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

My friend switches his fuse box off overnight so there is nothing on in his house overnight.

When the tv remote wasn't working, My grandparents used to take the batteries out of the remote and then run over the positive side with a butter knife.

They insisted it worked and never ever bought or replaced batteries unless it was for a smoke alarm.

DH resuses teabags, but he drinks it so weak that it barely has a colour in it, so it gets about ten cups.

Saving the water like Troys suggested is a great idea!

My DH has a nasty habit of putting water in the bottom of our bottles of body wash to rinse out the dregs. If I'm unfortunate enough to be the next one to use it then I end up splashing freezing cold slushy water all over myself. He also used to put vinegar in the dregs of tomato ketchup bottles but the kids complained too much so he doesn't do that any more.

My dear friend makes her own tampons from cotton wool and uses folded kitchen roll as pantie liners .Said friend also turns her knickers inside out and wears only 2 pairs of socks per week

The mushroom thing is pretty clever actually!
Mine are pretty tame...
If I buy carrots that have stalks I always take them off before paying.
My gran hardly drinks so freezes ice cubes of wine for cooking.
I also use tea bags twice (but only Yorkshire)
I may have stolen toilet paper as a student...
DP saves his "morning poo" until he gets to work, to save our water/loo roll.

My friend and I were helping on a charity stall selling second hand jewellery. She tried on two necklaces and sighed " I love them both .....which one shall I have??" After some more time spent agonising, I pointed out that as they were 20p each, she could have both! After a bit more dithering she bought them both.....

Love the takeaway story

Turning the fridge off makes sense, last winter DH measured the temperature of both the fridge and our kitchen......fridge was warmer.

I knew someone who used to cut q tips in two. Pretty frugal that.

And let's not forget the everlasting chicken (though I do make four meals out of mine as well).

www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2017/apr/09/how-to-make-a-chicken-last-a-week-angela-hartnett

I've thought of a couple more.
Family of four sharing bath water and insisting visiting guests do the same .
Stealing loo paper from public places.

Mushroom man :o that's hilarious and quite clever really. What a fun guy.

At uni my housemates and I would walk from our shared house to lectures most days (approx 30min walk) but if it was pouring down we'd hop on a bus to avoid getting soaked. One of our friends refused to pay 50p for the bus and would get drowned - she'd then have to dry out the contents of her rucksack/book bag!

I know a guy who deliberately started an argument with another family, so that he could sell their immediate neighbour billions of dollars worth of tanks and airplanes to defend themselves, plus additional services to act as a regional 'minder' got paid in the form of permanent shares in all the oil fields in the region, left behind their remaining now obsolete tanks, which they promptly billed the neighbour for which proceeds were used to develop a new range of smart tanks and airplanes.

Smart move as they saved $ Trillions!

A guy on Facebook told everyone how he took some bottles of smart price lemonade all the way to Florida so he didn't have to pay for drinks when out there!
The episode of extreme cheap stakes where the guy had one light bulb for his house and used to take it from room to room with him.

My MIL is loaded has has a few of these traits, like the house being a constant 14c as they'll never put the heating on, scabbing toiletries off me on holiday because she's too tight to pay to check in a case to bring her own. Offering to buy DD a Boden coat but rescinding the offer when I chose one not in the sale (sale criteria not expressed at time of offer. I guess she assumed they were all on sale. I even offered to pay the difference!) My favourite was when we'd been to the shops together (M&S) I'd bought some clothes for the kids. She made me carry her food shopping in the bag with the new clothes (think packs of sausages, all sorts of refrigerated goods with condensation on) rather than pay 5p for a plastic bag. Grrr....

FIL is as bad, they own a holiday home abroad see loaded but he refuses to switch the aircon on in his bedroom, even when it's over 40 in the day and 30 at night. Instead he tries to sleep on a sunlounger on the balcony

There was one woman who peed in a bottle and threw it in the garden so she didn't have to flush her loo.

Actually this is environmentally friendly. Urine is a good fertiliser for plants, and people have been using it for thousands of years. Plenty of people pee into compost as it adds nutrients. Modern flushing toilets are highly wasteful of water, and it takes a lot of energy to clean it again to go back into water supplies.

I know someone who will only charge phone in work.

Someone who goes to the gp for a prescription for calpol and head lice solution for their DC.

Someone who reuses teabags multiple times.

Miserly
Yes
That's the word
Ugh

When my ex goes shopping when his children visit, he insists on them carrying the items to the car. They have reusable bags, but he always forgets them.

I used to be a on a water meter. Thankfully, no longer, I'm saving £300 pounds pa, but I still am conscious about saving water.

I will use a tea bag for two cups of tea (Yorkshire).

My MIL would not light the fire until it was 6pm. We'd all be sitting in our coats all afternoon in that miserable front room. The room never heated up to being reasonable temperature til it was 9pm when we all went to bed, still in our coats.

Miserable.

I hate misers. I would divorce anyone who turned off all the switches at night.

Okay - once again, the plug thing. Yes, you should unplug electrical items when they aren't in use. I am one of those MNetters who had a significant house fire because something I left plugged in caught fire! (It was a food processor).

I had a house mate who had obviously been raised to look after the pennies. She insisted on washing basic dish cloths. The ones that cost 90p for 10..I said I didn't want them in with my washing (cos yuck) she was a bit surprised and suggested washing them separately. I pointed out that would cost more than just buying new ones!

Had huge rants about the level of milk used in the office, there's only so many drops you are allowed in your tea people!

This reminded me of an ex-co-worker. To save money when it was her turn to bring in milk, she would bring it in an old juice bottle, not too bad really I know. Except she refused to wash the bottle out first so the milk always tasted of whichever juice had been in the bottle beforehand. Made for some very weird tasting coffee. It got to the point we would throw out her milk, wash the bottle, then replace it with milk we'd sneaked in instead. If she caught us washing the bottle she would bin it and bring a different one the next time.

As a student, a family member used to take a penknife to the supermarket to cut the extra stalk off heads off broccoli before weighing and paying.