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 😂

@JeanMarie , what a picture you paint- I can imagine him having long filthy fingernails, bad teeth and breath, long, thin, greasy hair and a stained top and feel that -he’d made the effort for you. Bet he lived with (and off) his old mum, who also felt he was a catch and what a ‘lucky’ lady you were to be on a date with him!

We live in a small block of large flats. A City lawyer and his surgeon wife (thank you LinkedIn) lived in one of them. They had two small boys.

During the first lockdown we asked if they would like to borrow a huge box of Brio wooden train set pieces to keep their kids amused. Our kids are adults and we are saving the Brio for any potential grandchildren.

They were delighted and kept them for 9 months when they were about to move out. Frequently telling us how much their DC enjoyed the train set.

Not only did we have to ask for it back (we knew they were about to move out), but we received nothing as a thank you. Neither flowers or chocolates or even a note.

So mean

FIL again. Taking a shed down and extending his garage left him with a lot of rubble and wood to get rid of, he wouldn’t pay for a skip to take it all away, “ Too dear”.
He loaded it into the boot of his car and took it to the tip. This took several trips, the last one resulted in him overloading the car, the result of which was a snapped back axle half way to the tip, a breakdown service call out to recover the car and a hefty repair bill of £££. A skip would have cost him £70.00 at the time.

Ex friends of mine used to host a bbq and do up a list specifically telling people what they needed to bring. I didn't mind because they'd the hassle and mess of hosting but it took the p**s when one time I brought the requested steaks for 8 people and pork chops (costing a small fortune). Went up to the bbq to get food and there was literally 1 sausage left. I wondered how because everyone had brought so much food. Went to the freezer later to get ice and found said meat that we'd brought stuffed away in there... Okay we'll just pay for your food shop for the week love.

To top it off when same person came to ours for a bbq where we actually put all the food on and just asked if they could grab coleslaw on way as we'd forgotten, they brought value coleslaw that was about 36p at the time. Yet in social media they were showy, pretending to be loaded.

I don't think the manager in that example was a tightwad. She wasn't trying to profit off other people- if anyone it was the DH who was doing that - she just wanted her own milk to be available to her, and presumably didn't want to be milk lady for the department. Good for her.

dubyalass

I sort of agree. The relative I mentioned upthread is unpleasant and controlling. I dislike him and hate seeing how he treats his partner.

On the other hand, reading this thread and seeing everyone corroborating what a miserly tight-arse he is with their stories of similar bad behaviour is very cathartic!

I think I can be a tightwad sometimes but I try to hide it !

When I was a student. I had a friend who used to pick really expensive restaurants for their birthday. Order off the expensive menu drink wine and cocktails. Then you would have set meal or cheaper item. They would get really upset if you didn’t want to split the bill. They would complain I was being tight. To me though they were taking the mick so it works both ways!

ex dp used to put in requests for very expensive birthday presents.( over a grand) when I wised up he got nothing for being so grabby.

I am quite tights yes, but other people are grabby so what is worse?

One widowed man would hang around Lidl looking for bargains. He had £300k in the bank and no kids so estate going to random charities. Just go to M&S next door

He might actually prefer Lidl. Some of their products are better than any other supermarket, or not available in others.

@MyCatIsAJerk it took me a while to figure this out but it is abusive as they like to deny you pleasure and love inflicting financial pain.

I've figured out a way to dodge these stngey cf's when going for a meal out. I ask that my order be put on a separate invoice. Then I pay on my way back from the toilets so the cf's then have to pay for everything that they ordered. That's usually the most expensive items on the menu! Bil's face was an absolute picture when he realised he had to pay for his own £20+ King prawn main course! 😀😂

Here’s another one for you. “Peels an orange in his pocket so he doesn’t have to share the oil squirting from the skin”

MIL is notoriously mean, she once gave her other DIL an empty cardboard box for Christmas, but you nearly had to admire her nerve in coming to stay with us for three weeks including coming on holiday with us and only spending $20. She arrived empty handed, we had asked if she could maybe bring some Cadbury’s chocolate for the kids who were missing it, when she arrived she told us “the shops didn’t have any Cadbury’s”. Every time we went out to eat she would disappear to the loo when the bill came, another round of drinks at the bar - another toilet trip, she drank a bottle of wine a night but never offered to buy any. She would come to the supermarket and put toiletries etc. in the trolly and just assume we would pay. I really wouldn’t mind but she is loaded. The $20 was money she gave to DS1 so that three kids could go to the cinema (tickets probably $15 each). I decided in the end to find it funny rather than annoying.

Ooh a few
MIL
Stretching one egg between three dc by making French toast
Three DC offered a cheap lolly each or a 99 between them
On holiday waiting for fish and chips (takeaway) at a local pub telling me the suggestion of a g&t was very extravagant
When her mother died refusing to visit for a week because she would only buy an apex ticket
FIL
Saving everything that was broken in case it could be mended
Taking a broken torch out of the bin and taking it to three hardware shops to see if he could get a replacement filament (it cost £3.99
PIL
Buying a plastic ride on tractor for a combined birthday and Xmas present for DS's first birthday. DS's birthday is 25th December. They bought it on 27th December reduced to £8 from £13!

When FIL died DH found a cool million in his bank account! Their children remember being hungry. There was no financial abuse, MIL is meaner.

