Mu parents have bought 48 tins of tuna

[CrinklyCraggy]

It was on offer at a discount store, worked out about 50p a tin.

These are not poor people. One of their biggest concerns is inheritance tax (I say fgs spend it!)

They don't even like tuna much, but have been back for another 48 tins.

This absolutely will not be wasted. They will plough their way through 96 tins of tuna that they don't enjoy, just to be thrifty, which they don't need to be.

They've always been ones for stocking up when the price is good - in then70s they would buy a whole cow from the butcher for the freezer, but surely this is ridiculous?

What's more, I mentioned that we actually get through quite a bit of tinned tuna because it's about the only thing DS2 likes in a sandwich and they didn't even offer me a pallet

Do you have examples of extreme and unnecessary thrift? I like a bargain, I'd stock up if it was something I enjoyed, but when you don't?

Tuna soup?? I’ve been vegetarian for over 30 years so I might be out of the loop, tuna wise, but I’m pretty sure you don’t normally put it in soup.

OMG this reminds me of my parents' and the Y2K thing. They believed that everything would stop working on Jan 1 2000 and that they would not be able to go shopping - so they filled a room with BOGOF deals - even if it was stuff they didn't like because it was a bargain. Then of course it didn't happen and they spent months "eating it up" because being Wartime generation they couldn't waste it ... so months of spam, oxtail soup and sandwich spread.

Do you think they may be worrying about all of the news about power bills and food prices?

Fantastic, they will save so much money. I have a 2yr supply of laundry tabs, washing up liquid, shampoo, hand soap and toilet roll plus a years worth of tuna, mackeral, soup, tea, coffee and pet food. It just makes good economic sense. I only ever buy things when they are on offer.

That’s adorable, @Vebrithien

I stockpile when things are cheap. I could afford not to but it seems silly not to buy things when they are on offer. I wouldn't think anything of buying ten or twenty jars of coffee for example. I think 100 tins of tuna might be a little much though.

If anyone thinks it's tight then that's fine by me. 💁🏻‍♀️

I’m going to say that maybe they are now worrying about inheritance tax BECAUSE they’ve been thirty all their life…

(My parents are the same btw)

Thrifty not thirty…..

We like tuna but have no space for any more than half a dozen cans sadly.

My daunt was very frugal. She died ast year and we cleared her house. Found a bag of wool and needles she had stashed from various charity shops, plus half a dozen knitted squares she had managed before she got too ill. I took the wool and the squares and enlisted the help of my ndn lovely mum and turned that thrift wool and squares into a hand knitted blanket for my lovely cousins new baby. They had gone through 6 years of IVF and found out they were pregnant just before daunt died. Daunt was so excited, it would have been her first grandchild.

So her thrifty ways meant that her granddaughter gets a hand knitted blanket from her nanny.

Daunt also used to take her solar powered garden lights back to B and M and Wilco every year just before the 12 months were up and say they didn't work anymore and get a replacement set.

Love the Christmas lights story, reminds me of her.

When I had to clear my parents house I found 74 large 300g jars of (I think) Nescafé instant coffee, all without labels!

Safeway had washing up liquid at 39p a bottle I bought loads then I got pregnant and genuinely couldn't see how much I had under my sink and bought some more while it was on offer (and it was on offer every month) when I moved I had almost thirty bottles it took me a good couple of years to get through it

[quote OhFuckBloodyHell]@Newnormal99 the lidl stuff is drained. You can have my share, I'm allergic to it [/quote]
Really! I'm off there tomorrow then.

My dad once spent a whole day in the car trying to find a route that didn't involve a £2 toll bridge. He must have spent four times that in petrol.

@SpaghettiArmsMurderer well spotted. He has good taste. You’ve just saved me a trip to LIDL.

My DH has tuna for lunch nearly every day. I'm sick of it and I don't even eat it. However, I might have to go and get this deal to keep him in tuna when the cost of living rises to the point where we can't afford anything.

My sister bought a box of 30 tins of pilchards in tomato sauce at the start of the pandemic.

She still has 29 left.

My mother is lovely but will never 'waste' money on a taxi and she likes to shop at the local supermarket which is about a 20 minute walk, or 5 minute drive away. She would rather injure herself than spend £8 getting a taxi back from the supermarket, even though she can afford this. Once she insisted on walking back from the supermarket with bags of shopping with a broken foot and frozen shoulder (she only told me about this afterwards or I would have insisted on picking her up)!

