People Share The Cheapest Thing They’ve Seen Someone Do

Most of us have had “cheap” moments. Some of us might have slightly overindulged at the serve-yourself complimentary breakfast buffet at a hotel. Others might have asked a store manager to price match an item that they were selling above market value. Maybe some of us have even held up the long grocery store line as we clipped over a dozen coupons at the register. Another perfect example of a “cheap” moment is wearing your disposable contact lenses for three weeks instead of two to cut back on costs.

Generally, even if you have good intentions, being told that you are a cheap person is not something you want to hear. However, in some scenarios, being cheap is completely rational, like, for instance, if we’re short on change at the moment or are trying to save up money for a new car. Some folks may also be cheap towards another person if they fear they will take advantage of them, especially if they have trust issues. In the latter case, being cheap can be considered a defense mechanism.

However, some people completely go beyond what it means to be cheap. We consider these folks stingy, selfish, and rude. Often, the intent of stingy folks doesn’t just involve trying to be frugal but may also involve trying to get revenge on somebody, intentionally putting their needs before others, or cheating or lying to undeservingly get what one wants. Simply put, being a stingy person can involve undesirable qualities like dishonesty, egocentrism, and/or a lack of empathy.

I think the following stories will perfectly define to you what it means to be stingy!

31. He billed my 13-year-old for food at his daughter’s birthday party

There are so many things wrong with this!

“My 13-year-old daughter was invited to a small birthday party at a mediocre chain restaurant (Ruby Tuesdays) for her best friend. The girlfriend is over here quite often and regularly eats dinner, breakfast, lunch, etc. if she is here, and sleeps over about twice a week during the summertime. She’s been included to trips to the amusement park and water park nearby (we have season tickets, but there is always something to eat, funnel cakes, etc.), movies, and the occasional trip to Dairy Queen, and I’ve never asked to be paid or have her pay her own way. We treat her as one of our own.

Imagine my disgust when my daughter calls me from the restaurant bathroom, nearly in tears, telling me that they just told her she will have to pick up her own check after dinner and desert have been served. (Check was like $13.00.) The guy actually said separate checks to the waitress, but my daughter didn’t know what that meant. She had a few bucks on her, but she was short about five bucks.

The other girl’s father told my daughter that she would ‘have to stay and wash dishes or something’ and got really ugly with her like she mislead them or something. I have the parent’s cell phone numbers, called him and asked him really nicely if he could spot her ten bucks until he brought her home, and I would pay him back. He refused and made it sound like somehow my daughter and I were scamming him.

He suggested that I call the front desk and square it away, because they were leaving, and were going to leave my daughter there if she couldn’t pay so he wouldn’t ‘have the cops chasing him down on his daughter’s birthday.’ I did call the front desk, gave them my credit card, included a healthy tip, and told my daughter I would be there to pick her up in ten minutes, don’t go anywhere. When I got there, a**clown was trying to get my daughter to leave with his family now that the bill was paid. His daughter was in tears. Needless to say, it got ugly.” GhostonaRune

30. His mom refused to pay for my meals after she invited me camping. I was 15…

“A few years back, my (now ex) boyfriend asked me to go camping with him and his family. I had never been camping before and was really excited about it. We were going to stay on some islands in the middle of a lake, and the week before, his mom made us all come up with recipes and throw in some cash for the food we’d be eating for the week. I didn’t have a problem with this, and we came up with some awesome pasta dish ideas.

When we got there, however, she changed her mind and decided no, she wanted to eat out in the town nearby every day. (We were out camping for a week, and we had also brought a cooler packed full with the ingredients for each meal.) Nobody warned me of this happening and well, as a 15-year-old, I didn’t really think I’d need money when camping. Just the complete basics.

After she realized I didn’t bring any money with me, she screamed at my boyfriend for about an hour about how she shouldn’t have to treat his guest, how he’s going to have to pay for all the food I eat this week and how she expects this never to happen again, all while I sat crying in my tent nearby.

