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 😂

Isn't there a saying 'mind the pennies and the pounds will take care of themselves'? Very true in a lot of these scenarios.

I can't think that I have ever known anyone who is mean minded like this. But there again I've never known people give 'every expense spared' type of presents to LOs either. I must live in a bubble of generosity of spirit

Ffffd

I'm sure I've appalled my parents this weekend, by shopping at the posh food store for a couple of treats when we visited. But they happened to find a couple of things in there at a much better price than in Aldi.

They are obsessively frugal, but very generous with us (they've just given us a substantial sum).

It honestly makes me so sad, as we're generally pretty frugal ourselves in all the small things, but don't forget to just live life and buy the fancy cheese every so often. Our frugality is so that we can buy those things without thinking, not something we do all the time.

@thecatsthecats very interesting you say that- my FIL went through a tight wad spell but came shopping with me to M&S one day and was pleasantly suprised at how much I spent relative to him- that's because I use a lot of 3 for £8 offers, plus yellow sticker and freeze and there were more things geared to him on his own. He has since said he uses M&S a lot- plus a bit of Morrisons/Aldi for some tins and packets and cleaning stuff and was actually spending less and having Less waste. He found he was overbuying at Aldi and Morrisons just because some stuff seemed 'very cheap' whereas he now is buying more carefully and less junk

Definitely the case on quality. I pointed out that Booths also has a 3 for £12 meat offer with MUCH better meat, less packed with water, than the Tesco 3 for £10.

Plus they recently expressed concern over my health - well, actually, I'm trying to improve my health under medical guidance by eating less processed food, and organic stuff is pricey. But I'm eating and therefore spending less, because my body isn't crying out for nutrients compared to their cheap biscuits etc.

@thecatsthecats Yes, I buy less but enough and plan more- I've found if I totally cut out the snacks and nibbles etc and plan meals better I can go higher quality - when my FILs partner was alive you used to notice that they had so much rubbish always in the house- boxes of bought cakes, loads of biscuits, tons of crisps and nuts but actually not much sign of food that could make a good meal

Back in the days of "bring a bottle" parties - a couple we worked with brought a small bottle of beer, plonked it on the drinks table and proceeded to drink all the nicest wine and spirits all evening. As they left at the end of the night, I saw him pick up their unopened bottle and walk out with it in his coat pocket!

A woman I know charged her adult children and their husband/ wives £20 each for Christmas dinner at her house. Her grandchildren were charged £10 each. And when one of her sons was bodybuilding and was only eating meat, she charged him £12. When she took her grandchildren away on holiday for a week, she returned with a list of expenses for her son to pay. This was things like ice cream, food and drink etc.

We had that one year.
Apparently it was £30 each on Christmas day.

This was despite we had done the previous year with minimal input from others (including no offers of help for washing up) and we were also doing Boxing day (which they hadn't done the previous year).
Dh replied, "we'll bring the same as you brought last year-a pan of carrots".

I need to know how they responded to that.

@WalkingOnTheCracks

I don't know because it was between dh and his brother, but the upshot was-we took a pan of carrots. 🤣

I can feel my facetiousness muscles kicking in.

I'd've turned up with a pan of carrots and put 37p on the kitchen shelf.

"Just leaving this here. Unlike some people, we like to cover the cost of the energy expended in cooking our pan of carrots...."

🤣🤣🤣

We have a family friend who's a single guy. My dsis and bil nvited him for dinner at their house, he asked if he should bring anything so my sis said maybe something for dessert or a little side dish. She's not a sweet tooth so wasn't expecting anything elaborate. He brought a dessert and some wrapped brocoli, both with the yellow reduced sticker on. You might think oh, he's just saving a bit of money but getting something reduced as it's going to be eaten that day but he has form for being tight.

He'll always bring snacks for himself but will happily tuck into everyone else's and if say, there's a pizza, he'll take more than everyone else and wouldn't think twice of taking the last piece.

ha ha. i love reading these posts- i’m so glad I started this thread. Seems there are so many tightwads in existence. thanks for making me laugh. 😃

The brother of a good friend of mine.
He's 56 and has never moved out of the family home because ' it costs too much '
He's not had a girlfriend since he dumped his last one when he was nineteenth because ' it costs too much '
Took a job literally on his doorstep to avoid getting on the bus because ' it costs too much '
Refuses to have driving lessons or have a car or any other personal transport because ' it costs too much '
God knows how much he must have in his bank!
Weirdly, he's very generous when it comes to gifts for his nieces and nephews.

My H used to work for a company and the owner was a multi millionaire . He was as tight as a ducks arse and the office cleaners had to do his house cleaning too, plus the gardeners was classed as a cleaner too so it was all done through work accounts. One day his wife bought some cleaning stuff on the wrong card and he went beserk be

Pressed send too soon. He went berserk because she'd spent £2.50 of his money

I love it! So many times I have read on here where people basically supply everything and then the 'host' has the neck to look for money from them.

A pan of carrots should become a catchphrase for such situations 😁

@lurker69

Oh that is hilarious!!!

My dad is ‘careful’
he hates shopping to the point he didn’t wear a mask in shops,only due to the fact he didn’t go near a shop during covid
anyway,years ago we where in a shop and I was 5p short so asked if I could borrow it and I’d give it back when I next saw him
id forgotten all about it when I next saw him-but he had his hand out for his 5p
hes minted-owns his own house and had lots of income streams but still quibbled over 5 bloody p

my mother is just as bad
my son broke his arm and I managed to get him to a&e
they wanted to keep him in overnight (my dad was having a fit about how much it was costing the nhs to keep him in) and my mother said she’d pick him up the following morning-to which I was very grateful
she duly dropped him home-and held her hand out for a tenner for ‘my time and petrol’

I wish I was joking

I'm not sure that tightness...that's close to mental unwellness. My instinct there would be to try to repress the irritation and consider medication.

DH sent BIL some money for one of his children as a present (BIL sends nothing to mine but DH always says he doesn’t want to be that person).
He used PayPal and accidentally paid for services so it charged him a few pounds. Cue ranty email about how he would have make up the difference. So DH sent him the few pounds to make up for it.
Still keeps going on and on about it. This is someone who keeps trying to present himself as well off.
Charged his dying mother for a bottle of water whilst she was in hospital as well.