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 😂

I really think you should take the money, you’ve earned it putting up with your parents all this time.

This is financial abuse.

@Autienotnaughtie - absolutely. We've been there. When DH & I first met we were at a theatre group. It was decided we'd go out for a meal after one show wrapped. DH & I didn't have much money but we knew how much the set menu was, plus a couple of soft drinks on top so agreed to go.

Some of the members brought their kids and sat them on a different table to us all. Unbeknownst to anyone ordered loads of expensive hot chocolates & desserts as well as their food. People on our table ordered bottles of wine. When the bill came the Treasurer announced we'd split the bill between the adults only - say £50 each.

DH & I said no way, put down what we owed plus a contribution to the tip and left. At the next group meeting she tried to call us on on it, to shame us and say we still owed the money.

Luckily another guy who directed for us - and wasn't out on the night - tore her a new one. But we still remember her belittling us in front of everyone else.

I think your SIL did well here at putting her foot down! Her DHs family came over, why should she be the one to cook and serve them all a fry up? It’s suggested on here all the time - if he has friends/family over he needs to step up and host and she needs to not martyr herself in the name of hosting.

I'm convinced that a lot of extreme tightness is a personality disorder or similar. These people have hides like a rhinocerous, which the vast majority of us don't have. We would be mortified to be thought of as mean or tight, right?

I was about to say the same thing. Those who are always on the scrounge are probably just your regular CFs, but those who are very well-off and will sell their personal peace, dignity, reputation and ultimately friendships for literally pennies must have some kind of mental illness.

We rightly recognise and try to help those with eating disorders - when somebody who weighs under 6 stone genuinely believes she is grossly obese and thus can't eat more than a few slices of cucumber - but we don't recognise such a thing as a severe money disorder, driven by MH problems. Nothing at all wrong with being careful and avoiding waste, or being very frugal indeed when you have no choice; but what otherwise can be the motivation to spend your life saving a fraction of a penny here and there and then dying with £3m in the bank? Especially considering that you could have enjoyed a happy, prosperous, worry-free life and maybe still left £2m?!

@NeverDropYourMooncup

That sounds like you've had a load of really awful struggles and challenges in your life

Nobody here is talking about people like you, who have no choice but to live frugally and do without themselves. It's especially those who clearly have money themselves - whether they boast about their savings or have huge amounts of money that they freely spend on absolute luxuries when they want to. However, they will claim poverty and still expect all the really nice things, that they 100% do not need, but coerce somebody else - often somebody much poorer than they are - into paying for them.

Take a big blow-out takeaway for yourself, for example:

Some people will want one, but can't afford it, so they do without;

Some people will want one, and can afford it, but consider it a waste of money, so they do without;

Some people will want one, and can afford it, and consider it a worthwhile purchase, so they order one and pay for it;

The people we're talking about here will want one, either can or can't afford it, but nevertheless consider it a worthwhile purchase IF they can cajole/trick/deceive somebody else into paying for it for them, but NOT if they would have to pay for it themselves. All they care about is ensuring that they DO get it but DON'T pay for it themselves.

I agree. I think it can become a disorder.

I wonder also if in some cases, it's something people grew up with and can't shake off. And again, I'm not talking about frugality, or avoiding of waste but as you have described it perfectly - sacrificing 'dignity, reputation and friendships' for the sake of shaving off a few pennies usually at someone else's expense.

Have a friend who bought one bag of jelly babies for the children, then divided them equally between the children and parents.

Well done for speaking up at the time. Too often people get tricked into paying way more than a fair share in such scenarios.

Not my story but one I read elsewhere on the theme of stinginess. A guy stayed for a week with friends, while at work in the city they lived in. He was on expenses, but took all of their hospitality for granted and didn't offer them as much as a bottle of wine or a treat of any description.

On his last evening, one of the friends was out with him for a meal in a cheap and cheerful restaurant. The friend discovered that the restaurant didn't take cards so the stingy guy paid for both, and was insisting that the friend go to the nearest ATM immediately, to reimburse him before he left for the airport.

The friend let fly at the stingy guy about all he had saved during the week by sponging off them. Stingy still didn't get it, but I don't think he got reimbursed either.

I would love that jelly babies are awesome

I had to stop wearing shoes for medical reasons. I can only wear a pair the hospital gave me which are ugly. Someone I know was in my house and when I mentioned that she checked my shoes to see if they’d fit her. Ignoring the fact I was upset.

Me too! I can’t believe anyone would pay in this instance!

Im amazed at the amount of people who put up with other’s stinginess when it has a direct effect on them! Call it out. It’s obnoxious, rude and selfish behaviour!

My fella is known for being ‘careful’ (not to the heights of some of these but he’s ‘careful’)

i needed some new potatoes for dinner earlier (just for me-he doesn’t like them)

yesterday,I bought dinner,him a new tee shirt and a newspaper (the shirt and paper where for him) this came to about £25

as he was heading out of the door,I shouted through ‘if you don’t mind,would you get some of those potatoes from tesco please love’

he came into the room with his hand out for my card-for something that would have been £1.50 max!

he’s generous in other ways-with his time mainly-it’s just this huge blind spot with money (which does stem from his ex wife spending all the money that came into the house)

I would be very wary of that 'blind spot' of his. And the story of what it stems from. Very wary.

Thats not careful, that's stingy, he wouldn't even spend 1.50 on you?

Yes very tight of him

I would be very wary of that 'blind spot' of his. And the story of what it stems from. Very wary.

Thats not careful, that's stingy, he wouldn't even spend 1.50 on you?

Yes, this is a huge red flag. Even if everything he told you about his ex-wife is 100% true, he needs to understand that you are a completely different person and in no way to blame or suspect based on her behaviours. 'All women' is not a homogenous group.

I would wonder where else this attitude might manifest in the way he treats you. He is basically telling you that you are not worth £1.50 to him - even if you hadn't already spent significantly more than that on him just before.

Fair enough! Possibly we just projected tightness because were familiar with other aspects of her personality😅however, I dispute that the definition of tightness is limited to profiting off other people!! (although there are lots of perfect examples of this in this thread)

My cousin and his mate stayed at my house for 2 weeks for work. They were doing work that paid way above average. We fed them 3 meals a day and when they left, they gave us a bottle of champagne, costing about £30. I was fuming. I was imagining they’d leave us a decent lump of money. Silly me for not establishing this before they came.

But why would you assume they would pay you if you hadn't asked or they hadn't said they would?

I think you are in the wrong there with your expectations and they did what most people would do to say thank you, I do think they should have bought food but without knowing what you said/did with regards to feeding them it's hard to judge.

DH has a member of staff who charges all of her appliances at work am including battery pack. Refuses to use her electric at home

Oh also had a colleague who charged petrol money for giving people lifts home (fair enough) charged the larger colleague more due to her weight

This just seems sensible to me. 😅

Oh also had a colleague who charged petrol money for giving people lifts home (fair enough) charged the larger colleague more due to her weight

This is fucking hilarious, @HeArInGhandsgirl11 ! And I say this as a currently almost obese person myself!! But wouldn’t apply to me as I am the person always giving lifts, not the other way round. And do my passengers offer a penny of petrol money? Do they heck!

Such a good thread, OP!

Other ones I can think of off the top of my head: live-in carers washing their cars at work and snagging the client’s out of date yoghurt (would be chucked out otherwise 🤔, office colleagues stealing teabags and the good biscuits (leaving the shit, cheap ones behind).

When I’ve been really broke I have pinched loo paper, wet wipes and milk about tho be chucked out on a Friday, at an office job. No guilt as we often had to work through our unpaid breaks.