To ask your stingiest stories?

[iLoveFoood]

Tell me some of your stingy stories. The ones where you've had a friend out to dinner and they inspect the bill down to the last €0.20.... or the guy at the office who refuses to bring in the Friday biscuits but eats everyone else's!

I know a guy at my work who is a full time smoker but never has a box of cigarettes. Just asks someone different every time. He gets away with smoking ten a day, one off a different person every single day!

I asked him for one before after giving him my last few a couple of times and he said 'no, these need to last me 2 days' 😆

My parents are quite tight.

One Christmas they gave me my children some books as a gift. All fine, except for the fact they were actually books I had from when I was little that they got down from their loft.

Had my name in the front cover and everything!

Back when my friend, Kathy and I were single, we were out in the pub. Man approaches Kathy, explains he has to leave the pub with his friends, but gives her a brief chat up, hands her his phone number and £20, explaining he wants to buy us a drink as he would have done had he not had to hurry off. Asks her to call him.

Kathy puts the £20 in her purse and tells me it's my round. And she never called him...

Knew a very tight girl at university who was from a well off family and later went on to a well paid career, so tight that I was not surprised to hear that at her wedding a few years later all the guests were handed glasses of elderflower cordial instead of champagne / prosecco (and no it wasn’t a dry wedding, pay bar afterwards)

We are friends with two sets of siblings - two brothers and their respective wives.

We gave siblings A an old baby item of ours eg high chair

Siblings B then have a baby.

Siblings A (who are older and earn far more money than any of the rest of us) then SELLS our donated baby item to Siblings B.

Rude.

Acquaintance who was living in her flat that she owned. She met a guy who wasn’t from UK (relevant). They really hit it off and she asked him to move in. Guy was delighted to and of course would pay for half of everything. She told him all the bills and mortgage were double what they actually were so his “share” was actually all the bills.

How can someone do that to someone they’re building a life with?

The fact he wasn’t from uk was why she did this, as he didn’t know the cost of things here.

My nan on my dads side is the tightest human being I have ever encountered.

There's soooo much to tell.

• If you open a can of drink at her house and leave even one (1) sip in the can, she puts it in the fridge until the remainder is drunk (it can sit there for weeks!)
• She made the 4 DGC share a Happy Meal.
• Took my toddler DD our for the day just after my mum died. I gave her some money to entertain and feed DD. She took her to the park, didn't feed her and I never saw the £30 again.
• Keeps chocolate/sweets that are at least 5 years out of date and hands them out for Halloween and Christmas.
• For DDs Birthday she have wrapped up her old DVD player and two of the free DVDs that you used to get with the papers.

They weren't even toddler friendly!

• She baths once a fortnight and shares the water with my grandad

She is minted though. No surprises there.

Just remembered another one. Friend from uni, odd guy. He was obsessed with saving for a mortgage (at 18!). His parents gave him an allowance which he would just save up. He would come out but never ever buy a drink (he would accept if you offered him one which we eventually stopped doing). The worst was he would always come out to eat then say he wasn't ordering anything and he'd just eat our leftovers. People would offer to go half and half on a meal and he'd decline saying there's always extra left over. We ended up basically force feeding ourselves the entire meal even if the portions were huge so the greedy bugger didn't get any!

I’d a friend in college; it was a long time ago and my friend standards have improved over the years . He was and possibly still is allergic to cheap deodorant, so he would wipe himself all over with a face cloth and Dettol. He was very proud he could save money and hot water.

He’s married with four kids now. And very rich.

I am not sure whether it's me or them with this.
Cousin has 4 children, big house both work full time. Gave almost every bit of DD's baby stuff to her for her new DD, as a clear borrow all ok. Gave lot of clothes to her DD once my DD had outgrown them. So many clothes that my aunt boasted to DM that cousin had hardly had to buy a thing for the DD that summer. Posh wellies, coats, unworn stuff the lot was given. I was happy to help out.

DD was sick on way home from DM's, 8pm, pouring rain. They live almost in the middle of the hour long journey. So I rang and asked to clean DD up and borrow a seat. She kept us in bathroom/in hallway. Ok I thought no germs to her children. I gave a huge boxs of biscuits 2 days later as a thank you. I was very grateful.

Her DH was made redundant. Got a new job but didn't pass probation.
Around same time as the 2nd job I tried to set up my own business selling childrens stuff. I messaged her asking to like/share as you do. I got a message bk saying that she couldn't buy anything because DH lost job and they were on an economy drive.

I am a SAHM, I have been unable to WOH because my DD had some developmental problems so DH and I are living off his salary and a few benefits. I have zero self confidence and it was a big thing for me to try and set up a business. The cheapest items were £2.50 and would have suited any of her children.

Surely she could have bought just 1 item. After I had given all those things. I hadn't asked her if she wanted anything when she sent the message either.

My DM said that you don't give to receive and that anything she buys for DD she will take back when outgrown to give to cousin. This was after I complained about the above. My DD and I were also excluded from cousin's DD's birthday, DM and DF were invited. Again, not such a big deal, but when I try to accommodate them at my DD's parties I felt a bit sad. I realised I was not a friend or really wanted. Not so much as a box of chocolates in thanks for well over a few hundred pounds worth of stuff. She did let me borrow the car seat and a high chair. Maybe it is me. I can't help feeling sad though.

I won't be giving anything else. I could have sold the stuff on. And I ditched the business and am looking for a very pt job. Safer.