Needless to say, every time we went out, I had water with the cheapest meal on the menu. Even if it was something I knew I didn’t like.

Worst camping experience of my life.” Vexxill

29. She didn’t buy me a ticket and then ditched me

This incident happened to me when I was in my 2nd year of engineering.

Now I had just enrolled in some tuition classes for which I had to travel quite a bit. Most of this journey was through BMTC bus. So when my ‘friend’ (let’s call her nuthead) and I boarded this bus, which was crowded, I was pushed to the back and she stood near the bus door. Having closer access to the conductor I had passed my 10rs to her to buy a ticket on my behalf. She pulled out her 10 as well and asked the conductor for tickets. What I saw from the back was cheeky flirty smiles exchanged b/w the conductor and nuthead which meant ‘hey it’s OK I’ll take care of it…just hand me 10 and you keep the remaining 10’ for which obviously nuthead greedily obliged while texting her boyfriend and listening to music in that crowded bus. I even yelled at her from the back to please buy the tickets because I didn’t want to break the rules.

Midway down our journey, our bus stops and one man got on who was just wearing khaki pants and some casual white untucked shirt claiming to be the ticket checker. He just randomly checks a few tickets and by the time he comes to me I frantically search for nuthead who had vanished into thin air on a moving bus!!! How? She saw the so-called officer get in and exactly when the bus started moving she deboarded with no regard that someone who came along with her is stuck inside and might get into trouble because of her! Cheapness didn’t end there.

Next, the officer comes to me, asks for my ticket and I tell him the conductor refused to give me a ticket and the conductor just gave shocking looks and told him I never saw this girl and that I was lying. Then this so-called officer just comes closer to me and threatens me that if I don’t pay the fine I’ll be handed over to the police for which I freaked out and started crying. I was angry and scared at the same time. I was scolding the conductor and crying helplessly. Everyone else saw me crying and a few aunties even tried telling the officer there was another girl who came along with her and she left without me, but the officer just wanted money.

So, I take my wallet out. God knows how much money was in there. The officer just grabbed my wallet and took whatever money was there right in front of everyone. I was left humiliated and shaken.

I then went over to the driver and yelled and told him to stop the bus. He somehow understood my plight and just stopped right at some junction and I got down and crossed the road without both ways. It was my first day on that route so I had no clue where I got down and where to go next without any money or phone in hand.  All I did was stand at some roadside and just cry.

Then comes nuthead searching for me, laughing at me and making fun of me! I could’ve punched her right in the face but something just calmed me down and I just kept my composure. Then we boarded another bus for which nuthead bought my ticket and had the nerve to tell me to return the ticket money to her next day. She wasn’t joking because she took the money from me the next day.” Sylvina Jennifer

28. She lied about having no money just to get someone to buy her food

“I worked in a Subway, and an evil woman came in one day. It was busy and she took forever to order, asking a million questions and complaining about everything while an entire line is behind her. She gets to pay but, ‘Oh, I don’t have enough money for that.’ The nice old man behind her offers to pay for food sincerely, and she thanks him.

She goes to sit down, then gets up, complains to us while there is still a busy line about wanting to turn the ceiling fans off (never been off the 3 years I worked there).

To finally kick it off, she gets back up before leaving, orders two more footlongs, and pays for it no problem with the same wallet she said she had no money in. We were all shocked at this evil woman.” SpinkickFolly

27. He would take our tip money to cover his tab

“When I was a college freshman, a bunch of friends on my floor would all go out drinking as a group every weekend (like freshman always do), and 3 am Sunday morning would always find us in Denny’s. Eventually, we noticed that the staff looked really annoyed whenever 9 or 10 of us would show up, and we could never figure out why…Until one night we caught one of the guys taking the tip money off of the table and putting it in his pocket.

