To ask about the tightest person you've ever met

[GunpowderGelatine]

I'm not talking about skint people, frugal people or those doing good for the environment - but who have you met who is the biggest tightwad without the need to be tight?

Mine is my mum unfortunately. She's just been for a week-long visit and I swear she gets worse with age (though she's not even 60 so not old). She's well off enough that she retired aged 47, hasn't had a mortgage since 2002 and her husband earns a very good living. She wears designer clothes and has lovely jewellery, so I don't think she's secretly skint or anything.

We went shopping in town one day during her visit and both got the odd thing from places like Primark, Superdrug etc ie nothing expensive. Because I had DS in the pram which is awkward round small and busy aisles, when coming to pay one of us took the others' stuff up with them to pay whilst the other one of us waited by the doors with the pram. Stuff we bought cost us each no more than a fiver altogether. We then went for lunch in M&S, mum got a table whilst I went up with a tray, got toasties and coffees and paid then and there. Cost about £19 for the 3 of us to eat and drink.

At the end of the day I figured we were probably even in what we'd paid for and I would've said nothing more about it. However 10 minutes after getting home she presented me with 3 receipts for places where she'd gone up to pay for stuff, with my stuff highlighted (she must've brought a highlighter with her as I don't have one in the house 🤣) and the amounts written on - the amounts were £2.99, £2.62 and £1.49

She then said she wanted to "treat us all" to the cinema as the kids wanted to see the Lion King. So off we went, I packed some mini bags of popcorn from M&S and some bottled drinks as otherwise I'd be spending around £20+ for the equivalent in the cinema. I packed enough for everyone (this is allowed in our cinema). When we went to buy the tickets, she bunged me a fiver (the cost of her ticket) - so much for treating us! And then I thought we were going into the cinema but to my surprise she proceeded to get a large popcorn, large coke, a hot dog and Maltesers for herself. Which cost her £16.99. We had to all carry something as she had so much 😂 I was and thought it's a good job I have a sense of humour. She then wouldn't let my kids have some of her maltesers because "your popcorn is enough you'll get sick" - and then left a half full packet on her chair at the end

I don't think I've ever known such a tightwad! She's like this with other people - she gives her elderly neighbour a lift to the supermarket when she goes, and takes petrol money off her! Even though she's going anyway.

And no I didn't ask for money for lunch and what I paid for in shops, or for lunch, because i refuse to be like that. I also didn't want to mention about her treating us at the cinema because she'd no doubt say something passive aggressive like "oh I didn't know you were skint" 🙄

Cheer me up please by regaling me with your best tightwad stories!

The girl who refused to go halves on the bowl of chips(not crisps,chips) at the airport while we were waiting for our flight.
She'd been watching and counting and knew for a fact that I'd had longer chips than her.

Oh also forget this one, my dm, not stingey, she would buy us the world but likes to try and save a few bob, so after spending the weekend at our house, when myself and dh go to wash our hands, the soap squirts rapidly out of the container all over our clothes, because dm has watered it down for us, to save some money, I said Ma, its a bottle of soap from Aldi that cost a quid ffs.

DSS texted DP early in June and said "Fancy lunch on Father's Day?".

DP understandably assumed that his son, who's pretty comfortably off, was treating him, what with it being Father's Day and all. A couple of days beforehand, DP texted DSS and suggested I joined them, as I hadn't seen DSS for quite a while. I was perfectly happy to pay for my own meal, as DSS is ... careful with money.

I bought a round of drinks when we got there. DSS's ex turned up with their daughter, I bought them drinks, too. DSS asked me to get him another pint while I was at the bar.

When it came to paying for the meal, DSS's ex (who only works 2 days pw until DGD is at school) said she'd pay, even though she'd have to put it on her credit card. I couldn't bear the thought of her getting into debt paying for everyone's meal, as she's pretty hard up, so gave her the cash for mine and DPs. (DP never carries cash, he's like the queen, and I didn't want the faff of getting the bill split.)

Then, to top it all, DSS insisted on "borrowing" £1 for his bus fare home! His ex pointed out that he could pay with card as all the buses had contactless now, but for some reason he didn't "like doing that". I gave him £1.

On the way home, I calculated that when we factored in the cost of parking, DP being invited out by his son had cost ME about £70!

I went online and reimbursed myself from our joint account.

That's why your DM is wearing designer clothes OP!
My father has superglued radiator thermostats to zero to stop anyone turning them on - he's notoriously tight, I have no idea what money he has.
Dh had a relative who dried teabags on the line and reused them four tiMessage before binning, made a pound of the cheapest mince feed six (boiled to death into a grey gravel-like texture, served with boiled potatoes and carrots) She left ££££££ to someone who no one in the family knew!

