looking for road kill to eat and turn into fur handbags. Petrol must be cheap in America to make that worthwhile.

buy full fat and dilute so it is 50% water making it semi-skimmed.

It doesn't work like that does it. Semi skimmed has had half the fat taken out. Adding 50% water takes half the milk out, calcium and all. At least I think so.