Apparently, he’d been using OUR TIP MONEY to pay HIS TAB, and he’d been doing it the entire time we’d been making our post-drinking trips. When confronted, he explained how we obviously had more money than we needed (we tipped well to compensate for our drunken idiocy), and his money was tight, so he deserved help paying for his food.

To this day, he doesn’t recognize that what he did was wrong.” drinks_at_the_ackbar

26. He freaked out when his nephew asked to have a crab leg. He’s a millionaire…

So, you invite your family to your beach house for a week but can’t even give one of your family members a measly crab leg? Ouch.

“My brother hit the lottery, not sure of the final amount, but it was in the $2-3 million range. He rents a beach house and invites my other brother & I and our families to stay the week.

We all kinda do our own thing for dinner one night. He decides to get 3 lbs of crab legs. His 8-year-old nephew, my other brother’s kid, asks him if he can try the crab legs. Richy Rich goes off, ‘I pay for everyone’s f’n vacation, now I have to feed them too?!’

Whoa, my brother & I call him out, saying that he invited everyone; no one asked him to pay for vacations. We both wrote him a check for $1000 each and left the next day. Haven’t spoken with him since. That was 2007.” Deleted Reddit user

25. My millionaire brother billed us for a cheap, low-quality dinner he served us

Wealthy or not, normally when you invite someone over for dinner, you don’t ask them to pay for the food…

“My brother, who was a millionaire, was always EXTREMELY cheap, even when he was a child. The last thing he did that finally was the last straw was when he invited the whole family to dinner; this was in 1984. It ended up being boiled chicken necks and backs that he bought by the hundred-pound at the nearby chicken plant for just pennies a pound, with a small boiled potato and two slices of over-ripe tomato.

I couldn’t eat it. After the others ate, he gave everyone a bill for six dollars. This was a huge amount at that time for a good meal, much less his. We refused to pay because we had been invited. My brother started to berate all of us and almost cried because he wasn’t going to get to fleece his family. From then on I refused to have anything to do with him.

With all that money he could have really helped a lot of people instead he refused to help any charity, wouldn’t even go to church because he had to give to the church but watched it on TV for free. He could have helped his parents but refused to go in with the rest of us to help them. I wonder if he had any treasures in heaven when he died from a heart attack? His widow only took a few years to spend every penny he had. Good for her.” Shirley Smit

24. My friend gave my boyfriend a gift to give me. He gifted it as his own…

“In 2011 on my 18th birthday, my friends rented out a hotel room and threw me a surprise party. We get to the presents part, and my then boyfriend takes me into one of the empty rooms and gives me my gift. It was a really pretty belly ring, and I had never seen one that unique; I loved it.

Anyway, he was a d*uche; it didn’t last. About 3 years later, I was sitting with one of my close friends that I hadn’t seen in a while, just reminiscing about sh*t, and my 18th birthday party came up. She left early that night, so I was telling her about some of the crazy sh*t she had missed. Then we mention that ex and the whole, ‘Lol, I can’t believe you dated him’ convo ensued.

Then she says: ‘It’s such a shame he lost my gift. I gave it to him and told him to give it to you after I leave. You would have loved it! It was the cutest belly ring ever!’ I asked her to describe the belly ring to me, and yup, it was the same one he gave me. That mother*cker gave me the gift my friend got me and pretended it was from him and told her he lost her gift. (Plus, I broke up with him about 2 days later, so we didn’t really mention him much.) Obviously, my friend and I were WTF-ing, but yeah, there are people who are on a whole other level of cheap.” Purple_haze23

23. He finishes other tables’ leftovers to save money. He’s rich…

“I know this guy who will finish the leftover drinks from other people’s tables after they leave. Can’t go out to eat with this guy anymore because it’s so embarrassing.