My cousins boyfriend.
Where the heck do I start.
He will share in "rounds" down the pub and when his turn comes around its suddenly time for him to go.
He will walk 30 minutes out of his way to buy mushrooms from Tesco instead of sainsbury as its apparently 10p cheaper and expects my cousin to do the same.
Showers once a week dispite being an avid runner to pay as little as possible on the water bill. Also expects my cousin to do the same.
He actively looks for coins on the floor to pick up and keeps a spreadsheet detailing where and when he found them. He keeps them in jars and doesn't spend any of it.
He turns up to bbqs with his own booze, drinks everyone else's and takes his own home again.
He works a fairly well paid job and isn't struggling at all.
My cousin wanted to buy a little side table from a charity shop for a tenner, sent the photo to him showing her amazing bargain, she had to ask his permission to buy it. His response was "well of you do buy it, we will be having words when you get home".
Goes straight into the reduced section at Tesco to try and buy as much of his shopping there as possible and doesn't allow my cousin to play a part in any desicion making of a weekly food shop dispite her paying half of everything.
I could go on but I think I've made my point.

My mum. Not so much as tight but tight only when it came to spending on us children. When DSis and I were young teens if mum wasn't hungry because she'd had a big lunch or lunch out with her friends while we were at school, she didn't make dinner. She also didn't buy anything in for us to eat. I recall once only having a local farmers eggs in (he gave them for free in exchange for our haylage) so would come home and eat a handful of boiled eggs for dinner. There was nothing else.
She wouldn't pay for hairdressers for us (she went though) so we had unruly, uncut hair and clothes were only ever bought at Christmas from other family members. And it was a couple of jumpers from Granny if we were lucky. The rest of my clothes came from handmedowns from my own friends or my mum's adult friend. I was 12 and wearing adults size 12 jeans, held up with a plastic belt. I looked like a fucking tramp growing up and mum was always in Joules equestrian clothes (pricy)
We weren't even poor. One year her boyfriend was given a silver pocket watch she had engraved. I got a tin of Roses and an Impulse body spray set.
School uniforms were bought gigantic so we could get a few years use out of them. Once the elastic went in the socks (our school required knee high socks) we had to fold a rubber band into the top to keep them up. That was in the 90's so disposable income was pretty good for average families and socks were maybe £2 at most. She just didn't want to spend the money.

I used to live with friend who wouldn't put the heating on. It was beyond freezing in the winter so much so you could see your breath when you woke up.

One year she had to move out for a few months, but refused to leave the heating on low and shock horror the pipes burst and ended up costing her a fortune. To this day I refuse to be cold in my own house.

*times fhs

A friend of mine lived in a beautiful big detached house (on an estate where premier league footballers lived - you get the idea) and she and her husband owned a restaurant in the same place which they'd had for years, and it was doing very nicely indeed, thank you. Both had lovely cars - she had a BMW, he had a huge Range Rover. Both with personalised number plates. She also had a couple of small businesses 'as a hobby'.
She'd spend a fortune on makeup and skin care, getting her hair and nails done, clothes, etc. She once showed me one of her wardrobes which was stuffed to capacity with really good cosmetics. l've no idea why - she couldn't possibly have used them before their shelf life expired. When my other friend and l mentioned in conversation that we'd had a bit of success selling things on ebay, she asked if she sorted some stuff out, if we'd list it for her. We said yes.
The next time we went over, she led us out to the kitchen, and proudly showed us a pile of the tattiest, manky, scratched pans and oven dishes. You couldn't have given them away, never mind got people to buy them (and pay postage!). She seemed genuinely surprised when we said it wasn't worth listing them, and didn't understand at all that people wouldn't pay postage for heavy items they could buy for a few quid at a charity shop or market. She'd have been much more successful selling some of her myriad cosmetics that were gathering dust.
One birthday she gave me a makeup bag that must have cost about £1 at Primark. With a few samples inside it, which were very clearly marked "not for resale". The kind of thing you get when you buy top end makeup and get a 'gift' which is usually not the kind of things you'd use anyway. When it was her birthday, l'd taken her out for a meal at a very nice local restaurant, including wine.
Bearing in mind this was over 15 years ago, even then their house, cars and businesses must have been worth well over a million. And heaven only knows what they had in the bank. She was nice, and generous in other ways, but terrible at presents!

