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.

[SnickersWasAHorse]

Troy I only was my towels once a week too. I just use a fresh flannel each day and wash them all when I was the towels.

[GuinefortGrey]

When I lived in Dublin 15 years ago all the supermarkets provided a little hacksaw thingy on a chain specifically so you could chop off your stalks before weighing them! We thought it was absolute genius. I wonder if they still have them?!

[Glosgran]

A penny-pinching colleague ate half her banana one lunchtime and then folded the skin back over the remaining fruit. When I commented she said that she would keep the other half for lunch the following day. This same colleague never removed the protective plastic covering on the seats of her car and was reputed to have laid a new carpet upside down 'to save it from wear'!

[00100001]

Why is eating half a banana penny pinching?

[scaryclown]

Taking fag.ends out of pub bins to make rollies ..
Coffee instead of breakfast
Old pyjamas and socks as washing rags/shoe polish cloths
'Accidentally' ordering 1 box of pen refills instead of 1.. That's kept me in Parker pens for 7 years and I'm less than half way into the box
Diluted cheap baby shampoo in old handsome bottles..
I've done those little milk carton before ..But then had a brainwave and just gave up milk and sugar in coffee.
No protein shakes, just cheap oats and water
Old food cans instead of plant pots
Egg box sections as egg cups
Old jars as coffee cups/baked bean microwave pots
Surplus chips and fish from fish supper into freezer dropped into next slow cook stew..A bit odd, but not too bad!
Collect discarded shower gel bottles from gym , add a bit of water, and top up my own bottle..
Use sports centre showers if member/confident walking in, instead of own.

[Badbadbunny]

Seems to be a trend towards two types of "money savers".

Firstly you have those who are extreme and will "waste" their time to save a few pennies.

But, there are lots of examples of ways in which you can save money which aren't extreme at all, and are really very quick and easy ways that take little more than a bit of thought/planning.

But it's the behavioural aspect that's important. If you think and plan to save what other people would regards as "small" amounts of money, you're in training for saving huge amounts when you buy other things. It's the thought process of "look after the pennies and the pounds will look after themselves" - not the literal meaning of people saving pennies which accumulate into big money. If you get into the habit of saving money on your daily "minor" spends, you're in a much better position to save money on the occasional big purchases because you're in the habit of thinking whether something is necessary, whether there are cheaper alternatives, and whether you can get the same thing for less money. If you have a glib/blase attitude to your daily minor spends, you're far more likely to fall into impulse purchases of bigger things too.

[Deejoda]

Well surmised bunny

[NightWanderer]

Bananas go rank so quickly though. I know someone who eats half an apple with her breakfast and saves the other half in the fridge for the next day. That seems normal to me but how does a banana keep until the next day?

My brother does the tobacco thing but he`s kind of a freegan.

I make a big pot of soup at the weekend and freeze it for lunch during the week for myself but I think thats sensible.

[NotCitrus]

Bananas do keep if you cut them in half before peeling - just a tiny skin to peel off the end. If you change your mind half way down, not so well.

[scaryclown]

Haha..Lol etc..

Paying staff so badly and having 'saving' rather than 'earning' bonuses for staff so you try to get by with half the staff..To save £60 a day.. But then lose £300 a day because popular items are not adequately restocked...

THEN encouraging other departments to do the same, then taking those skeleton staff to prop up the till manager's gloriously huge savings with' queue busters' all day ..So that none of the departments even have adequate staff..So even more stock fails to get replenished, then patting yourselves on the back for high 'queue clarity's scores..Because you have fewer customers buying fewer items be side items aren't in stock properly..

Yes that's you Walmart you absolute duffers...

[Badbadbunny]

Yes that's you Walmart you absolute duffers

Clarks are the same these days, but they've kept the staff numbers and drastically reduced the amount of stock they have in store. So all the staff are just hanging around telling customers to order on line because they've little in their store room to actually sell.

A lot of financial decisions are made by idiotic managers who havn't a clue about how finance/business actually works. That's why you get these stupid short term decisions which cost firms dearly in the long run.