One time he even asked a couple, ‘Are you gonna finish that?’ as they were chatting over dessert. They were sorta taken off guard and, even though there was plenty of cake left (ie. they might have wanted to finish it), they said, ‘No, be my guest.’ He swiftly snatched the rest of their cake and cleaned the plate. His stinginess really borders on ‘outright rudeness,’ and I’m sure he’s aware of the weird looks he must get, but it doesn’t seem to influence his level of ‘giving a f*ck’ in any way.

I can understand cutting coupons and using Groupons to get better deals and taking leftovers home even if it’s a higher-end restaurant where that’s less acceptable, but this dude is on some serious next level sh*t. The ironic part is that he’s incredibly wealthy. Not sure what the exact number is, but I know he had well over a million dollars at one point after getting his foot run over by one of those luggage carrier cars in an airport terminal and settled for an insane load of money.

As a sort of explanation/justification for his quirkiness, he’s been pretty emotionally/psychologically twisted since his wife died ~10 years ago of brain cancer, and we suspect his stinginess has something to do with some deep-seated psychological damage.” Deleted Reddit user

22. She couldn’t get a 30-cent discount on aspirin, so she left… after two hours…

This is actually embarrassing.

“I work at a department store. A woman came to my counter to buy one box of aspirin. It’s only three euros, but she showed us a card that would give you a percentage discount, so she would only have to pay 2.70 or something.

However, the card wouldn’t work, no matter what we tried. The till just didn’t accept it. I got my boss to help out, but she didn’t understand either. We try different registers, the same result. Nothing. After about two (!!!!!!) hours of trying, the woman was still waiting patiently.

We finally decide to call the main office because the woman would probably keep standing there forever. Finally, the main office told us that it’s impossible to get any kind of discount on any kind of medicine, by law. When we told the woman, SHE PUT BACK THE ASPIRIN AND LEFT?!?! She waited two hours to get a thirty-cent discount and left when she couldn’t get it. What the f*ck.” dgnarus

21. He lied about hating his meal to get free food for him and his date

“I was on a dinner date at a fantastic local Italian place, and the table behind ours consisted of some loud dude-bro and a rather bored/annoyed woman who appeared to be on a terrible first or second date (at least terrible on her end).

There’s a carved, ‘OUR GUARANTEE: IF YOU DON’T LOVE IT, IT’S FREE!’ wooden sign above the host’s podium-station-thing. He ate like a barbarian, loudly making happy noises and, ‘This is f*cking delicious!’

When the server comes to drop the check, dude-bro gets a sh*t-eating, ‘Hey, watch this!’ look on his face and goes from happy bro to sad bro like a switch being flicked. We guess he’s asking to see the manager. Both my girlfriend and I know exactly what this a-hole is about to pull. As the manager arrives, he forces a fake frown and shakes his head while gesturing to his plate, which has been vaporized of every last bit of edible food.

His date is completely mortified as he’s causing a scene about his awful dinner which YOUR GUARANTEE SAYS IT’S FREE!!! which has now attracted the attention of most of the other tables.

She finally has enough and snatches the billfold…receipt-holder-thingy, and slaps her credit card in it, then walks away from the table to follow the server to the register, never looking back at ‘Hey, where ya goin? Yo! Hey! Hey! Hey!’” Wandering_Scout

20. He cheated the recycling machine to get an extra two dollars

“Not sure if it’s like this everywhere, but in Norway, we have this system of recycling called ‘pant’ where if you give back plastic bottles and cans, you get a small amount of money back. Say one 1.5l bottle cost 30 NOK and you get 2.5 NOK back.

You ‘pant’ your bottles and cans by putting them into a machine (can be found in most grocery stores), and when you’re done, the machine gives you a little receipt with the amount you can cash out at the counter.

Pretty recently, 4-5 years back, Norway got rid of its lowest value coin, which was 0.5 NOK. So, what happens then if your amount is .5 something? It gets rounded up to the next whole number. You might see where this is going…

I was at the grocery store to just quickly pant some bottles one day, and this older man in front of me was taking so God d*mn long panting his bottles. Reason for that? He would insert one bottle, then get the receipt which said 3NOK instead of 2.5NOK and do that with EVERY. F*CKING. BOTTLE. Mind you, he had like four plastic bags of them.

