Cheapest thing a person has ever done

[Unorganisedchaos2]

Inspired by the children's birthday party thread, Im sure this has been done so many times but humor me as Im stuck at home with a poorly DD...

Our family once knew a couple who were convinced that the baby they were due to have shouldn't cost them any more than the family allowance and a grant I believe you used to get in the early 2000's. Some of the things they did:

• Commented that it had worked out well that the baby was born 2 months prem as they had been able to claim family allowance but he hadn't cost them anything yet as the hospital were providing nappies, milk etc.
• Refused to visit the baby until the hospital had issued a free parking pass then only visited 3 times a week because they were tired and as it was a 30 minute it was already costing a lot in petrol.
• Did a separate food shop for him of all supermarket own brand food and £1 meals, she actually had "his money" in one of those money bags the bank used and made the checkout person run it through as two separate shops.
• Spent hours in charity shops buying up the next few years with of clothes for him, at his second birthday they were asking us to buy clothes for 7-8 year old.
• Asked my mum to register as a childminder so they could claim childcare but expected my mum to do it for free (not honestly sure how that was ever going to work out)
• Not child related but he refused to drive above 50 MPH because he believed it was uneconomical, even if he was late for work or holding up a queue of traffic.

It all came to a head over a phone bill-i owed a £30 phone bill which I was going to pay on the Monday (this was the friday)

She snatched it up and walked out with it (I didnt see her do it-i was very confused as it just vanished and spent all weekend looking for it)

She came round on the Monday telling me I owed her £60 as 'I've paid it'

I lost it and years of everything came pouring out and I've not spoken to her since

Shes a narcissist and this was how id been brought up-dont rock the boat-shes the boss-her word is law-she does everything for you (she did nothing)

It's hard to explain unless you've lived it but she made me the scapegoat and everything that went wrong was all my fault

She'd swoop in and id be the useless one who's washer had broken ('so I'm doing her washing!I'm such a good person' or 'she didnt pay her phone bill,I've paid it and she owes me')

I felt like I was free the day I snapped and told her where to go and i wasn't putting up with her abuse anymore

Of course that makes me the bad guy and her smear campaign has to be heard to be believed

I do still owe her £30 but shes had thousands of pounds out of me-she can whistle for it

Shes not just tight (my father is worse in the sense he just refuses to spend money) but she uses it as power over people

Oh, not at all, its completely unhinged isn't it.

Thankfully most parents feel the same 🌺

I think this is really insensitive. It's common knowledge that many women struggle to bond with their babies surely? It's also well known that mothers are far more likely to struggle to bond when there's been a traumatic birth or serious ill health of either of them.

It doesn't mean they're crap mothers or somehow inferior to all those women who's hormones and mental health do what's socially expected of them in the hours and weeks after birth.

I can also see how some parents struggle to visit their newborns daily once discharged, for logistical, monetary, physical or mental health reasons and I would never dream of blanket judging them.

That's not tightness its good sense. Gets everything cooked using less fuel, which over a year will save on your bills.
Every little helps!!

Yes, I think these are very common. Steamers.
I have two, and there was definitely at least one set in my parents house. There wouldn't be enough space to cook all the veg for roast dinner without them!

My childhood friend had parents that were so tight - Her dad brought home blue paper towels and scratchy toilet paper that he had snaffled from work.
They lived like they were in the war (in the 1990s)
Her paper and books for school in Sixth Form were often old envelopes etc, or bits of scrap paper (until school stepped in)
My friend was their only child - yet they didn't really ever treat her well.
They had one tiny christmas tree and her presents (of which there were about 6) were always things like safety pins on a card, cotton pads for eye make up, a packet of Bic pens. Her 'big' present was always a cassette tape.
As you can imagine, she loved coming to my house as although we were on benefits, my mum was generous and loving- she did a stocking for anyone who might walk past our house during December 😂

Anyway, when my friend went to uni (on a full grant) her parents bought a house outright with no mortgage in a much nicer area and they made it clear she wasn't having a room there - she was welcome to stay at the weekend occasionally but that was it !

