Active discussions

Meet the Other Phone. Flexible and made to last.

Meet the Other Phone.
Flexible and made to last.

Buy now

Please or to access all these features

Talk
Housekeeping

Find cleaning advice from other Mumsnetters on our Housekeeping forum.

Original poster

What is the stingiest thing you've ever done / seen someone do?

900 replies

Teadrinker11 · 12/01/2022 21:03

Yourself or someone else, what is the most stingy, mean, miserable thing is that you have ever done or seen someone else do?

OP posts:
RedBeetroot12 · 12/01/2022 22:42

Big no-no from me too! Ye-uck, who wants pi55y tea !

scoobydoo1971 · 12/01/2022 22:51

In my younger years I gained a lot of weight due to metabolic failure (rapidly in months). My 'friend' bought me...drum roll...a weighing scales as a birthday present as I was in the middle of hospital care for my conditions. That faux par was bad enough, but there was a dent in it suggesting it was used. She gleefully informed me that she was skint. and it was left behind at a weight watchers meeting her mother ran (she was a group coordinator I believe). The family had made a decision that as I was a 'big' girl, it was the best present for me. I never saw her again nor her family, so lost 9 stone of toxic friend and went on to lose 4 stone of weight in the next year. The tactlessness of some people is breath-taking.

godmum56 · 12/01/2022 22:51

@Santaisstilleatingmincepies

Dh vacuums our fake grass. Our ndn mops the path outside her gate.. She is even on Google maps doing it!
why is this stingy?
FangsForTheMemory · 12/01/2022 22:58

A flatmate of mine moved out and took his washing up brush with him.

WeBuiltThisBuffetOnSausageRoll · 12/01/2022 23:02

My dad used to follow the coal wagon and catch what bounced off and follow horses with a bucket to catch manure for the roses

I can't see a downside to that at all. Instead of dirty/stinky stuff left all over the road, it gets taken away and properly used. Everybody is a winner.

A relative once told us how he switched off the pilot light on his boiler overnight - every single night - because, if you don't go to the trouble of remembering to go and switch it off/on a mere 730 times a year, it will cost you an extra £1.62 for that year.

On the other hand, I don't know if it makes me stingy, but my heart sinks when I see somebody using one of those Coinstar machines in supermarkets. Maybe not so bad if you only have coppers, but the illustration of 'spare change' on the machine clearly shows 50p/£1/£2 coins in the bag.

They take (IIRC) 8% commission for their trouble; I would never use one when, if I have a big bag of coins, I can simply feed/pour them into the self-service checkouts when paying for my shopping and let that machine count it all, without taking a single penny in commission!

SpiderinaWingMirror · 12/01/2022 23:10

@ArblemarchTFruitbat tbf you could buy 4 blackjacks or 4 fruitsalads for 1p back in the day

gelatodipistacchio · 12/01/2022 23:12

Will add more, but here's one from my ex, who at the time made £200k per year: he was super angry when I used household funds to buy a second pair of shoes for our 2 year old. He thought she was fine with only one (despite occasional potty accidents and jaunts through mud)

WeBuiltThisBuffetOnSausageRoll · 12/01/2022 23:15

Two of our friends at uni were an engaged couple and, when they went out for a day, one of them would pay for one thing and the other pay for the next thing and then they would 'even up' later (not necessarily unreasonable - they were students).... except they would even do it when it was literally pennies difference. I still remember hearing him saying to his fiancée - in all seriousness - that he'd carefully calculated everything and she needed to pay him the difference of THREE PENCE, before they agreed that she would do so as soon as she'd been to a shop that evening and got some change!!!! Took those of us in earshot all of our powers not to explode with laughter Grin

anappleadaykeeps · 12/01/2022 23:23

ExDH would only let me or the children use half a square of kitchen roll at a time, not a full square ever.

He would get angry if you disobeyed him on this.

noodlezoodle · 12/01/2022 23:26

I know someone who washes and reuses cling film. She's done it forever so it's definitely not for planet saving reasons Grin

EveningOverRooftops · 12/01/2022 23:34

@MinnieJackson

Saw someone snapping the ends of broccoli in the veg shop before weighing it. My Gran always used to tell me not to tie a knot in the plastic bag when you put it on the scales there because it weighs more Confused
Bizarre. Stems get frozen for stock and soup making days!
HumourReplacementTherapy · 12/01/2022 23:41

About a year after a woman I worked with retired, someone bumped into her on the top floor of our office building with a towel in her hand. She had kept hold of her door pass and come into town each day on foot and used the work showers, (which were not very nice anyway Envy)

She also used to fill up two large water bottles every day and take the water home with her.