Definitely definitely my mum, she came to visit for 2 weeks from overseas and when I was taking her to the airport she proudly announced she had spent £11.70 in the whole trip guess who had subsidised her...same trip we walked into a largish town near us( 25 min walk) I felt rough as hell with flu but she refused to step out of the house alone(that’s another thread) so I really felt I had to be her tour guide. I git sicker and sicker as the afternoon wore on, so bad that I couldn’t face the walk home. And insisted on getting the bus back home because I knew I couldn’t make it on feet. She was FURIOUS that she had to spend the Monet on bus fare...furious! Who cares about her daughter being extremely poorly eh?

That is horrible @FionaOgre

Have you ever pulled her up on it and asked why she did that on you?

fionaorge that’s so so sad, has she ever asked your forgiveness? What a hateful thing to do!

she would just expect the group she was with to subsidise her evening

I just utterly fail to understand people who do this. I wish a CF would name change and explain why they do this

My brother. He is loaded (through his own hard work, so good for him).

When our mother spent a fortnight in hospital last year (it turned out to be cancer - she only has a few weeks left now), he gave her an itemised bill for the toiletries, magazines and drinks he had brought her. He also added the £2 parking costs when he came to visit her. He was using her car.

He used her car for a while (driving about 5000 miles). He even used it to spend what was probably her last Christmas with his GF's parents (DH had to make two 3-hour round trips 3 days after I gave birth so that she could spend Christmas with us). When she was fed up with paying for the insurance and repairs and asked for the keys back, he moaned about how much more expensive his food shop had become, because he couldn't drive to the big supermarkets any more.

I am not even going to write about the drinks / meals out.

Oh another, sis in law, found out recently that any presents her kids get for birthdays, even small ones from school friends parents etc, all get locked into the spare room, they aren't allowed to use them, then get regifted to others. Disgraceful.

FIL died about 10 years ago. DH had to deal with paperwork as it was very sudden. There was over a million in the bank. And their children remembered being hungry.

One repeated memory of my childhood is my mum not coming into attractions, because she didn't want to waste money on a ticket for herself. Never mind that my sister and I might have enjoyed her company.

And of when she got mad because I ripped the knee of a second hand pair of trousers - never mind that I was bleeding and crying.

Now they have a second home (bought outright), and she's very defensive about not being a 'rich' second home owner.

She's right - they're not rich. Just slightly above average income, with batshit priorities.

The bright side is that my husband and I are both very balanced financially, and enjoy a healthy savings cushion with generous helpings of the 'treat yourself' attitude.

I was friendly with a single woman at work for a few years. Really liked her and we had some things in common but ---- she was very mean. Most of the time I didn't notice but sometimes she would come out with things which made it obvious.

One was, she wouldn't go out with a bloke unless he paid for everything.
Well, even well off chaps don't like being taken advantage of but she wouldn't ever get her purse out and when she had a boyfriend, after a while he would mention the fact.

She also didn't like going out with other women because she said she couldn't afford to pay for meal and drinks or whatever - but she could. I know she had a mortgage and a car and had to budget but she also had savings and went on holiday every year so could certainly have paid for the occasional night out.

The biggest thing that struck me was she had an old friend, a man, who was a taxi driver at odd times (because he needed a bit of extra money), he was very nice indeed. She charged him £35 for washing his net curtains! In a million years I can't imagine charging a friend for use of my washing machine, particularly as a one off. This was a good few years ago when £35 was worth more than it is now but even so, I was aghast. When she told me I said, "£35?". Couldn't believe it! She said, "I need the money".

Imagine, charging a friend £35 for use of your washing machine - once.

Seriously how can you be "friends" with these people.Once is fine we can all be caught out.But after that no way.

This. They get away with it because people let them. The drinks skivers, just why do you keep buying them stuff? I have a friend who happily goes into the loo to fetch the skiver, 'Oi, your round!' 'You need to buy your own because you try to get out of paying when it's your turn.'

My ex-H. There are many, many examples but he surpassed himself shortly after he kicked us out with nothing. I emailed him to ask if he wanted the children for dinner that night. He asked why. I explained I had 0p in my bank, 0 food in the house and had already eaten at all my family members that week. I was willing to go without. I only wanted him to feed the kids.

He turned up at my house with three sausages that were starting to turn, a yellowing head of broccoli and 3/4 of a bottle of vodka that was probably mine anyway from when I lived there and told me he couldn't have the kids for dinner because he was packing for his holiday the next day.

I fed the sausage to the dog, binned the broccoli, drank the vodka and hacked his Just Eat account to feed the kids.

