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 😂

My husband tried for a few Winters to get me to light the fire with a piece of fire lighter no bigger than a broad bean.

He can manage to light a fire with a piece this size but it takes ages to properly get going. He has been told to fuck off several times 😀

My wealthy friends came for New Year for four days. We provided everything in the way you f food, snacks, entertainment etc. They bought one bottle of crap wine with them and four beers ( which none of us drink). They consumed all our champagne and nice wine, when they left they unbeknownst to us took their own booze back with them. CF. 🤣

"A friend! who paid for a meal for 3 of us using her Tesco vouchers and then asked us all for our share in cash.

Someone I worked with (and who would have been on at least 3x my salary) would ‘borrow’ my copy of Q magazine and use the office photocopier to copy and take home the articles he wanted to read.

I went out for lunch with a friend and when the bill came I said we'd go halves. Oh no, my cake cost 10p more than hers so she deducted it from the bill before she paid her share.
Another friend had a daughter that only ate egg yolks, so she put the whites in the fridge for her husband's take-out for work.

I did a favour for a friend. She wanted to thank me by treating me to tea and cake. Asked to borrow money to pay for that.
Also... gave me a tenner for my birthday, then took it back to get a cab home.

@SDTGisAnEvilWolefGenius and @TreacheryPepper spitting feathers means to be angry, I’ve never heard of it to mean thirsty, even a quick google confirms the angry meaning…maybe it’s regional?

@Rainbowdashpinkiepieapplejack

im now nc

With both of them, I hope. What awful people. 🌹

I wonder whether she deliberately wrote the cheque in the restaurant so that everyone would see how tight he was.

My friends exh who texted her after their ds had stayed over at his, to ask for her share of the tooth fairy money.

And not to be outdone, my exh, who had to accompany me to the bank to close our joint account. He’d left me a couple of weeks earlier for the ow while I was on an unpaid career break. The account had £1.27 in it and he asked for his half.

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.

This made me laugh!

We were invited to Christmas lunch for five families at a family member's home. She owns four properties and has several foreign holidays each year.

We told her we would be taking fizz - enough for everyone, lots of soft drinks and two desserts for the table.

After the ~mediocre~ meal, one family member (who had taken nothing towards the meal) suggested we all give the hostess £40 per adult to help with the cost of catering for so many people.

It put us in an awkward position, so we ended up paying £80! We had actually spent more than that on the drinks and food we'd taken with us.

The following year we were invited again and declined. 🤣

Spitting feathers definitely means thirsty down here

This made me feel quite ill just to read. I may need a large gin

Had a night out with three friends. The following morning three of us received a text from the fourth friend explaining that we hadn’t given her enough cash to cover the taxi we all shared home (she was the final drop off) and that we each owed her 50p

WOW!
I’d be making them order massive pizzas for finishing all the food! Or charging them. With bank transfers etc these days it’s easy to stand over someone and demand money

These stories are all so funny 😂

I know one guy who does the rounds of discounted boxes for Hello Fresh, Gousto etc. Just does a rotation.

About 20 years ago a group of women got together at someone’s house every few weeks for supper followed by an evening of cards and catching up. The hostess provided the food and the others would organise the drinks. If you didn’t want to cook we were happy with takeaway.

We were all on decent salaries but only one woman was rolling in it. She was on about £120K pa back then. And single, no DC

When this woman’s first dinner came around she gave us plain boiled peanuts to nibble. The main course was a casserole of summer squash boiled in milk then baked with onions and Ritz crackers. There was no pudding. No one including the hostess was vegetarian, though we all liked delicious vegetarian food. That statement has no relevance for this meal.

She never hosted again.

I know the tightest man in America. He lives in New York State.

He carries a little coin purse so he can whip it out and use the coins when he splits his half or third down to the penny.
He cheats the servers out of their full tips - he never leaves anything more than 10%, which is insulting to servers here in the US.
Instead of going 50-50 on a meal out, he insists on the parties paying for exactly what they ordered, so he doesn’t “get cheated” out of $1.
He made his wife quit teaching because “she spent too much on clothes.”
He meets his friends for coffee once a week — they all throw a couple of dollars on the table, but he counts out $1.43 exact change. They all make fun of him behind his back.
He’s extremely wealthy — owns a very, very lucrative business. No excuse for his tight-fisted behavior. None.
No children.
Oh — he also took the checking account away from his wife and now doles out the checks if he thinks the reason is legitimate.
They’ve been married for 43 years or close to it.

WHY???

I once went out for a meal with friends. When it came to desserts only one friend ordered. The waiter brought a few spoons and she said, go on have a try. I tried one spoonful and at the end when we got the bill she charged me for that one teaspoon of ice cream!!

It appears to be age-dependent - over 50, more likely to go with "being very thirsty" - under 50, more likely to be "very angry", apparently.

It's a form of control: coercive and financial control that takes this behaviour out of petty stinginess to another level. It is abusive behaviour which leaves a nasty aftertaste in the mouth. Stingy people who are wealthy are that because they don't spend unnecessary cash. They are happy to spend yours though, just not theirs.

My bil is notoriously tight fisted, we went on a picnic once and my ds wanted to share crisps with his cousin. They were both quietly swapping each others crisps until bil saw them. He grabbed the crisps out of ds' hands and told him he had to eat his own. By which point his dc had already finishedy ds's crsips but bil wouldn't return the packet to ds.

He's awful, he's quite happy having you pick up the bill but will calculate to the last penny if he has to pay.

I was once in a place in London, the Rainforest Cafe if it matters and a lady with an american accent was paying her bill and picked up a 5p coin and asked me if it was OK as a tip? I said, "no, that's an insult" SHe was on the first day of her first trip to London so I can forgive it.

My SIL is from a wealthy family and is notoriously tight. We went for a meal with them years ago and the bill came to £78. I would have been happy to go halves, although my total meal came to about £8, they had 2 courses each and shared a pudding, and a bottle of wine (both having steak at £12.50 each). At the end of the meal she examined the bill and counted out £25 for the two of them, I sat there in silence for a minute and BIL laughed nervously and said that she hadn’t put enough. She said she had and after an embarrassing debate between them she reluctantly produced another £5 (still not even half!). I paid the rest of the bill and didn’t know whether to laugh or cry!

I'm nowhere near 50 and 'spitting feathers' means thirsty where I grew up (Lancashire). :D These stories are hilarious.
I know someone who picks his dog's poo up with bits of cardboard to save on poo bags.

I was a teacher for many years, and one of my colleagues made plans to walk her class to a nearby cafe for lunch on the last day of term. It was quite a big group because many parents also went as well as the TA’s. The cafe had a separate room where large groups were served, and individual cheques were given to all adults while students were prepaid. After eating their meal, the adults each left a cash tip on the table as the class went outside to walk back to school. After the term ended, one of the TA’s told the teacher that another TA (who was known to be untrustworthy) had stolen all the cash from the table. The teacher was mortified because the cafe owner was well known in the community and probably thought everyone had failed to leave a tip.