Fascinating thread. My little story isn't that impressive, but I still think about it now and then, so I figure I'll share it.


In HS, I partook in an exchange program that involved me living with a French family in Paris for a month. Anyways, they had a kid who was ~1 year younger than me (so 16 or so) who was obsessed with Pro Evolution Soccer for PS2 (game similar to FIFA). I sucked at video games or anything but I eventually obliged in playing a few games with him. He pwned me pretty thoroughly and decided he wanted to see if he could beat me 5-0 and we would bet 5 Euros on this. I refused but he kept nagging so eventually I obliged. I obv. played with Chelsea and put 5 in the back and he only won 2-0.

After he "lost," he got really upset and said something to the extent of "remember that beer I bought you a week ago when we went to see the CL match at a bar? that's the 5 Euros I owe you" and stormed away.


It's not really that stingy, I guess, but having something like that happen makes me appreciate having a real friend buy me a beer or something and ask for nothing in return.

my grandfather god rest his soul, but he had a nice garden going and went to the farm to buy manure very cheap anyway its a family classic for us.... he kept telling my dad to fill it up when the bags were already full... but no he really meant overflow it... he compacted it as hard as he can in those bags to get every penny worth and was overflowing from the top of the satchels and my dad just standing there in disbelieve repeating but its only ****... its only ****.

i gots me a stingy poker story too.

A couple of friends ( my wifes originally ) came over to play a few home tourneys. We are supposed to play 4 games winner take all. First games were $5 then next couple were $20. So we start the $5 game. I take chip lead. wife's friend ( the girl) cripples me in a hand and i am basically at the chip and a chair point. So i work my way back up take out my wife and the other friend ( the guy.who happens to be completely smashed ) now I have a 7-1 chip lead or so. Now it is 3:30 in the morning her friend says her BF aint going to pick her up unless she leaves now cause he want to go to bed. So she wants her money back. cause she still has chips and could maybe get lucky and run good and win. so after about 30 mins of arguing with her about how I called in sick from work and it was costing me $200 just to play and if she was online or at a real tourney they would blind her stack away. I just threw a toonie at her and shook my head. on top of all that I had to give the drunk guy his money back too. It wasn't fair apparently. There have been very few times when I have felt like punching a woman square in the face but I tell you she just about got it that night.

your 'friend,' you say

I use leftover arby's sauce for many things. Sometimes I'll actually cook with it. It's great.

My aunt saves wrapping paper, but we pretty much make fun of her for it and I make it a point to destroy the paper on any gift I get so that she can't repurpose it. The saving isn't so bad as the deliberate unwrapping job it requires. It's a crime against joy.

I think it's somewhat lousy form not to invite a wife to a rehearsal dinner, but not worth getting that up in arms over either.

I think the credit card roulette catastrophe thread by Irieguy qualifies:

"So I was out to dinner as a 4-some: me, my SLF, and a married couple. The two women have been good friends for several years. I have known the other woman for a few years and her husband has become a friend over the past year or so. They live out of state, so we rarely see them, but I think we all consider ourselves to be good friends.

They are not gamblers.

We had a very nice dinner with a few very nice bottles of wine and we knew the bill would be >$500. So I asked if he wanted to split it or gamble for it. We had a discussion about CC roulette earlier in the night, so he knew what it was. He said "either way is fine with me," and of course I said let's gamble.

While the waiter was mixing the cards behind his back I explained the game out loud to make sure the wife knew what was happening. She understood the rules and was rooting to be drawn first (the winning card in this case.)

My card was drawn first, so I won. The wife then snatched the card out of my hand and said "NO WAY, split the bill" and gave my card back to the waiter. We split the bill and the rest of the night pretty much sucked (including her storming out of the restaurant after her husband told her she "cut his balls off.")

The dude apologized profusely and offered to buy the next dinner in Vegas, but the whole scene rubs me pretty seriously the wrong way.

So what's my play?

-Forget about it, whatever
-Don't go out to dinner with them anymore
-Continue as is, but torture him about it whenever possible

Irieguy

PS- The wife is not super stable and would not tolerate any harrassment over this issue at all without a mental breakdown. The dude, while super cool, would not have any kind of sense of humor about it."

Dids,

that reminds me. Did you invent/coin the term Crusade Against Joy to describe the NoThumb/daryn modding era? I thought so before but I'm nearly certain of it now.

you sound like the stingy one.... anybody that wants to smoke the resin in my bowl... you are surely doing me a favor.... lol that **** is not good for you.

