funny examples of when people have been extreme tightwads / tightfisted

[Sensisoul]

i recently fell out with a friend who is known for being exceptionally tight with money.

They have no kids & do anything to scrimp and save so they can afford a champagne lifestyle at the drop of a hat. They buy expensive beauty items with free gifts and then take the items back for a refund afterwards and not return the free gift!

This is a light hearted post about examples of tight friends, partners & family members who have either gone out of their way to be tight or given terrible birthday/ Christmas presents over the years.

NB- This isn’t a criticism on saving money, being mindful of money to stop hardship etc. It is great to collect coupons and vouchers and I do the same. It is more a lighthearted look at how tight some people can be:

Tell me what happened and when & is that person still in your life?

I’ll give a few examples:

this friend requests vouchers from people at Christmas
but always buys people “presents”. These presents can be anything from some old used nail varnish to free beauty samples sachets.

Their family now insist that they buy them gift vouchers as they no longer want their version of “presents”

Only orders hot water in a restaurant/bar- so drinks are always free. sometimes brings own tea bag and milk if they fancy a cup of tea.

Insists on walking everywhere and is spitting feathers when they share a taxi with anyone. They would sooner walk home on their own at night and potentially risk their own safety, than hail a cab and get home safely.

Order the most expensive luxury drink at a bar and then complain said drink is flat and that another fresh bottle is opened. They would then complain again and get another drink free!

Arrange to meet for lunch/dinner at the venue of their choice & then not order anything at all from the venue & say they are getting something from the burger van nearby afterwards. Then watch me eat my food that was ordered from the venue while they sip on a free cup of hot water. ( the hot water was free btw)

Insist on always getting a child’s portion at any eatery. whether this is chips
from a burger van or a posh restaurant.
This person always has to have the cheapest bill at the end of a meal.

Send a sympathy card when my auntie passed away & have the text in the card crossed out!! God knows what the original card said 😂

Hell no. They cook up beautifully in the oven the next day

How can someone with an American accent even suggest that’s a decent tip.
I couldn’t forgive her that even if she’d been here 5 mins

Tips. Right, hard hat on, but I frigging loathe paying them. It’s not my fault or problem if the waiter isn’t paid properly. Companies should pay appropriately. If I go out (rare) sometimes I’m on a v tight budget and don’t really want to be there anyway. I certainly don’t want to add to my bill! Also, I’ve never been tipped in any of my jobs ever. As a nanny a long time ago, I once received a Benefit makeup kit. That’s it!

I think this post is aimed more towards people with plenty of money who are tighter than 2 coats of paint, rather than those who are genuinely struggling.

My dick of an EXH left me with 2 toddlers and a mountain of debt. Once I had paid everything out of my benefit money ( no child maintenance from him)
I had about 60 pence a week left.
A debt collectors used to come round and collect 5 pounds a week , one week I asked if he would accept 4 pounds because one of my pound coins had fallen down a grid ( that wasn't actually true!!) He felt sorry for me and said I could pay it next week 😀

Im London born and spitting feathers means angry to me. Im knocking 50.

@NeverDropYourMooncup This is why I abhor any sort of unpaid 'team building' at work. Collections, team dinners, etc.

It's unfair for your colleagues to judge you ...most social tightness is only an issue if it impacts others. And in most examples stated here... tightwads are happy to accept others' generosity, but won't put their hands in their pockets. You only drinking water, not doing SS (but not wanting a gift either) really affects nobody. In fact THEM wanting to split the very expensive bill across everyone is unfair.

The only issues are you nicking toilet roll (again, stealing, which while your circumstances are bad is still stealing). And rushing to the buffet. Everyone doing that and stuffing themselves is the reason why there's nothing else left for anyone at the end, isn't it? If everyone was sensible you wouldn't have to do so.

My ex on our first Christmas presented me with a big gift box of Molton Brown products.

A week or so later and I had obviously used some of the products he quite happily announced at how pleased he was at the money he had saved on buying me a present as he had found the gift box on a train.

Another time we stopped off at a quant pub for a pub lunch which was a rarity in itself and to his horror when we stepped inside the pub was 'trendy' and the food 'fancy' in his eyes and high price to reflect.

We sat down and he became more and more angry as he read the prices and had the nerve to say I (and him) could have a starter as the main meal.

I said no and with that he stormed out and I mean stormed out!

He was driving so I had to follow him out and the twit then was on a mission to find a pub with cheap food.

I think we spent the next three days driving around before he found one and he took great delight in scoffing his cheapo burger and chips in some run down grotty pub which had a hygiene rating of one star.

I know someone, not short of readies, who on holiday in Spain, walked 5k (and back) to buy a €6 bottle of vodka from a weLl known IDnternationaL supermarket and moaned about the state of their feet afterwards. There is a very nice bar and a supermarket in their hotel.

Heh, that reminds me of my OH who complained of my 'profligate' use of kindling - ie more than the three little twigs he insists on using. As you say, the fire gets going eventually

Some shocking tales here!

One of the meanest things I've come across was the behaviour of OH's brother and sister in law some years ago. It's a long standing tradition in OH's family that whoever hosts a gathering makes everyone a cooked breakfast next morning to fuel them for the drives home. OH's brother and sil have eaten a great many of these cooked breakfasts. When it came to their turn, they offered bowls of cereal and nothing else so OH went out and bought the breakfast makings himself. Both the brother and sil refused to cook and then sat in the living room scowling over their bowls of cereal while the rest of the family cooked and ate breakfast on their own. They did this without a hint of shame, just moaning 'Well, I'm not doing it!' and 'Well I'm not doing it either!' in front of everyone. It has not been forgotten.

