What's the most extreme example of effort to save a few pennies you have heard of?

[wineoclockthanks]

Lighthearted!!

Mine is someone who buys shirts/t-shirts and asks for the hangers, then returns the clothes minus the hangers.

I did mention that Wilkos sell 10 wire hangers for £1.75 but she was adamant it was worth it.

Please can I stress this is lighthearted, I am also on a tight budget and count my pennies so not judging at all.

YY Woodhill eco friendly non wastefulness = good, stealing or taking advantage of friends and family = bad.

At uni we all used to buy our own personal roll of loo paper so there was never any in the loo, you had to carry your own around with you. One house mate used to blow her nose and then when the tissue had dried, use it to wipe her bum She saved loads of money. She also saved crisp packets and food packets and put used ST/tampons in there rather than waste more tissues wrapping the soiled ST before putting them in the bin.

She used old knickers as kitchen clothes and dusters. She didn't have many clothes so the washing machine wasn't always full when she washed her clothes, so she would wash all her 'dishcloth' knickers and plastic bags out in the machine and reuse them.

I think her parents were divorced so she got nearly a full grant as well!

I know a couple who collect sugar, sauce, napkins etc whenever they eat out anywhere, and dole them out to their own guests as if distributing largesse! They aren't poor, they have homes in USA and Europe.

Also someone who only buys yellow sticker fresh food or reduced tinned food from Cash & Carry stores. It means they have strange combinatios for meals like a plate of sprouts with ready grated cheese, or spaghetti hoops with mashed potato.
They are beautifully thin though, so that's a plus!

No you?re not my sister redshoes

boys vests and pants being used for girls, and vice versa

I would have no probem at all with that. gender stereotyping of kidS, clothes and disposable fashion made by eight year olds I do have a problem with.

Dkitty litter woman should call herself a contemporary artist. She'd make a fortune winning the Turner Prize

Well, I do the tea-bag re-use thing, but that's cos DP uses 2 per cup and I hate waste. We save them on a plate and use 6-8 for my tea- which is still pretty strong.

One which I don't think was extreme...but I suppose is relative:

A couple of yrs ago I'd been on antidepressants for a few months. I'd decided - with my GP - taper off a bit, especially as I was ttc (fertility treatment).

GP offered to prescribe several different strengths of pills to help with this. Nah, I said, a nail-clipper on my hi-strength ones would do the job, and would mean only one prescription cost rather than several as per her method.

She expressed surprise that someone in the throes of spending £thousands on IVF, would be that worried about £8 here&there on prescriptions

Some of these things are perfectly reasonable from an eco point of view. I do think we do have too much of a throw away mindset now

6-8 teabags? How do you fit any water in???

Oh, but here's a genuine one (at least DP isn't normally like this, honest).

DP bought a box of Aldi nappies too small. He only realised once he'd opened the box (glued) and an inner bag.

Nevertheless, he thought he should try to get a refund , against all my protests. Spent over an hour and a car journey on it Was most crestfallen to not only get turned down, but to come back to my "Well, what the very fuck did you think would happen?!" reaction.

People keep mentioning prescription costs, but the reality is that no-one needs to pay more than about £9 a month for prescriptions. Most are free, and if you are on regular medication, or need a few in one go, get a pre-payment card. I'm surprised there are people who don't know about it. No brainer for anyone who needs more than one prescription a month and has to pay.

You can even backdate it a month, so if you find yourself needing medication, get a proper NHS receipt, so if you need any more within the month, you can buy a 3 monthly card or sign up for an annual one by direct debit, backdate it for a month and then reclaim what you've already paid. You're then covered for the next 3 months/year.

So many of these examples are just good sense and being wary of waste reduction.

However the lengths some people go to to save literally a few pence is astonishing. Asking friends for 5p for a photo! Don't they like having friends?! How rude!