I used to baby sit for a family in town. It was a 20 minute brisk walk.

They used to book me until midnight, never leave a thing to eat or drink, no television, no telephone in an emergency either.

After reading to their lovely children (they were a delight) l would curl up and read for the evening. However, almost always they rolled in at 2pm.

The wife would go straight to bed waving goodnight. The husband would try, every time to pay me until midnight. Then huff and puff at having to raid his daughters money bank to pay me the extra two hours, and how unreasonable I was being.

I stuck to my guns, in those days it was £1 an hour. But I hated getting home long after midnight so I charged £2 an hour after midnight. I was always very clear.

I really think he thought giving me £4 for 6 hours minding, including the two after midnight was fair. This was the 1980's.
They tried this twice, after that I said I was busy.

In comparison, another local family paid me £2.00 an hour and had a warm welcoming home.

A friends partner who had been separated from his wife for 20 years . Too tight to pay for a DIY divorce ( less than £100) .
She( estranged wife) died and he was very put out he wasn't mentioned in the eulogy.
He and partner are still together. separate houses and both as stingy as each other.

- She baths once a fortnight and shares the water with my grandad
Come on that's not true

@stopinthenameoflove As true as I stand here!

When I was a child, we used to share bathwater - I had the bathwater after dsis, and mum and dad shared a second lot later on - mum first, then dad. Admittedly, we did have baths twice a week, not once a fortnight, but still.

The reasoning was that we had a very old immersion heater, with no thermostat, and it cost too much to heat up the water, so we had to share.

I didn't mind too much when I was a child, because I got to stay up later than dsis as she was younger, so that seemed like a fair reward for having the used bathwater, but when we were teenagers, and had the same bedtime, I started to resent the fact that dsis always got the clean, hot water, and I didn't, and that I had to clean up the bath and the bathroom after my bath, and she didn't - so I asked mum if dsis and I could take turns to have first go in the bath - and she said NO!!

That's one of the things that cemented my view that she preferred my sister to me - she always made me feel second best. Though in recent years I have also wondered whether she refused partly because, if she acknowledged that it was unfair to me, she'd also have had to acknowledge that it was unfair to my dad, and she didn't want to have to have the used bathwater and clean up the bathroom!!

Stupidly, this still makes me sad.

Once went on holiday with another family. Agreed to each cook for all one night.
I cooked for all 4 adults, their 3 dc and our 6 dc. All had a fab time.
Gets to their turn and the dw announces the campsite shop is shut so they can't cook!!. No reschedule!!
We actually packed up and went a few days early.
They had a daily budget of €50 between them!

I might think differently to others, but to me, bringing a bottle as a gift for the host and bringing your own beer are two different things. I certainly don't want random drinks left at my house- 3 bottles of Budweiser, half a bottle of vodka, 2 blue WKDs cluttering my fridge for example, please take them with you when you leave!

Got invited to a 30th birthday bbq as did about 20 other people and was told that we had to bring whatever food we wanted to eat and drink. The host provided cheap burger buns and burger sauce and salt n pepper and that was it. If you didn't take it you didn't eat it.

It was my grandads funeral a few weeks back, but before hand theirs a party on the 9th day to talk and drink about the person who's past.
There was some wine and spirits left over.
A few family members were caught taking them home with them, when asked they said they brought them with them. My dad would of more than said they could takes with the extra food that was left and given away.
I was so shocked that family could do that especially at such a sad time.

I certainly don't want random drinks left at my house- 3 bottles of Budweiser, half a bottle of vodka, 2 blue WKDs cluttering my fridge for example, please take them with you when you leave!

That's your prerogative as the host though isn't it? I usually ask people if they want to take their unopened drinks - sometimes they do and sometimes they don't - but when I am a guest I wouldn't just take back a bottle I had brought. If the host told me they wouldn't drink it themselves and asked me if I would like it back, then fair enough.

Family member (close) came for a full day of drink and food for Xmas day family of 5. Didn’t being even a bottle of wine and our Xmas presents bought the night before in Asda I was especially pleased with my pink iPod pouch thing . I don’t like pink and I didn’t own an iPod. Then proceeded to drink all the available prossecco proclaiming that was delicious is there any more.

Her husband wd also disappear at bill time for any meals out leaving my DH and bro to pay !

@cushioncovers just read yours and I have been to same bbq ha wonder if it is the same family!!

My late grandmother was decorating her box room and got 3 rolls of wallpaper for the price of 2. Of course since it was only a small room she was left with an unopened roll of paper so she decided to take it back to the shop and get her money back. After being told by the cashier that a refund for one roll wasn't possible because she bought the paper in the 3 for 2 deal, she exclaimed 'but the free roll is the one on the wall!'. She kept up this line of argument for 20 minutes, even after the store manager had been called to explain the issue. In the end they let her return the wallpaper and she got her cash back. I really do think they just wanted rid of her. This story makes me smile ever time I think about it!

I agree about not wanting guests to leave stuff! We have quite a lot of parties and I recently had to pour a whole load of cheap cider and lager down the sink because we’d built up quite a stash and we just don’t want it. I think if someone brings a bottle of wine, drinks the wine you’ve provided and then takes their wine home again then that’s cheeky. But if someone brought something that they specifically liked to drink then I really wouldn’t mind them taking the leftovers home again.

Someone made a cake for my wedding reception (it was a very informal buffet event) and at the end of the evening it had gone. It never made the table as there was so much so someone had taken it from the kitchen.