He must have been there for 10 minutes for something that would normally take one minute. All for that tiny, meaningless change. 0.5 NOK is $0.06. Assuming he had maybe forty bottles, he made $2.34 getting the individual receipts instead of just one where all are added together. Stingy b*stard.” TJFusk

19. He tried to get us to reuse used toilet paper

You’d be better off asking your guests to use leaves to wipe themselves than used toilet paper…

“I was at a friend’s apartment about 5 years ago for a ‘moving in’ get together with about 10 others. Halfway through the party, I used the bathroom and when I went to wash my hands, I noticed he had not gotten around to buying hand towels yet. Giving him some slack and understanding it was his first place, I figured I would just grab a few squares of toilet paper and simply dab my hands with that. Not a big deal, but the roll of toilet paper was empty, so I just dried my hands on my pants and let my friend know he needed to replace the roll.

After I tell him, this mother f*cker walks into the bathroom, grabs what he thought were the ‘cleanest’ squares of USED toilet paper from the trashcan and wraps them around the empty roll. I don’t know what the heck those squares were used for or what possessed him to do something so unsanitary and absurd, but I didn’t end up staying at the party much longer to ask him why.

Very easily the cheapest, stingiest, and most disgusting thing I have witnessed in my life. I wasn’t really that close to the guy who threw the party and that basically confirmed that I wouldn’t be making any attempts to further the friendship.” millionaire_

18. My best friend gave me $2 for lunch on my birthday and then asked for it back…

I imagine he didn’t give him a birthday gift either. The least he could have done was just let him keep the two dollars.

“In high school, I forgot my lunch on my birthday, and I didn’t have any money for the cafeteria. I told my best friend this, and he gave me $2. I thought, well, OK, it is better than nothing, and I thanked him for it. I got a cheap snack or something, basically enough to get through the day.

The next week he came up to me and without a hint of irony said, ‘Do you have my $2?’ This was literally my best friend in school, and he did not acknowledge my birthday in any other way. I was like, ‘Wait, what? I didn’t realize that was a loan.’ He said, ‘OK, well give it to me soon.’ My best friend LENT me TWO DOLLARS ON MY BIRTHDAY, so I could not go through the day hungry.” Deleted Reddit user

17. Our friend would charge us for a cup of coffee at his house

“Ok, this is a true story, as unbelievable as it seems.

Got a friend who is generally the source of many unbelievable cheapskate stories, so here goes one that I can remember at this moment, and it’s not the worse example.

He bought a coffee machine a few years back, you know those Keurig capsule ones, because it would save him something like 6 cents per cup of coffee compared to getting his coffee at the local coffee shop. Considering he drinks about 4-5 a day he figured he would pay for the machine in saved money after a year or so? I kid you not.

Now, it gets worse. Whenever we went to his house, he would ask if we wanted coffee. We quickly learned to say no, because he would serve us coffee, and ask us to pay for it, the cost of the capsule, electricity, and water, and when we protested in disbelief, his retort was, ‘It’s cheaper than in the store!’ I f*cking kid you not.” Typhera

16. They would make their own lemonade with our free water, lemons, and sugar

“I used to live in a resort town on the Gulf Coast that is besieged by “snowbirds” every winter, seasonal residents getting away from whatever frozen hell they came from in Minnesota or Illinois. As a group, they are some of the rudest, most disagreeable people I’ve ever met—I used to remark that it was as if their personalities never fully thawed out once they came south.

Being in the south, naturally iced tea is one of the most common beverages and it’s always served with lemon, or lemon wedges are available nearby. I had a friend who owned a restaurant, who had to finally remove lemon wedges from the beverage station at his place between the months of January and April. Why? He looked at his food cost and was shocked to discover that he was going through more lemons during those months—the slowest business months of the year—than he was even during the summer. He set out to find out why.