There's a guy at the bar where I work who instead of ordering food will grab a couple bags of oyster crackers (which we don't charge for) and a bottle of mustard and squirt a little ball of mustard on each cracker and eat that for a snack. He also tips 10%.

Cardo,

Probably. That sounds like something I'd do.

I think the LOL part of this is all of you not telling him to f*** off. His doucheyness should have been pretty easy to diffuse. As he's going for the first slice you tell him "hands off...we paid for this. If you want some then chip in some money next time." Even if he gets huffy about it an something like, "well excuse me for living...didn't know you guys were so cheap" you and everyone else there know that you're in the right. And you can always come back with, "cheap is always trying to steal everyone's food without ever paying for anything."

I seriously don't understand how anyone gets away with that type of behavior for very long. Any situation like that I've seen where somebody is getting out of line there's generally somebody to politely put them in their place...and then more sternly put them in their place if that becomes necessary.

A lot of these stealing (or not paying) type stories really could be handled this way and it's kind of weird to hear about guys who are "always" doing such things.



This is stealing. I don't really see it as stingy exactly. But it is certainly weird behavior.

+1 and who the hell splits a gram in the first place, and the next day has "a lot" left?

I try to offer twice or deny once or twice. Anything beyond that and I give in to their desire. I don't like offending them either, but I hate being viewed as cheap since I came from that background.

I mean, I am cheap. But only when it's something affecting only me (like if I'm buying a grill or something, I'd want a really good deal).

The fascinating thing that I have found is that people who go to great lengths to save pennies often don't save money or make as much money as they should in situations that actually matter.

Like stuffing their life savings under a mattress rather than investing it (actually the mattress has a lot of investments beat recently, but that's not why they're doing it), or not negotiating something at work. Or totally getting ripped off buying a car or a house.

Don't they realize that getting a few thousand dollars in any of these ways will more than compensate for several lifetimes' worth of this nickel and dime BS? Apparently they don't see the inconsistency.

my mate once threw away half a banana because it had all that soft brown **** on it, his dad pulled it outta the bin and ate it.

also once a phone company called my mates dad asking if he wanted a better phone plan, when he replied that he uses $30 credit twice a year they just hung up the phone on him.

we split a gram cuz we at the casino and there are no ounces available

i have a lot left because I medicate wisely ...

guess you don't live and california and smoke potent water hash in a hash pipe... cuz that **** gets very very potent when you run out and is very very clean

sorry.. dont' smoke shwag or beasters

alot of the stories about people reusing Teabags/bin bags and what not is more than likely some sort of ocd or older people who grew up with it and i can understand it. but some of these stories like about the guy not ordering food and asking for peoples leftovers is just like "wtf are you doing sir" have some ****ing pride

My mother in law was visiting our house recently. She is the cheapest woman I have ever seen. She wanted to turn on a lamp, but it had a normal light bulb in it, so she didn't turn it on because they use too much electricity. She found another lamp that had a high efficiency lightbulb, unscrewed it, and put it in the lamp that she wanted to turn on. Then she turned the lamp on... Wierd

Alot of what's being described isn't so much traditional stinginess but rather manifestation of a mental illness of some sort.

Like the woman who guts rotten fruit and tries to return it, something tells me there's alot more going on than just simple "trying to save some money"

I live in a sales tax free state, my cousin lives in the next state, about an hour drive, not really close with her or her husband, basically see them on the 4th of July and Christmas. Get a call from husband, he's ordering a new computer and wants to see if he can ship it to me to avoid sales tax, no problem. Two months later, buys a flat-screen TV, again no problem. Instantly after this, he gets the all you can ship membership thing at amazon, doesn't ask if he can send stuff and I start getting random small packages after the 3rd one shows up, I call and say I have some stuff for him, he doesn't know what's in the packages and asks me to open them. First one was a travel stick of deodorant. Cost 0.76, saved 0.04 in sales tax. Second, 1 4-pack AAA batteries, $1.10, 0.07 saved in sales tax. Third 6 pack of pre-sharpened #2 pencils, $0.44, 0.03 saved. Asks if it's cool if he can keep his sales tax discount, I've gotten about 250 packages sent to my house from Amazon in the last 9 months.

totally agree with you on this one. weddings bring out some real cheapos.

not all all

This. My GF's family is pretty much like this. They're really cheap and worry about small purchases, but make god awful decisions on large purchases and have no idea about investing.

Is this thread a huge level when it comes to this wedding thing? Not inviting the wife of someone in the wedding party to the rehearsal dinner is completely bizarre/cheap/bad etiquette. If you can't afford to do so, then you should be having a cheaper wedding and/or dinner.