Having a big dinner party, cooked eight courses(I don’t do that anymore!),it was a big deal, one of my friends turn up with a bottle of the cheapest wine in the supermarket and proudly announced it was £6 reduced to £3. She’s known for being tight but there was no need to share just how awful a gift she’d knowingly brought.

I used to work for a multi-millionaire landlord and one incident still sticks with me. The day a tenant moved out, I took the final meter readings, completely standard procedure. The next day, she “coincidentally” went to inspect the property and noticed the electric meter had ticked over by one unit overnight. She called me insisting we had to close the utility account using this new reading.
A single unit cost about 7p at the time, yet we spent far more time and effort dealing with this than the amount was even worth

My mum always used a pressure cooker and I did as well when the kids were still at home. Now just the 2 of us the veg goes ina steamer over the potato pan and hey presto all cooked using one ring!!

Dh's grandparents invited us to a Boxing day buffet when we first met. I took with us a chilled bottle of decent white wine and a big box of biscuits. These were promptly taken away from me on arrival, never to be seen again- OK maybe misconstrued as a gift rather than a contribution. However I was then given a tepid glass of Liebfraumilch (yuk) and told to help myself to a very disappointing buffet 😑

I also had a friend who I hosted for the evening, along with others, provided snacks etc - she brought a bottle of wine and at the end of the evening as it was still half full, took it home again!!

that's not someone being 'cheap'...that's serious CF territory right there!!

Not as bad as some of the stuff posted on here, but here it goes. Once my DGM was no longer able to cook for the family (something she loved doing), my DF started going to her house every Saturday to cook instead. That means that, every Saturday for over 10 years, he bought enough food to feed about 15 people (at his own expense) and spent 4-5 hours cooking everything from scratch. One of my aunts was in charge of the drinks and bought wine for the adults, again, every Saturday for over 10 years. My other (cheapskate) aunt was in charge of buying bread and drinks for the children. Every Saturday, she would bring 3 small baguettes and one 1.5L bottle of coke and then would get mad when all the bread had been eaten before the main had come out, but she still never bought more than 3 small baguettes (despite this happening again and again) and would loudly complain about the cost to her (£3-£4 max) in front of my DF and aunt. We were 6 GC, of which 4 were hers, and they would scoff down most of the food and bread before anyone else had an opportunity to eat anything. My DF got so tired of this and other cheapskate behaviours that he went NC with her and most of her side of the family after my DGM passed away.

@Worriedaboutrapecourts and @WiggyWiggyImGettingJiggy so sorry to hear what you've been through. 💐💐

Agree. We were daily out-patients for a few weeks. I was lucky to have my mother drive us in everyday. Another woman who was also a daily day patient with her prem baby would travel 1.5hrs taking 3 buses across town wrestling a one year old, a two year old and her fragile prem new-born all in one pushchair single handedly on and off buses whilst she was physically sore, weak and exhausted post partum as well as hugely stressed about her fragile baby.

Some years back my DM had a customer (she worked in a shop) who had a very poorly child in hospital. My mum would ask after the child but she would say she was struggling to afford to get there so didnt go in very often - it was a bus ride way but then proceed to buy cigarettes.

My ex used to stay at mine at the weekend, never asked for anything towards the gas, electric, water or food he was using. I asked him in his way to pick me up a bottle of milk (bare in mind he’d drink the majority in his 10 cups of tea per day) he passed it over and told me it was £1.08, handed him £1 and he said to me deadly serious “you owe me 8p”. Fair to say he didn’t stay the weekend after that.