Those d*mned stingy snowbirds would get a glass of water, take it over to the beverage station, grab a dozen lemon wedges and some sugar packets, and make their own lemonade, in such numbers that he could no longer afford to provide lemon wedges on the honor system. He would put them back out just before spring break, and take them away again after Christmas. Miraculously, his food costs plummeted.” Is_you_ignunt

15. He kept trying to get discounts on everything and pocketed our waitress’s tip

“A few summers ago, my sister and I went on a mini road trip with our friend and his boyfriend. I didn’t really know the boyfriend that well, but by the end of the trip, I couldn’t stand him. He didn’t pay full price for any of the meals he ate as he always found something, usually fabricated, to complain about.

The one night we arrived late at our hotel and had trouble finding a spot to park. It was nearly 1:00 in the morning, so there was only one person at the front desk. He told them he wanted to speak to their manager because the parking lot was too small, and he wanted a discount on his hotel room.

But the worst was when we went to a bar. My sister and went to use the washroom so left money with the guys for our drinks. We had planned to be there for a while, so we left a fairly generous tip. We found it odd that the waitress didn’t come back to our table for a long time. Turns out it was because the boyfriend pocketed the tip.” rhubarb_forest

14. My mom resells books from our library’s book exchange for a few bucks

“So, I live in a country where the libraries provide a service called book exchange. Basically, people come in and dump their old unwanted books at a bookshelf, and other people are free to take it home if they want to.

Works great right? Old books find a new home with a loving owner. Well…in theory.

My mom steals boxes of these books, literally hundreds, and flips them on a secondhand app for dollars. Literally, she’ll cart home heavy a** encyclopedias to sell them for a few bucks online. Not only is this abuse of other people’s kind-heartedness, but we’re also not poor. My family’s not rich, but we definitely do not need to rely on book theft for pocket change. I’ve tried to talk her out of it, but all I got was a scolding, with her telling me that I should be more appreciative of her efforts to put food on the table.” WannabeManofMars

13. He had us dig out his dead wife’s gold teeth to resell them. He was wealthy…

“My mother-in-law told me the story back from when she and her husband were running the funeral home in town. The county attorney (one of the richest people in town) had brought his deceased wife to the funeral home for burial services.

The wife had extensive dental work done and the dentist had used gold for this work. The county attorney asked my father and mother-in-law to dig out all of the gold so that he could sell it at one of those cash for gold places.

My father-in-law was a combat vet from Vietnam and had served in special forces unit, so he had seen many, many horrible things. My mother-in-law had told me this was the hardest thing he had ever had to do as a funeral director and would never speak to the county attorney again after that.” aylandgirl

12. He poorly filtered his drinking water to save cash. The water made them sick…

“A family friend decided that they should drink/use tap water for everything. Doesn’t sound too bad, right? Nope. Where I live, the water that comes from the tap is not ‘clean’ enough to drink, but it can be used for anything other than that.

This family friend decided that sticking on those sponge-like filters on the taps was all it took to make it drinkable and it was all fine and dandy from then on out because he couldn’t be bothered to buy a gallon of mineral water, that costs less than a dollar, that could easily last them a week and a half, probably. He thinks he’s frugal by doing this. But he was aaaaall for buying an expensive tv, two 24-k gold rings for himself and some other jewelry for his wife and kid and other things like that.

His daughter ended up getting UTI first, then him and his wife. They ended up spending more than they should’ve saved.

There’s a difference between being frugal and being cheap.” NightArmadillo

11. My stepdad would pay for a $5 sandwich with stamps from other customers

“When I was a kid my family ate a lot of Subway. My family wasn’t poor, just really stingy and frugal. My stepdad would make us all get kids paks. So, my mom, older sister, and I would order the kids paks and go sit down and eat.

