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?

Had to go to the bakery after 5 on a Saturday for the half price cream cakes !

My dad used to deliver Sunday papers. His round was rural.....think naice affluent areas, just outside of the City boundary....his customers weren't short if a few pennies!
This was 70s/80s. He used to charge about 7p delivery on each paper so wasn't exactly coining it in. One Sunday he came back to tell us Mr Toffynose-Up-His-Arse had deducted 10p off what he owed for his Sunday Times as he was disgusted that the previous week's edition had featured a double page advert in the centre....Mr Toffynose-Up-His-Arse declared he didn't pay for adverts!!!! 😲....Dad was speechless...it was so mean and ridiculous that he just laughed it off. I remember feeling really angry on his behalf... that was his delivery charge and a bit more lost. I wish that awful mean man could see my dad getting up every Sunday at 3 am, meeting the paper train at the station, making his bundles of papers up and heading out in all winds and weathers to make sure these people had their Sunday reads.....he was doing his best to make a bit extra to keep his family going....those 7ps on each paper were our bread and butter. Still makes me fume 40 years on!!!

Teabags were never designed for one cup of tea, but for teapots. You’d put your teabag in the pot, and then would let it brew/mash/stew, and then would top it up with water for further cups of tea. Recycling at its best.

It was never one teabag per pot. It was always one per person and one for the pot, the same as scoops of tea leaves.
Having said that I use three tea bags in our teapot whether I'm doing tea just for me or for all four tea drinkers, more than four needs extra bags.

Oh I've just remembered one, it might just be being frugal but I found it funny.

Some of my relatives were invited to a 100th birthday party.

The guests decided to count the candles and there were only 96.

The wife of the man having his birthday said the candles came in packs of 12 and she didn't want to waste any.

Save 'used' toothpaste tubes, then when you've got a few, cut the tops off and scrape out the toothpaste collected around the shoulder. You'll get enough for a few more days.

Ex husband sold an old sofa to a friend and I later found out he’d cut the lining under the cushions open to check for loose change that might have fallen through.

Coming home from a skiing holiday 15 years or so ago, I was embarrassed to be selected for a hand luggage inspection and to have to pull unopened bags of budget brand white sugar, white flour and rice, total value maybe around £2.50, out of my bag and put them on the counter in front of everyone. We'd been self-catering, I'd overestimated how much cooking I'd want to do, and I hate wasting food. I could feel my DH and the customs officer exchanging an eye-roll.

A group of us with small DC decided to have a small Xmas gathering in an afternoon for the DC (all pre-school age) and parents. We held it in one friend's home and everyone agreed to bring some food/drink. A friend of a friend wanted to come but really wanted us to just pay for caterers. The rest of us were on a budget so told her to just bring something like crisps if she was too busy to cook. She arrived with 2 large bags of cheap cheese puffs, which she hid in the kitchen 'for later'. Everyone else had brought something home made, which she happily ate lots of. At the end of the party she retrieved her crisps to take home, and also took several tupperware boxes out of her bag and filled them with sandwiches, cake etc to take home for her husband's tea (she was not invited to do this). She is wealthier than any of us so it was not a case of being skint.

@ConstantCougher

Someone told me they ‘steal’ packs from inside packs at the supermarket and add it to theirs eg paracetamol from one carton and add it to another so they only pay for say 16 but get 24!

Not sure why you've put 'steal' like that. It IS stealing. Not stingy, theft.

I went on holiday with a very wealthy friend and his family at the age of 14, stayed in their villa and went out on their yacht. On the last day the mum boiled 14 eggs that were left over and wrapped them up and took them as hand luggage on the plane! She was in first fucking class (I was in economy obvs!) I have never forgotten the madness of it.

We live in a tourist area that holds a famous festival annually. We had exceptionally wealthy parents of a friend of DHs invite themselves to stay. They stayed for 8 nights. (For free clearly). The whole week we provided food when they were not out breakfasts etc. In that time the husband criticised the fact I drink beer (unladylike) and the wife criticised our decor and how I pruned my roses. The 'hostess gift' they gave us was a bunch of supermarket flowers that they put in their own room.

When they left a mutual friend commented they were surprised they had not even contributed a bottle of wine - considering the husband had recently sold his business for a reported £60 million (it was reported in the FT).

Fucking tossers. We'd never even met them before- just said yes when their son asked if we minded putting them up.

@londonmummy1966

DM is very frugal as her father gambled away the family money just after the war (when there was also rationing). If she gives you a card , rather than posting it she won't write on or seal the envelope so you can use it again. All wrapping paper is ironed and reused. Birthday and Christmas cards are kept either to make tags or to use by the phone for taking notes. Soap ends pressed in a mould to make new ones and any uneated food bound to reappear in a stew later in the week - often nt envy.

I am probably nearly as bad in some ways - I make gift tags from our Christmas crackers and save the ribbons off chocolate boxes etc. I also save the stalks from caluiflower and broccoli etc to make soup.

Tbh, a lot of the examples given here and in the rest of the thread aren't stingy and are just waste saving.

Using leftovers, reusing things, not chucking things away - these should be normal behaviours if we care about the planet, surely? Most people I know resus things like gift bags/wrapping paper and use Xmas cards to make gift tags.

e.g. reusing leftovers in a stew is good practice if you want to reduce food waste (and usually really tasty!). What the fuck has happened to society if that is now seen as disgusting?