I've tried but all I get back is a shocked face and 'your lying'

Shes very good at acting-its a known fact about narcissists

I have a friend who is obsessed with saving money and gets really upset spending and gets her greatest pleasure by saving tiny amounts of money.
When daughter stayed for Xmas she went into melt down when her dd plugged in her phone to charge for a few minutes as she was ‘using the expensive daytime electricity’. She fell out with a hobby group who also met in the pib and she would only ever in only drink soda water that was provided free by the pub.
Every time I visited her (2plus hours c each way) she would said have arranged eg to collect piles of tiles from the next town using my car. On one of the visits we went for some chips /I didnt have any cash so she paid my £3 and then kept on indisting on remonfing me of her bank details to transfer the £3.

If you steam in the microwave it’s both quicker and cheaper

My parents were pretty tight. Skint I know but still - not only did we have shit trainers, but my mum would buy whatever size was on sale. At 14 she bought me size 7 trainers. I was a size 5. Unsurprisingly I never grew into them.

Many people forget the nicotine is addictive and that some smokers have a genuine addiction. It's very easy to judge someone for continuing to buy cigarettes when they're poor and have children, but it must be incredibly hard to give up an addiction when going through the emotional turmoil of having a child in hospital.

Fwiw I've never smoked.

I’ve got overseas family staying with me. They’ve had a lovely all inclusive holiday (at my house at my expense) for almost 3 months whilst “looking” for jobs. They’ve eaten and drunk like royalty! They didn’t even wait to be offered alcohol they just helped themselves - I came home one Saturday evening in the summer to find them already on their second aperitif sitting in my garden drinking my spirits.

They’ve not had to even buy basic toiletries. They just use what’s in the family bathroom. They made themselves at home straight away.
They finally got jobs (after much pushing from us), first pay packet and there was no conversation about paying their way.
We imposed a very modest contribution to bills (no rent) and told them to buy their own food now they were working.

When they started doing their own shopping and cooking they made a traditional sweet treat from my husbands home country that you can’t get here. (Think scones and cream or an elaborate favourite biscuit from a uk perspective). It’s the kind of thing my kids gravitate towards as soon as we arrive in his country on holiday (which isn’t very often). I don’t have time to make them as the dough takes time to get right, and then once cooled there are other stages until final finished item. I'm too busy with kids/work etc.

We all saw them bekng made in the kitchen. They didn’t offer any of us (not even my kids, one of whom has given up his room for them and he is sharing with a much younger sibling) even one small piece. They kept them in a tin in their cupboard and ate them themselves over a few days.

I’m not sure if this is cheapskate or just a complete lack of awareness of how to be gracious, grateful and polite. Community/family spirit was fine whilst it was them living off us, but it all changes when it’s the other way round.

needless to say after a few months of stuff like this we've told then to start lookkng to rent their own place and to be out within a month.

But you must realise that this instinct or lack of it isn’t something for which anybody should be congratulated or criticised? It isn’t something that you have willed into place, is it. And, even if it was, what made you the sort of person that was able to do that?

You were behaving as most animals do when they have given just birth: protective towards their young. Be thankful that you have not experienced anything in your childhood or adulthood or in your chemical make up that prevents this happening.

You can’t motivate yourself to be motivated. How you react to your newborn is the sum of what happened to you when you were in your mother‘s uterus, which obviously was influenced by what was happening to her. It’s then affected by the environment in which you grow up and the stresses and stresses that you’re under whilst pregnant and at the time of giving birth.

Thers nothing incredible“ about it: it happens and these mothers need assistance and nurture as much as the baby does. Often they don’t get it, or it’s too late and their children are the subject of care proceedings.

I am terribly sorry for your loss

We were visiting my parents, having dinner. My mum received a message about a distant family member visiting in a few weeks' time. She started overexcitedly planning food for them, and stood up and removed a bottle of drink from the table to save for them.

It was a soft drink, not a fancy brand or anything special! It's like she thought, "oh, we're having guest twice this month, we can't afford to put out multiple bottles of pink lemonade".

They own two houses and have hundreds of thousands in investments.