OMG OP, don't get me started! My DDad was not so frugal and would have the odd treat he fancied, but sadly he's passed away and my DMum is another level frugal! We took her out for a picnic back in the summer (just on the spur of the moment) and she really created because I bought a pack of sandwiches each. It actually spoilt what could have been a lovely afternoon. We also had a lot of ducks and geese turn up (we were by the river) and one of my sons fed them with a load of bread we'd bought and she stopped speaking to him because he'd used up the bread (that was for the week, not for her anyway!). He is 20 so was quite it was an issue.

She also made me return tights and pants multiple times as "They weren't quite right" basically she was trying to get them cheaper. She needed new glasses and I said no problem, get whichever ones suit you best - when she found out the price she stopped speaking to me for a bit (but I paid for them!). To top it all she fell over a few weeks ago because she had worn through the soles of her slippers to the carpet and didn't tell any one (she is ok though). She is well aware she has 2 brand new spare pairs of slippers in her wardrobe. Words fail!!

@KatherineJaneway

I'd buy that ☺️ Tuna can be used in salads, soups or stews. I use it a lot

Tuna soup?!

Tuna stew?!

What?!!

My mum would balance the empty tomato sauce bottle on the new one. Probably got a whole bottle’s worth of dregs over 30 years. Until one marvellous day the cat knocked of the Sauce Draining Tower and broke the full bottle. 30 years of hard work, all gone.

They also have weird ariconditioning rules. It does not go on unless it is over 37 degrees C. They will sweat through weeks of 36.9 degrees C because the magic threshold has not been reached.

In the wet season, it can rain for months on end. Will they use the clothes dryer? No! They drape clothes all over the house to dry. Now, it is almost impossible to dry wet clothes in the tropics in the wet season. I have to admire their perseverance.

@Mumdiva99 - the only way I can more or less stomach tuna is tomato paste sauce made with soften garlic in olive oil, reduce down some tinned tomatoes, add the tuna, cook until disintegrated, lots of black pepper and chopped parsley. On linguine or fettuccine because I'm weird and can't eat short pasta

Reminds me of the episode of my family where Nick brings home loads of cans of tuna

When clearing out my Grandparents' house, the kitchen was full of a few long life items. The things that stood out were jars and jars of red label nescafe instant coffee.

@SpaghettiArmsMurderer

I considered buying it for DP who eats tuna & sweetcorn pasta like a student but it’s only in brine or oil and he prefers spring water 🙄

Take the labels off. The springwater is used to make brine (it's just salty water). He won't notice the difference - I'm an utter arse about these things but this is water from a tap + salt vs more expensive water + salt; occasionally there's a miniscule amount more salt in the brine version. But 0.2% of a can isn't that much of a difference and there is even less in both of the reduced salt versions that have recently come out - if you go to the brand company, you'll find that they are part of a huge Thai operation and the salt content in all their brands is the same - it's just labelled differently.

Aw, I've just remembered one. My grandpa tried to make us children go up the sides of the stair carpet so we wouldn't wear out the middle so fast. Until my mum shouted at him it was unsafe! He was so careful and had a beautiful house to show for it and was a fab grandpa, we just thought these things were funny!

My parents do stuff like this. My mum's favourite part of their home is what I call the prepper room. There's a store room/ larder that is honestly embarrassing to me. It's a sort of hoarding I suppose. BUT they thought nuclear war/ survival living on supplies might be a thing in their lifetime (COVID revealed them to be very 'ready' but massively bad at coping). I frequently insist they go through and check dates / pass shorter dates on to people if there's a surplus.

I wish 48 tins of cheap tuna sounded weird to me.

My in-laws live in a very small house, which is home to them, my DB and SIL, and two cats. Until recently, there were three cats and a dog. The living room is tiny, but FIL hoards loo roll, so all the time I've known them there's been a large desk crammed into the living room, with packs and packs of loo roll stocked underneath. There are packs of kitchen roll crammed in over all the cupboards.

My parents have more space, but just use it to expand. They recently had a major upset, because the third freezer in the garage stopped working, and it was coming up to Christmas. That meant they faced Christmas - as a family of two - with only one chest freezer and two functioning full size standing freezers. The thing is, my mum will buy enormous quantities of food, but she never really eats it. Ten years ago she had a kitchen extension done and found she had loads of tins that'd gone out of date in the 80s/early 90s - she had a huge double cupboard full of tins so it's no wonder she'd lost track.

I think it's to do with being that middle generation - they inherited ideas about food poverty from parents who lived through WWII, but they had far more disposable income than we do, so they bought loads of stuff but never really felt the need to use it efficiently.