@lucillelarusso

I went on holiday with a very wealthy friend and his family at the age of 14, stayed in their villa and went out on their yacht. On the last day the mum boiled 14 eggs that were left over and wrapped them up and took them as hand luggage on the plane! She was in first fucking class (I was in economy obvs!) I have never forgotten the madness of it.

But what was the alternative? Chuck them all in the bin?

Boiled eggs are snacks. I'm not a fan, but my DH would certainly love an egg to snack on during a journey.

Do you usually chuck loads of food in the bin whenever you travel somewhere, when that food would make a perfectly good travel snack? Maybe this means I'm stingy, but that just feels like madness to me.

Had to go to the bakery after 5 on a Saturday for the half price cream cakes !

My dad used to do this with us when we were kids and as older kids/tweens we found it so embarrassing.
Sometimes he went in first and said "what time do you reduce the cakes" if it was in a few minutes he would make us wait outside the shop for 3 min (or whatever the appropriate time was) and then go in again and ask for the things we wanted.

He was very thrifty his whole life,(never a tube of toothpaste thrown away without first cutting in half and scraping out the last bits!) partly from the way he was brought up (to mend, repair, reuse and get your moneys worth from things) and also I know now that they did struggle for money sometimes, but as kids we just thought it was really embarrassing!

On my way out to the supermarket during lockdown my neighbour gave me a shopping list & asked me to shop for her as I was going anyway.
The cashier helped me pack & used a supermarket 10p bag.
I gave the neighbour the shopping in the bag with the receipt it was £30.49
She put the money in an envelope through my door minus the 10p.

One ex-DP was incredibly tight. Never put his hand in his pocket.

One night in town, he suddenly insisted on taking me out for a meal, to a mid-priced (and therefore out of my £££ range) Italian restaurant. He was all romantic about it and, since he was Lord of the Occasional Grand Gesture, I thought perhaps my time had finally come to be treated! He was in a lavish mood, insisting on all three courses and wine.

When the bill came, he... disappeared outside!

This was quite early on in the relationship. We lasted 6 years, on and off. I think it's fair to say I was still learning about boundaries and self-worth 😂

I have posted this before but a man i know used to have only one light bulb in his entire house. He took it from room to room as he needed to. He was an accountant on a good wage, just extremely stingy.

I know someone who bought a jumper for his Dad for Christmas. His wife noticed the jumper had been reduced by a tenner after Christmas and asked, as he hadn't worn it yet could she return it and then buy it again at the reduced price. The FIL agreed, then they fell out for months over who should have the £10.

The same PIL won't allow their grandchildren in the car as their car seats might damage the upholstery. Once their other DIL was staying with her children at her parents and was leaving from the same town that the in-laws lived in, on the same day to stay with their son and DIL for a week. They wouldn't drive the DIL and GC home. They begrudgingly took their luggage and left them to go on the train.

In the past my own PIL decided to order dominoes but were too stingy to order enough for everyone so they just got it for the grown ups and gave the kids cheap pizzas in a domino's box.

@KatherineJaneway

Why not make two cups of tea as unless you want very strong tea, a bag easy does two.

It doesn't.

Yes it does - a normal teabag, not one of the “single serving” ones with string attached. Been making two good strong cups of tea in big mugs with one for years and it’s completely fine. (Not the same one for all those years!) I really like tea, have plenty of fancy loose leaf teas as well as ordinary twinings tea bags. I’m not compromising on tea quality! Twinings Assam, two big mugs, sorted.

I spent over £50 cooking a Mexican feast for my friend - loads of different dishes, took me hours. She turned up to my house empty handed (which is fine, I really don't mind if guests don't bring anything) - but then she told me she was popping to the off licence to buy a bottle of wine and asked me to go halves! I politely refused.

My friend (who I lived with) finished her degree and her Dad came to pick her up to take her home. She is disabled so couldn’t manage to take all her stuff on the train. He and his wife (her mum) were both in professional jobs, clearly had money.

He sat at our kitchen table chatting and drinking tea on arrival. Practically the first thing he did was demand petrol money from her.

I think a lot of these are thrifty and sensible, rather than stingy.
Many years ago I worked in an office that was organizing a small office party. One colleague had a bottle of sherry left over from the previous Christmas that he was willing to contribute, providing the rest of us paid him for it. That was stingy.

We have a very old friend, a single bloke, who also 'can't bear waste.'
But he's quite compulsive about it. To the extent that when eating out with friends he will reach across the table and hoover up everyone's leftovers from their plates cheese rinds, bits of fat and gristle-- meat, crusts of bread, anything.
It's a bit embarrassing as the wait staff look on bemused as they hang around to take away the plates.
He will eat cream that has gone off by adding sugar to it and claims this makes it ok and it tastes fine. It doesn't.
He has a cat and proudly boasted that he put some dodgy, slimy cooked chicken into its bowl but when the cat turned its nose up at it, he took it back out of the bowl and ate it himself.
He must have a cast iron gut.

Using leftovers, reusing things, not chucking things away - these should be normal behaviours if we care about the planet, surely? Most people I know resus things like gift bags/wrapping paper and use Xmas cards to make gift tags

Yes I remember my mum used to go on about how mean a friend was for making tags out of old Christmas cards. But she was ahead of her time I think!

@Deadringer

I have posted this before but a man i know used to have only one light bulb in his entire house. He took it from room to room as he needed to. He was an accountant on a good wage, just extremely stingy.

Omg my FIL is bad but this is a whole new level of tight!! Hilarious 😂😂