But my stepdad was a man and wanted a footlong sub. He just didn’t want to pay for it. So, if there happened to be a line of people behind us, he would stand by the register and ask people if he could have their stamps. He would do this until he had enough stamps to get back in line and get his free sub. Then he would heckle the employees to give him free extra meat and cheese (which worked about 50% of the time). Meanwhile, my family would be sitting there, eating our kids paks, absolutely mortified.

Sometimes, there wouldn’t be a line behind us, so he’d be resigned to get himself a kids pak too. Then he would demand that he get 2 extra cookies instead of the toy.

Needless to say, my family got banned from several Subways in our town.” Deleted Reddit user

10. The manager had me leave the pith on oranges to “get more juice” from them

“A few years back I was doing a trial waitressing shift at a cafe for free, to see if I could handle the job, etc. The manager/owner teaches me what to do and tells me to cut the skin off a bunch of oranges and so I start the job, cutting away the skin and white pith, so there’s only orange flesh.

He then comes back and says, ‘No, only the skin’ and proceeds to demonstrate, cutting the thinnest layer of the skin off, leaving ALL the white pith. The orange is literally a white ball. Just so there’s more ‘juice’ when you grind an orange up. Oranges are one of the cheapest fruits and this manager wanted to out as much pith in the juice as possible to bulk it out.

At the end of this 3-4hr free trial shift, he then ‘generously’ offers me a job paying $10/hr (min legal wage is approx. $18/hr) if I keep doing well. What a miser.” ahwc11

9. He would give everyone half a drink and top it off with water

“I used to work in a factory that had vending machines at the edge of the shop floor. They had a large selection of hot and cold drinks available, with my drink of choice being hot chocolate. The vending machine spat out a small plastic cup of the stuff if you were so gracious as to drop 14p into it. For some drinks, like coffee, the price rose to an exorbitant 18p.

That’s right, fourteen pence for a hot chocolate. That’s twenty cents for those in the United States.

Cue ‘Dai’ was the stingiest person I’ve ever had the pleasure of meeting. His car, a Fiat Cinquecento, was often brimmed full of junk that he’d wombled out of somewhere and had planned to sell at a car boot sale for whatever profit random sh*t wombled from somewhere and sold out of the back of a Fiat could make.

On the rare occasion that he offered to go and get everyone a drink, he’d get a single drink of that type, pour half into an empty cup, then top both up with hot water from a nearby hot water machine. He’d do this for every drink type ordered until he’d got everyone’s drinks, then return with them with a big grin on his face, like he’d bested us all or something.

The guy was rumored to actually have quite a lot of money, not because he earned a lot but because he’d only outlay money if he absolutely had to and even then would try to find a way to game it to his advantage.” DaMonkFish

8. She kept attending free seminars to take advantage of free food and drinks 

“I used to have a friend who would scour the city looking for free seminars/presentations/anything as long as it had free catered tea/coffee/snacks.

She would go in with a huge bag, and as she got her paper cup of tea, she would be stuffing a second paper cup with spare tea bags, as many as she could fit. Then she’d put that second cup in her bag and sit down and drink her tea.

Once she finished her cup of tea, she would repeat it for as long as the seminar/presentation/whatever was going on, making a cup of tea and stuffing a second cup with tea bags, instant coffee sachets, sugar packets, biscuits, whatever was on the table and putting the stuffed cup in her bag.

She was quite well off, just really loved free stuff.” DAT_CANKLE

7. They shared a $1 burger and made a “salad” with the leftover lettuce for dinner…

“My great aunt and uncle sent me an email showcasing their frugal prowess:

They decided to splurge and go out to eat. They went to Burger King because they were having a sale on Whoppers for $1.00. Between the two of them, they got one Whopper without fries and with a water cup.