My maternal grandparents were once found drying wet snotty tissues on the radiators and used to wash clingfilm and spread it on the tiles to dry. Very wealthy people.

My brother used to drink with a group of blokes and one in particular could be very slow to get his round in, sometimes not getting one at all.

Brother sorted that one out one night by going up to the bar, got friend to go with him for a large drinks order, barman tells him how much, brother picks up drinks on a tray and says "my friend is paying" and walked off.

It worked, friend did get his round in after that without any prompting.

Someone else I know goes into his local drinking hole and if he sees a group of his friends at the bar, slopes up and orders his own, then turns around and pretends surprise to see them there. He's done it for years, they all know he's a tight arse. Funnily enough, he's is mega rich compared to them but can't seem to stretch his hand into his pocket to buy one round even though he's quite happy to accept a drink from anyone else in the group.

I think he's been challenged several times and has grudgingly bought a round but it's quite rare.

used to walk with my sister when our babies were in prams.

would stop for a coffee from the corner shop and take alternating days to pay. She would always ‘need something’ when it was my turn, usually for the kids, and I would always feel petty asking for £2.50 - £4. Until it began to fester into sheer resentment.

She said she needed whatever for tea and I said go in and get it then. I only had £3 in change which is how much the coffees cost. She stormed in and we never had walked again.

our relationship has improved A LOT in the past five years and I’m staggered how much of her shit I put up with/what she deemed acceptable.

There was also the skittles incident in Krakow Airport but that still gives me the rage.

This is about me being tight fisted. I was quite broke at the time but kept helping out a friend with money. Had handed them yet more money to get something at a drive thru. They told the cashier to keep the change and I went off on a massive rant. I'd probably have done it myself for the charity box but something just wound me up about them deciding where MY 20p went that day.

@Bootothegoose you can't leave us hanging about the skittles incident, you need to tell us, pleeeeaaase!!!

I'd have taken my meat out, and taken it home with me!

@CloudPine
I too despise stingy people.
When they die they can't take their money with them.
Someone else will eventually reap the reward of their stinginess. 😀

Long term group of mates, we would have a night out together every few months. One ex-friend who is no longer in the group was in his late 30s, flash car, good paying job, the best clothes and shoes, lots of posey photos on Instagram. Appeared to have an amazing lifestyle.

In reality, he still lived with his folks and was the type who always disappeared to the toilet when it was time to buy a round. If sharing a taxi home he’d always bail out at his stop with no mention of paying his share. There were plenty of nights where someone in the group put the dinner on their card and the rest of us gave them cash, except for this one guy who would feel around his pockets then feign shock that he’d forgotten to go to the cash machine earlier, but he would ‘make sure to get it after we leave the restaurant’. Of course no one would ever see that money.

The beginning of the end of our friendship came after one dinner when we all left a sizeable tip for the young waitress who had gone out of her way to make sure we had a good evening. As we were leaving, said ex-friend mentioned they’d left their mobile on the table so would have to run back. As he walked off I realised I’d left my wallet on the table also so walked back in a few seconds behind him, only to find him pocketing the tip we had left. I challenged him and he again feigned shock, claiming he thought it was our change from the bill (we paid by card so that makes zero sense but was probably the first excuse to pop into his head!)

MIL - didn’t want to buy DH a birthday present so she cut out a photo of an item from an Argos catalogue and wrapped it up in a big box as a “joke” 🙄

MIL is a real tightwad. She adores DS, her only GDC, but when he was little always bought him cheap copies of toys from the local market, then bleated and moaned because she never saw him playing with them. No MIL, because it was cheap crap and broke after 3 days! Poor DH had this his whole childhood, at least DS got decent toys from everyone else.

Her current thing is drying out and re-using paper hankies - she has them all draped over a drying rack on the radiator in her bedroom.

She also had a complete meltdown when I had done some shopping for her and misread her list. She makes a lot of bread and I thought she had put 5kg of flour, so I bought 3 bags. She rang DH to complain, she said she was so angry she could hardly speak, so we kept the flour and didn't charge her the £4 it had cost.

I have friends that go on camper van holidays and won't pay for a campsite- instead they travel round the country staying on friends drives, using their facilities and blagging meals every night.

Heard this one just the other day, from a sister who’d flown a considerable distance to help an old friend who was packing up to move back home. Another friend was there to help.

Among other hyper-CF incidents, this woman was very mean with food for her volunteer helpers. One night she made an omelette for the three of them, with - wait for it - three eggs! And then cut it into unequal pieces and asked who wanted the smallest bit!

Sister is now finally through with her.

My exact thought!

Some of these examples could be conceived as controlling behaviour, surely?

I did have a friend once upon a yesteryear who always bought mineral water to drink on her own round (usually the last in the rotation) but would happily drink alcohol on everyone else's. She was always careful with money.

Some people are unnecessarily mean with money (and generally mean spirited) but others are minding their pennies because they don't have the money to 'throw away'. There's a difference.

On the subject of the Brio loaned to a family, I don't think you'd necessarily expect a 'thank you'. The family may have felt that they were doing you a massive favour storing it for those nine months? And surely you don't give to receive?

People have very different value sets so it's difficult to apply one's own to others.

And people who are reasonably off but live on their own (and don't have dependents) can be the worst but possibly only because they become set in their own eccentric ways with no-one to 'check' them?