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

[Teadrinker11]

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

[echt]

Collect pine cones use them as firestarters. Collect branches on every dog walk year round burn them through the winter

How is that stingy? Good dry kindling is ridiculously expensive. When it's been very windy, the eucalypts drop twigs and branches galore where I live. I see loads of dog walkers collecting them. Why wouldn''t you use them? When people cut down trees, they often leave the logs on the nature strip for anyone who wants them. Is that stingy of those who pick up free firewood?

[pastaparadise]

All the pp about frugal older people Recycling or mending things - my df was brought up in the war and a but similar, though not to extremes. It's a great idea.

Our generations are so much more wasteful, but given the climate and environmental crisis we should all be much more like this. It's so hard though as who has time to unravel jumpers to make into scarves or use up all the old buttons. We're all working long hours to pay for more new stuff

[Yellownotblue]

Some years ago my DH went to a tennis championship final (not Grand Slam but next category down - recent winners include Federer Djokovic Nadal Zverev etc) with my friend’s DH who is a tennis fanatic. He is also unbelievably tight. Tickets to the event cost about US$100. Friend’s DH brought his own packed lunch so he wouldn’t spend any money at the catering venues. So DH had to eat alone in the restaurant. 🙄.

[CarrieMoonbeams]

The first (and only) time DH and I went on holiday with one of his friends and friend's partner, it took us a few days to realise what the stingy gits were up to.

Instead of having a kitty, we'd decided at the start of the holiday to go food shopping on alternate days. When it was our turn to pay, they'd bung in loads of sausages, burgers, bacon, eggs, rolls, cheese etc etc. That way, when it was their turn to pay the next day, they hardly needed to buy anything as there was loads left from the day before!

[remainsofthesummer]

When I was a student I loved m and s prawn sandwiches but they were a bit spendy. I'd open it up and take half the prawns out and put it between two slices of bread from the bread bin. Voila! One for today and one for tomorrow!

[SteppinOutwithMyBaby]

@twilightcafe I have black tea, no sugar, and don't like very strong tea. I can get 3 cups of tea exactly as I like it from one tea bag.

I gave a friend a fright when we were staying in a hotel and she was making tea for us. She pulled out the teabag and was all set to throw it into the garbage when my automatic reflex was to say No. I just couldn't bear the waste.

I must admit I prefer drinking loose tea, but even then thought of one for each person and one for the pot makes me feel like throwing up. Ugh, that strong tannin flavour. What do I know, I can't stand the bergamot smell or flavour in Earl Grey tea

[MarbleQueen]

I know someone who crashes any local event armed with several Tupperware boxes so she can take a load of buffet food home.

[FiveGs]

I've said this before on here, but my best friend brought our other best friend a half opened (drunk) bottle of wine as her wedding gift. It was not on the bride's wedding list!

She has form for other stingy behaviours but that took the proverbial.

[OhWhatFuckeryIsThisNow]

A friend on moving day, caught her dh removing lightbulbs. She made him put them back.

[Eileen101]

Gosh the packed lunch thing probably would be me we never really eat out or use the catering at places like that. It's a cost thing mainly rather than unnecessarily being tight. We have professor jobs so people probably think we have loads of cash but with a mortgage and two in nursery, we really don't.

Some of the other things would be me too - broccoli stems go in pasta sauce. If we didn't live in a smoke free coal area, I would definitely use pine cones for kindling!

The tea bags thing made me I'd definitely be surprised if I saw someone using one bag for two cups! But then I buy loose leaf so I can have it strong.

[Eileen101]

Oops professor = professional

[Alayalaya]

In many cases people do these things not because they’re stingy but because they’re poor. I find it in really bad taste to criticise.

[SkiingIsHeaven]

I worked with a guy who brought the house phone to work with him every day so his wife wouldn't run up bills using the phone while he was at work.

That was when phones were plugged in and mobile phones didn't exist.

Absolutely disgraceful.

[Toddlerteaplease]

@BobbieT1999

One tea bag in a pot to make tea for 4...

My parents do this. Never worked out why, as they are not stingy at all.

[sashh]

House share in London, we'd often get a pizza delivered that was £9.99.

I took £5 off my housemate and gave the delivery guy £10. The next time my housemate said, "I paid £5 last time, so it's my turn for the change"

[FleeceNavidadFromTheSheep]

I knew someone who would buy a newspaper to read at lunchtime then sell it to a colleague for half-price. This was pre the internet.

[FixItUpChappie]

Went to a friends once (friend A) with one other good friend (friend B). Ordered a pizza, plentyfor everyone. Friend A's husband came home reached toward a slice (in his own house) and friend B went off about how he needed to pay .

Mortifyingly embarrassing - it's been 20 yrs and I remember it like it was yesterday

[Scarby9]

My teenage boyfriends mum would iron and reuse wrapping paper.
The ironing board was out in the living room on Christmas morning and everyone passed her their paper as they unwrapped their gifts. She would cut off the sellotape, neaten up the shape of the remaining paper, iron, fold and pile up.
She used to sweep the end of their cul de sac weekly, but was otherwise perfectly nice and normal with no other unusual habits.

[daisychain01]

@squashyhat

I guess this was a product of memories of wartime shortages but I remember when I was a child my Dad would stick the tiny sliver of old soap onto a new bar rather than throw it away. I now get really irritated with my DH for throwing away the dregs of a shampoo bottle rather than turn it upside down and squeezing it into the new one so Dad must have passed on his parsimonious habits

I wish more people would think like your dad. That isn't stingy, it's just not being wasteful and as you rightly say, when you're in the midst of a world war and you don't know where your next bar of soap is coming from, you maximise your resource. Glad you've carried that on!

[hugr]

@tulips27

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.

Why didn't you make a donation?

[sandgrown]

@WeBuiltThisBuffetOnSausageRoll. I took a temporary Christmas job in retail. The shop was in a pretty deprived area. I was next to the Coinstar machine. Many of the people who used it had obviously saved their change all year to pay for a big Christmas shop. No way they could put all that in the self serve.

[DedalusBloom]

@tulips27

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.

So you didn't donate either?

[Laufeythejust]

We once had a dinner party, one couple brought a crate of beers, refused to keep them in the fridge with everyone else’s and then didn’t leave until they had drank every single beer so that they didn’t leave any. It was 2am and everyone else had left. On nights out if they came for drinks beforehand at ours they would come back at the end of the night and take whatever beers they hadn’t drank.

[cptartapp]

PIL contributed two small £1 cheesecakes from Morrisons for Xmas lunch for ten (inc four teen boys) plus six mince pies.
Then took home those mince pies not eaten.
Hundreds of thousands sitting in the bank.

[Flatandhappy]

I drove MiL home - a 90 minute drive - after she stayed one weekend. It was a rainy Winter afternoon and I had a small baby in the car so I really wanted to drop her and head straight home. She insisted that I had to take her to Lidl through the town's busy one way system even though she lives on the outskirts to pick up some groceries. I asked if she could get them from the shop on the corner of her street and explained that I wanted to get baby back but she said no, it had to be Lidl. When she came out she had bought a pint of milk and a loaf of sliced white - when I asked why she couldn't have got them at the corner shop the response was "it's cheaper in Lidl".