Not me, but DH. His 'hobby' sometimes involves camping out with a group of 5-8 men and the 'rule' has always been 'bring beer to share but bring your own food'. Most of the guys bring a case of beer to share around and, obviously, their own food. Normally this means steaks, chicken, and the usual BBQ items. But one guy (there's always one, isn't there?) brings a 6 pack and some random bits of food for himself (crisps, granola bars, bananas, a sandwich or two). He drinks what he brings himself and then sneaks into ice chests and starts drinking what others brought. Then at mealtimes sits and stares longingly (think Labrador sitting by the dinner table) at the rest of them with comments of 'that sure looks good' as he sighs at his 'pitiful' sandwich. In the past one or the other of them would offer to share food or a few beers, but a few years ago they wised up to the fact that he always did this and never paid them or bought 'replacements'. So now they just say "Yes, it's delicious. Next time you should bring some for yourself". And as for the beer, they actually started bringing lockable ice chests.

He's not rich, he's not poor. He's just tight.

The thing with old people dying with expensive paid off houses and loads of money in the bank is you don’t really know what their pension situation is. They can’t spend their house value and they may have been hoping to spend the hundreds of thousands in the bank over the next 20 years as income because they don’t really have a pension. I agree though that they were often lucky compared to younger people and they shouldn’t expect others to pay for them.

When I was a trainee lawyer I was expected to pay for clients’ transport sometimes to the tune of hundreds at a time. I asked accounts for the money in advance and they looked surprised as to why I couldn’t just pay for it up front and claim
the money from expenses later. Erm, I live in an expensive city and you know what you pay me.

I'll never forget the time we treated DH's sister to a long weekend at Centre Parks. Our DC were 4 and 1. Hers was 3 and it was his birthday while we were away. She had tapped up DH and MIL to pay her fare from Aus to the UK. The entire weekend she accepted every meal out, every coffee, every drink and ice-cream. There was one night when we ate in the lodge having provided presents and birthday cake for the child she didn't supervise and after the meal she lay on the sofa to read a book whilst we cleared up and supervised three children. Because of a storm DH and DS had to come home via train and bus and it was hairy to fit her and her ds in the car to get them back to London safely. Her DS hit baby dd the entire journey and wouldn't share his toys/books. At the supermarket trip on the way home she a totally said as I paid "oh you're paying again, it makes me feel guilty. DH and DS got home at 10pm - they were lucky to have a got a connection and not to have had to book an hotel. She spent the entire trip whining that her house was tiny whereas ours was huge. I so wanted to say "yes love, because I worked flat out until I was 35 whilst you tried to be an an artist and did fuck all".

When her father died she decided not to come to the funeral even though dh offered to pay because it would be too stressful for her. And then whinged that she hadn't properly had closure to grieve.

When MIL was 80 she was bankrolled to visit the UK again, had all her expenses paid and whinged that they were really poor. She turned up to the 80th birthday dinner in trackies, trainers and a tee shirt because she had nothing else.

She has worked part-time in a shop all hernlofe and her partner stopped working as a carpenter for the aussie authorities so he could hand make guitars.

She never ever stops whining and comparing. This is the woman who told me dh was a corporate bastard and to think twice about marrying him. She has never fought shy of holding out her hand. I have no sympathy. She is an intellectual snob who turned up her nose at me because I liked nice, shallow things. I wouldn't mind if she didn't constantly complain about being skint and how the dc have so little. MIL has given them money for beds and computers over the years. I'd have told her to do some work compatible with her Russell group degree and full-time.

She is both mean in spirit and in sharing with an expectation everyone picks up her tab.

It was good to get that out.

@iklboo
@NeverDropYourMooncup

The people I described are all well off and it's the rudeness and taking from others I dislike rather than attempts to save. I hate waste so will go to lengths to avoid it. I have nursed 1/2 lager as I couldn't afford anything else. I would never judge anyone drinking water or not wanting to split the bill. Awful if anyone has ever judged you for not having enough money.

This is my experience too!

My exH was so tight. He'd complain bitterly for days about having no money for e.g. to pay the £165 road tax for our joint car when he had £25k in his current account doing nothing, and about another £700k in savings, and no mortgage on our £500k home (which he inherited and, unknown to me (or so he thought) registered in his sole name despite us having been married 15 years at that point).
All he'd do was moan about having no money. He didn't drink or smoke but had an expensive hobby and wouldn't think twice about dropping £200 on a new part for one of his bits of kit. Then read the riot act about having to come with me to Aldi and spend £40 on groceries because I didn't have a pot to piss in a couple of days before payday because I'd spent most of my wages on household stuff. When I left he offered me a £10k settlement.

It wasn't just money he was tight with either. Never did anything spontaneous, never showed affection.

This.

Been there,got the t-shirt.

Took me a while to stand up to CF’s. Some of them are very pleasant people to be around so it’s easy to make excuse for them because they are so nice.

Givers need to have very strong boundaries because takers have none.

tell us about the skittles incident- sounds intriguing

That's awful - did you get more than 10k?

Hope you took him to the cleaners and hung him out to dry @torquewench

Mine isn't funny just sad.

When my Dad died my Mum invited her four grown up children and six friends to bury his ashes and to a meal afterwards.

She told us she was paying for her friends but we had to pay her back afterwards (not in front of her friends naturally).

My Mum lives in a million pound house and has 1.5m in the bank. We don't.

Both my parents were so financial mean. I am NC now and 100% don't want any of her money after she dies.

Oh @Minimalme !!!
That is so horrible of your Mum.
I am so lucky, I have a wonderful generous Mum (and Dad).
She'd give you the shirt of her back.

East Midlands and mid 50s, has always meant being angry in my area. I've never heard it used to mean thirsty.