Frugal is fine, but when you’re such a cheapskate that it starts to affect your health, or your children’s health, it becomes a problem…
Many thanks to the Redditors who responded. You can check out more answers from the source at the end of this article.
1. I had a friend who’s divorced dad would be “in control” of her tampons. He would give her a tampon every 8 hours. She couldn’t get one any earlier than that. Once her mom found out, her mom sent her to her dad’s with boxes of tampons that she had to hide from her dad.
Apparently her dad thought that females waste tampons and don’t use them properly? It was weird.
SinfullySinless
2. My mother tried to convince ticket seller that I was 6 years old (actually 12) and my brother 12 years old (actually 19) to save 6 bucks for a hop in hop off bus ticket. Needless to say my mother did not get the reduced price. Especially because of the reason my brother was smoking a cigarette.
Moorycc
3. I went mini golfing with my cousin, her husband, and her three kids. The cashier just thought I was 12 and asked, “So two adults, four kids, right?” There was a very small pause and then my cousin replies, “That’s right.” I’m 25.
Strelitziaceae
4. Mom would date richer guys around the holidays so we could have Christmas presents to open.
thatonegirl127
5. When my dad moved into his house, he had a guy come over to do a free demonstration for a water filter that goes under a sink. The guy used a bar of soap for his demonstration and left it when he was done.
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My dad called at least 4 other companies for a free demonstration just to keep the free bar of soap, and never intended to have a water filter installed.
He does things like this, and it gets worse as he gets older. But I just let him do his thing.
freepieces
6. When I was in jr. high I wanted my parents to buy me some weights so that I could bulk up a bit for the sports teams. My dad is super cheap so instead of buying me weights, he filled two big folgers coffee cans up with cement and stuck stuck them on either end of a sawed off broom handle.
mejok
7. My dad always refused to buy me a fish supper from the chip shop. Said it cost too much, and I could have fritters instead. Not really a big deal. Until a stray cat moves in to his house, he decides to keep it, and regularly treats it to fish suppers.
gabdmm
8. My dad returned a video game I got on my bday so he could buy it cheaper from the middle east (there was arabic language option). So after playing a little bit on my birthday I had to wait another week until it was delivered.
Linmios
9. Ex-wife was a frugal spender and always tried to save money or make extra money where she could. After our divorce, my family would still gift our children clothes on the holidays and their birthdays.
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That was until I found her selling the clothes on Craigslist and then go to the goodwill to get cheaper clothes for them.
Now my family makes sure I get the clothes. They go stay with her with what they were sent with.
Its_puma_time
10. The exterior of our family minivan must have been 70% duct tape by the time it was retired. It was a running joke that we’d put fresh patches on before a big event like a wedding or prom.
Pride_Is_Expensive
11. My ex step-mother was like every Disney step mother ever. She was loaded but was super stingy, when we all stayed at her house she made my dad bring our own food every time. One time we forgot, and she fed us 65c tinned tomatoes.
lyrajayviolet
12. When we demolished our brick garage, my dad made us clean every one of those bricks with a pickaxe and line them up around our house for future use. They are still there 8 years later. All $500 and one-year time and back breaking effort worth.
Our cars are worth $2000. He buys identical cars and dismantles them for parts. Just when you think he’s done scrapping, he lifts the engines out of them and stacks them underneath the carport. They have 300,000KM on them.
We sit on milk crates around the dinner table.
Our TVs are 20″ in size to save on power.
Dad saves candy wrappers because they may be useful.
Most of our furniture is stuff people threw out on the street.
We use soap for shaving cream and shampoo.
Our Granny flat has cupboards and couches stacked ontop of each other to the cieling you have to shimmy through everything, the weight is so heavy the ground has settled and cracks have started to appear everywhere.
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I tried reasoning that the space could be better utilized by renting it out, but apparently its more important to keep faulty treadmills, lawnmowers, fridges, ovens and washing machines for spare parts…
Many more examples of stupid stuff because he doesn’t understand the value of time and space :/…
sp3ctr41
13. My parents taught me never to buy drinks or dessert or snacks when going out. Those things are much cheaper at the grocery store in bulk, and you just have to wait until you get home to enjoy them.
I miss my parents.