EveningOverRooftops · 12/01/2022 23:42

@Theunamedcat

Weigh the veg on the machine THEN bag it

Collect pine cones use them as firestarters

Collect branches on every dog walk year round burn them through the winter

My dad used to follow the coal wagon and catch what bounced off and follow horses with a bucket to catch manure for the roses

My nan bought a heart for my moms dissection lesson at school she was sick that day so they had it for tea instead

We collect pine cones then dip them into melted old wax melts (usually soy wax) that no longer has much of a scent for our fire pit.
Nancydrawn · 12/01/2022 23:44

@HoneyFlowers

My father in law would not pay £1 for parking their car near our wedding venue when we got married, he'd only park it in free parking the other side of town and therefore when we arrived at wedding venue we were all waiting around 25 minutes for him to catch up and arrive so we could get on with our wedding day.
That wins so far!
liliainterfrutices · 12/01/2022 23:51

My son’s flatmate moaned about him giving a friend a glass of water because of the water bill.

WeBuiltThisBuffetOnSausageRoll · 12/01/2022 23:54

ExDH would only let me or the children use half a square of kitchen roll at a time, not a full square ever.

He would get angry if you disobeyed him on this.

I once saw some toilet roll in Tesco with the price comparison calculation on the little shelf label rather unfortunately abbreviated to '21p per 100 shts' (I forget the exact number of pence) - maybe he'd seen and misinterpreted that too and had got a completely unrealistic idea of how long disposable paper rolls are supposed to last!

YourVagesty · 12/01/2022 23:57

In work a few years back and one of my colleagues had printed off a bunch of pictures of us all on a staff night out. All just pictures on an inkjet printer and on regular office paper. Nothing special and pretty poor quality.

She was asking 5p per picture Hmm

Smallkeys · 12/01/2022 23:58

I attended a funeral the other day and there was a collection box outside I was in the Q behind a couple who pretended to donate !

TyneTeas · 13/01/2022 00:06

@Smallkeys

I attended a funeral the other day and there was a collection box outside I was in the Q behind a couple who pretended to donate !
A lot of funerals I have been to have a collection for a charity favoured by the person who has died. Is that not common?
Smallkeys · 13/01/2022 00:09

Yes they are common my point is they waited as if they were going to donate and then just pretended to :-) I thought that was a bit stingy and dishonest

TyneTeas · 13/01/2022 00:11

Ah yes, I missed that bit about pretending to donate somehow, sorry! I had thought you were saying collections were stingy, eg asking those attending to contribute to costs

belowaverage · 13/01/2022 00:11

Dbil was coming here to get married , lived abroad, v wealthy , invited friends over for wedding in country house hotel and paid for them all. We were told rooms had been booked for us and PIL too ,while other friends and extended family were being bussed from city most of us lived in.
the day after the wedding we were leaving after breakfast and were handed the bill for the two rooms , luckily i had a credit card to pay the £750 DP raised it and was told we should have went home after the wedding if we didn't want to pay!

tulips27 · 13/01/2022 00:15

I was at a funeral where no-one donated! The undertakers felt so bad that one of them made a donation just so there was one.

WeBuiltThisBuffetOnSausageRoll · 13/01/2022 00:19

belowaverage

That reminds me of a CF thread from some time back, where a poster had a relative who absolutely insisted that guests stay for multiple nights at the hotel where their wedding was, even if they didn't live far away.

At the end of it, they were presented with an astronomical bill - far more than the prices of accommodation on the hotel's website. When they queried it with the hotel, it turned out that the bride and groom had demanded they charge the guests massively inflated prices so that all the costs of the lavish wedding were unwittingly covered by them - I think they may even have made a profit on it!

OriginalM · 13/01/2022 00:19

My ex husbands gran who was very wealthy but never spends anything and will walk to a shop a mile away if it meant it was 1p cheaper etc her mum died in bed which was a double bed.
My ex husbands gran who had a single bed refused to throw out the bed sheets her mum died on (and without being gross the sheets had a body that had been there for some time ), she took the double fitted sheets despite her mum dying on them and her having a single bed and said she wanted them and would use them.
It wasn't for sentimental reasons she never spent anything unless she absolutely had to