The worst case I saw was a hot shot "professional" procurement manager who screwed down all the firm's suppliers so much with forever wanting quicker delivery timescales, higher discounts, retro bonuses, etc. - Short term, she could report massive savings to the Board - constantly getting congratulated when she announced yet another successful negotiation of 20% off supplier x's price list. But she hadn't any commercial nouse and soon the suppliers started giving her inflated price lists so she was paying the same (or more) than before her "successful" negotiation. Then things turned nasty in the firm with a few cancelled contracts and at the very time when the firm needed all the goodwill it could muster to carry on trading under harsh cash flow conditions, the suppliers turned the screws on her, put the firm on "cash on delivery", etc., and nearly crippled it. It took the Board to start negotiating directly again and cutting her out of the loop before they saw the damage she had done to supplier relationships and she was soon sent packing!

[mintinbox]

Bananas do go rank. Unless you put them in freezer bags and keep for porridge and smoothies.

I loathe to throw food away. I freeze anything before it'll go off unused. I par boil and freeze spare potatoes for roasts. I freeze any little bit of cake, fruit or veg that can't be made into a casserole curry or crumble before it's too late.

But even I boaked at the thought of frozen chip shop chips in a slow cooker!

[AllRoadsLeadBackToRadley]

I've done the tobacco thing at 3am when the nearest 24hr is 5 miles away.

[SemiNormal]

I've done the tobacco thing at 3am when the nearest 24hr is 5 miles away. Me too, but only from my own roll up ends, not someone elses from a bin or anything - that's taking it to extremes even I won't go to!

[velvetcandy]

This thread has cheered me right up! Soon to be "ex" mil takes a plastic tupperware box to the harvester and takes about 10 bread rolls, butter packets, cherry tomatoes basically anything stuffed into her box home. Her and fil also dont order a drink but fill up their sports drinks bottles with coke from the refill machine. I hate the harvester btw i just dont like that kinda fried food burger chips thing.

[woodhill]

So effectively stealing velvet, must be embarrassing. I don't like Harvester either

[Deejoda]

I watched a programme looking at how dirty things are and the Harvester was mentioned (the bread rolls and salad bar in particular). I have never been in one and probably never will now

[Gwenhwyfar]

"If you have a glib/blase attitude to your daily minor spends, you're far more likely to fall into impulse purchases of bigger things too.
Book"

No, I really don't agree with that. I'm quite lax on small spending, but with anything expensive I dither for months. It's really not the same thing.

[Ezzie29]

This thread is making me realise how wasteful I can be! The only thing close to penny pinching I do it to tear tissues in half before blowing my nose - I have a small nose and half a tissue is plenty. I could do so much more without going into miserly territory tho, I must look into it!

[scaryclown]

I've done the "pizza hut endless salad' thing...take a big Tupperware box in and fill it with tomatoes and croutons...

[scaryclown]

Also done the laundry soap thing and cut bits off to wash hair, shower etc.. it's actually very good (Portuguese brand) not so foamy, but lovely sea salt smell :)

[Blatherskite]

My sister used to work in Pizza Hut. Her one tip was "NEVER EAT THE SALAD".

It gets topped up rather than refilled so if you're getting towards the bottom of the tub then that stuff could have been there for days! With all those grubby hands in it!

[ohjessie]

To the people drying out sheets of kitchen roll... why not use a cloth?!

[artycakemaker]

I thought of this thread yesterday.

I came home from a work trip away and found that the cat had pissedall oer the bag of toilet rolls. So DH lovingly rinsed all the toilet rolls and hung them on the radiators to dry.

We are NOT poor. But he does hate waste. [grr]

DH is away himself all week, leaving this afternoon so my cunning plan is to bin the toilet rolls and buy new ones. (From Aldi, so not expensive to begin with).

[janaus]

In Australia, we have "rounding down or rounding up" with cents.

If something totals, say 33 cents, it gets rounded down and we pay 30 cents. If it's 38 cents it gets rounded up to 40 cents.

So, at the supermarket one day, it was very painful to watch a lady buying carrots. Get one carrot weighed, pay for that 1 carrot. Another carrot, weighed and paid for. And on it went. All in the hope that rounding down would save her a few cents.