Bonus: uncle would put drumsticks in shrink wrap and hide them in his pockets to take to the movies. Then again, our family still has a picture of him from college in the 1960s, a new immigrant to the US, holding a bag of coins at the pay phone, with a huge smile on his face. His dorm mates surprised him at Christmas with the bag of coins so he could call his parents overseas, just for a few minutes. Thank you, Baylor University.
ypsm
14. My girlfriend’s parents went to McDonalds on their first date and used a coupon.
Ptolemaeus_II
15. When dial up came out we got a free months trial CD. We used it for almost 10 years by frequently setting the date back on the computer.
sarahzaza
16. I used to get ants in my cereal boxes and my mom would still make me eat it. They don’t do that anymore but it made me realize how financially stressed my parents were until 10 years ago, because now they waste more food than I do.
ILikeRifle
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17. When my parents had the family home refurbished, Pa would carefully extract the nails from the ripped-out woodwork with a claw hammer, and then hammer them straight again and put them in tins for re-use along with unused nails.
For years afterwards, every third or fourth nail you used from his workshop would bend like a banana on first wallop from a hammer and you’d hit your thumb.
MisterShine
18. My parents weren’t really cheap. They were just frugal. They’d spend money on nice things; but couldn’t stand the idea of wasting any.
We had a pool, plenty of electronics, and typical middle-class luxuries–but cut our own hair and made our own toothpaste. That sort of situation. My dad would spend 2 hours fixing a $5 pizza cutter, but we had a boat.
Anyway, when I was in middle school, a few friends and I built a fort in my backyard. We mostly used cardboard but also tarps and whatever we could find. We held it all together with duct tape.
My dad thought it was great, but when we were done, my friends went home, and it was time to take down the fort, my dad says, “make sure you save all the tape that’s still sticky.”
He seriously had me make a “role” of used duct tape that he would suggest I “use first” before using any new duct tape. Not too long after that, the battery cover to my electronic football game broke and I made it stay on using used duct tape.
iMakeItSeemWeird
19. Parents would pick a place when going out that had some sort of “Kids under X years old are free” and I had to be 3-4 years younger than I am for the day.
lendonen
20. Often when he drove he would build up speed to just over the speed limit then turn the engine off and free down to 5mph or till he needed to turn in order to save gas. He did this while my friends were in the car.
We lived in a sketchy neighborhood and he concocted a DIY alarm by stringing fishing line in front of the edges of the yard leading to through the bedroom window and tying it to an empty coffee can to catch intruders. He caught my friends.
Called my then best friend while I was out of state, and made him get on the roof to fix the antenna (because he can’t get up there himself) rather than getting someone out to fix it.
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I found out about this weeks after when I saw my friend again.
Once I moved out, invited me home to visit, and upon arrival I was told that I need to mow the lawn and clean up the back yard for him because we’re getting guests. The yard hadn’t been maintained since the last time I was there.
Let our cat die slowly and painfully over 12 hours after it had been attacked by a dog to avoid paying a vet. There was a gaping whole on it’s side.
Waited till it got really bad before taking me to a doctor / dentist in hopes of the pain/infection going away by itself.
Made me take letters to the school financial offices and face the people there on his behalf with regards to school fees not being paid on time in hopes of earning sympathy points.
Made me start taking the school bus even though we live a 5 minute drive away and there’s always someone home when he figured out he could falsify school bus tickets.
Told me depression isn’t an illness and I was too young to be depressed when I wanted to see a professional after the school life coach recommended it.
_ThrowAway-san
21. “It works fine; you just have to baby it” was my dad’s mantra.
Also, when I was a kid I got the room that had an air conditioner hole cut into it. My dad installed a swamp cooler there (intended to cool the whole house), and mandated that I leave my door open at all times. If I closed the door by accident or whatever, the air pressure would instantly blow up all the ceiling tiles in my room. Good times.
heidismiles
22. My parents don’t understand the “invest a few more dollars for a much better quality product” thing, so when I was in high school or just starting uni and they bought me clothing, it would be a $20 pair of jeans from JayJays that would last just a few weeks because of thunder thighs wearing them down as I wore them daily, and then we’d have to buy another pair. They’d buy one pair of $5 shoes from Kmart because they were the cheapest, but they were also the most uncomfortable and – again – I’d wear them on a daily basis so they wore down within a month and we had to buy more.
I’m in my early 20s now and teaching myself the concept of “bigger price tag is better quality” – I bought myself a pair of Dr Martens in 2015, and my parents almost fell out of their chairs when I said they cost $180. Except I’ve worn them practically every single day since I bought them – whether to uni or work (hospitality), and they’re still solid and in good shape. Best investment of my life tbh.
myrightboobisbigger
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