As for the poster who spends ages crawling up to traffic lights in order not to stop and uses only the clutch downhill - I will happily set up a standing order for the 15p a month saving you make of you stop doing this. It's dangerous and you shouldn't be doing it on the road to save literally pennies

We found direct flights for £20 each way at the airport we live a few miles from, which we thought was brilliant. BIL disagreed because he'd found flights from an airport literally the other end of the country for £15. He could get a Megabus to the nearest city for a pound and get the local bus to the airport for 1.50. Of course, this took him the best part of two days each way, entailed him sleeping in the airport, arriving much later than everyone else and leaving much earlier

My mum lives abroad and on one visit to the UK took a megabus and two trains from the NW to a London airport to save £25 flying from Manchester (a much closer airport). The journey was 1.5 days longer and by the time she bought food and drink etc it cost more than if she'd just just went from the closer airport!

That's what I thought Cherry. Surely if your journey is significantly longer, you'll spend the savings and then some on food and drink during the journey. But if someone is willing to go to such extreme lengths, they probably lug a giantic packed lunch with them too.

I live between Leeds and Manchester and my list of airports to look at extend to Leeds, Liverpool, Manchester and Doncaster. I'd possibly consider Humberside or East Midlands but in reality the cheapest/best timed flights are usually Manchester, Liverpool or Leeds anyway.

I consider Birmingham or Newcastle as getting too far away. And if we start having to travel to London, then it's usually cheaper and quicker to start looking at travelling from a local airport via Amsterdam, Brussels or Paris instead.

A thread on here currently about turning a shopping trolley into a pram!!

Re-using teabags is more cultural - I remember in Norway cafeterias would have a dish of used-once teabags for people to make their very-weak tea with. Personally I leave the teabag in until I've finished drinking, partly so I don't need to wash up a spoon nor saucer.

I reuse tea bags, because I prefer weak tea. Why would I throw it away? Wasteful.

My kids leave loads. DD is a very picky eater and often changes her mind about food halfway through. So fruit gets skinned, cored, chopped and added to a bag in the freezer so I can make crumble etc in no time. I do use ready made crumble mix though, cos I hate making crumble!

I cut up ruined or worn out clothes that even charity shops won't want. Saves on kitchen roll. Plus DD gets a sore bum a lot and a wet cloth seems to clean up after a wee far more gently than loo roll. I wouldn't use it for poo though!

Our stash of bargains is impressive. When we got our new kitchen, the designer insisted we wouldn't need that many cupboards (16 plus drawers etc) -we could have done with more!

My ex got his degree in stinginess.

He would buy his milk from a different shop from the rest of the grocery shopping because it was 2p cheaper.

He would walk for miles rather than pay for a bus ticket.

He refused to buy any other food or drinks on holiday when he paid full board- not even juice when out.

He wouldn't put the heating on unless it was below 0C outside.

He saved all the salts/ sugars etc from cafes so never bought packs of these from supermarkets.

We would never know in advance what was for dinner because it had to be whatever was in the reduced aisle in the supermarket.

I do use ready made crumble mix though, cos I hate making crumble!

Home-made crumble mix is freezable. I do this in portions, as DP likes a pudding now and again, especially from the rhubarb in our garden, which I loathe. I freeze single portion amounts of fruit and crumble (separately, to avoind the crumble going soggy) and can simply use to make a single portion crumble any time.

I reuse a teabag, just the once though. That way I get my weakish tea, but it still tastes of tea. Nothing to do with being miserly but I get the taste I want.

The fail have lifted this thread

Ugh! hate the fail.

FIL saves the little plastic bags that come with cereal variety packs and reuses them to wrap left-over food.

We also had a fantastic holiday with in laws where we drove through France in convoy (strict rule - our car had to follow fil's). He insisted on avoiding all toll roads. Both dc were horribly car sick due to constant windy roads. Fun times.

Such a lazy excuse for journalism! Do some bloody research for yourselves! They've even done a screen shot

Following! I've done so many of these