He's not skint. He owned two properties outright when we left. IDK how many he owns now but I do know he holidays abroad 2+ times a year and now owns a villa in Turkey. He pays £125 a month child support based on the p/t wages of his job and after having given up his career and transferred his properties to his sister's name to avoid paying maintenance on the rental income he receives.

SIL is probably the tightest person I know - if she does give a gift then it is it almost always something she already owns but now has no use for with minimal effort given towards its suitability (e.g. a sz 8 cardigan for someone who is a sz 16; a children's puzzle book with several pages already filled in for a teenager or just plain odd - one small chocolate bar out of a multipack, a single packet of tissues). She used to regularly 'forget' her purse if we went out with her (used to because we now actively avoid meals out) so we took to taking cash with us and lending her some, and then dropping by the cash point on the way home (it was then it became very clear it was all done on purpose as she was obviously pretty annoyed about this).

For her parents' 50th wedding anniversary DH bought the cake, flowers for the tables, balloons etc - came to about £250 (all agreed with her beforehand and suggested we got it all as we lived closer). The idea being that when it came to splitting the venue/meal bill out we would adjust how much we each paid, when it came to splitting she declared that she had 'spend about the same' on sundries. She had bought one pack of party poppers as far as we could tell. DH just rolled his eyes (no surprise at all!) and let it go. I would be very surprised if her net worth was less than £5M to put it in context. Tightness isn't the only issue we have with her so we very rarely see her now.

Lots of examples from a friend - who I no longer see. Nothing like as bad as some on here but so embarrassing.

I was with her and another friend wandering round a gift shop and cafe somewhere in Derbyshire. The shop was quiet and the guy that ran it was chatting away to us and asked if we wanted a coffee.

She said 'no thanks' and my other friend and I said 'Yes please, that would be lovely'. He brought them over to us as we were browsing and we got purses out to pay. 'That's alright' he said 'they're on the house'. CF friend immediately said, 'Oh in that case I will have one please'. So embarrassing - and so obvious that she hadn't a clue how rude she was.

I cannot believe some of the things I've read on here. I thought my DF was a meanie with cash. He had his own flat and DM had her house, he'd spend weekends and such. He would take us to cheaper shops for shopping and on the occasions we went to his flat we'd see he had more luxurious items. DM got fed up of it, worked her ass off and ended up earning double his earnings, bought her house and now lives the life of riley with her equally rich new husband. My DF is still a tight arse and has a fit when he sees what I spend on my DD. It brings me such glee to see him twitching sometimes lol.

A retired colleague but had returned to work thro boredom. Used to make a cuppa soup last 3 lunchtimes. With half a biscuit each tea break.

Never ever brought anything in canteen. But there was often free things for treats. Cake, choc etc. She always was 1st there for that

She would do a 10pm finish. Rather than drive and pay the couple of Quid she would use her free bus pass but wait till 10.50 for the bus in the city alone then have a long walk due to location of bus stops. Yet the drive was 1.5 miles..

She was loaded.. No mortage for 20 years. Brought her son a house outright. And pays towards lots to her GC activities etc.

Former boyfriend while I was living in the US, who once gave me a lift into the nearby town (he was going anyway) and charged me half of the 30 cents for the parking meter for our hour-long stay. At first I thought he was joking but he wasn't. Later I found out from his mum, who called him a tightwad, that he had 40 grand in the bank at the time--this was 1990 and it was a lot of dosh then. I on the other hand was a penniless student but it would not have occurred to me to ask anyone for 15 cents for a parking meter ....

My cousin is still friends with someone she was at school with. They both have husbands and children. The friend lives at the other end of the country, so for a few years they'd spend a few days close by (friend would stay with her parents near home, my cousin and her family would book a Travelodge or similar) and do stuff with the kids.
My cousin is a fantastic cook and it's hospitality house when anyone visits.
One year when they visited this friend, they were staying in a B & B as usual, but were invited over to eat in the evening. The kids were fed first, (l forget exactly what, but it was something like one pizza for five, four of who were boys!). Then came the piece de resistance. The evening meal was ONE tin of Stagg chilli with some rice. For four adults. My cousin's husband is used to her amazing cooking and as soon as they left the house, he said "Sod that. Where's the chippy?" They were all starving.
The next time they went, he told me that "the cooking had improved to mediocre."
This friend was weird with birthdays, too. Apparently she'd ring my cousin and 'remind' her that it was one of her children's birthdays coming up (ie, "don't forget to send a present"). She had three children, and my cousin was always generous with them. My cousin has two, and always got useless tat when it was her children's birthdays. l think she stuck it out until the eldest was 15, then said she was going to stop exchanging presents as it was getting too expensive. She still gets phone calls as a reminder for birthday cards, though.