They removed the lettuce and cut the burger in half. They each ate their half in the restaurant. They carefully wrapped up the lettuce in the burger wrapper and took it home. For dinner they shared a ‘salad’ made entirely from the Whopper lettuce and mayonnaise packets.

They were so proud of themselves…” eightygalaxy1

6. She put a bracelet in the clearance rack, then argued that it was “on sale”

“Back when I worked at a Macy’s, we had a clearance rack for jewelry. I once saw a customer take a bracelet off of a display and sneak it into the clearance rack. About 30 minutes later, the same customer tried to buy the bracelet from me. When it rang up as full price, she claimed that she found it in the clearance rack and demanded a discount.

She went so far as to make a huge scene and demanded to see a manager. I tried explaining that I literally saw her plant the jewelry in the clearance rack herself, but she would have none of it.

The manager comes along and gives her a discount anyways. Turns out you can get whatever you want if you make a big enough scene. But, the worst part is that the bracelet was pretty cheap in the first place. Almost anything over $30 is kept in the glass displays. Anything considered ‘fine jewelry’ is kept in special displays that nobody is allowed to touch unless they had certifications.” tako9

5. She accidentally gave us $2 too much when we were caroling and took it back…

“When I was about 7, my brother (6 at the time) and my best friend (9 at the time) would busk outside shopping centers playing Christmas carols around Christmastime. My friend and I played the violin, and my brother played the cello. One day a lady threw in a couple of silver coins and, by accident, two dollars. Without pause, she knelt down and took her two dollars back. My brother saw this and started to cry because he thought she was punishing us for not being very good. I was so angry. And that’s the stingiest thing I’ve ever seen anybody do.

The story ended well though. Some old guy who was having coffee across the street saw what happened, came over and handed my brother ten dollars.” Squeezit_the_Moocher

4. They wanted a free manicure so they went to CVS

“I used to live with seven girls in a two-bedroom apartment in Michigan, USA. There were two girls, Avanthi and Lakshmi, who were very stingy and they always tried to take things without paying for them.I was the last to join the girls in the apartment. The day I arrived, in the evening these two girls asked me to come to CVS with them. I went with them as I also needed some things and didn’t understand why the other girls refused to come; they were also giggling as I left with. They told me to be careful and all and I ignored them thinking what would happen at CVS that would put me in danger.

We reached CVS and was looking around. I came to the cosmetics sections and I see these girls painting their nails, then and there itself. My eyes literally popped out with shock I. went to them and asked what they were doing. They said they are using the ‘try me’ bottles. I tried to argue with them that it’s to test on one fingernail and that you don’t sit there and apply the color to all your nails.

They didn’t listen and didn’t move from there either. They also tried acting as if they are looking around so that they can apply a second coat as well. I got scared and moved away from them. I was literally on the opposite side of the store, took things I wanted and checked out without even looking at them. I walked/ran back to the apartment as if there was a ghost chasing me from behind. I was scared and sweaty.

I came back to my apartment with a shocked and scared look on my face and the other girls were smiling at me saying now you understand why we didn’t go with them. I was angry at first because I also might have got into trouble because of them but then smiled along with them.

Some other things these two girls used to do:

• Change the tags on dresses they want with cheaper ones. They look for the ones that have sticky tags.
• Go to the candy section in Walmart and eat candy directly without taking them in a cup and paying for it.
• The Walmart near our apartment used to have a bakery section. They’d order from the bakery, go to isolated aisles, eat it off and put the cover in some aisle there and not pay for it.

They were always doing these things so all the other girls just stopped going anywhere with them.” Gayathri Kanakam

3. My family member gifted my cousin who is mentally handicapped an empty box…

“I have a cousin who is mentally challenged. She is 33 now, but her mind will never progress past that of a 4-year-old. So, every year at Christmas, we all go out of our way to buy Jenny a lot of gifts so that she can unwrap them because she really likes to unwrap gifts. I usually go to the dollar store myself and spend about $20 bucks and get her 20 gifts, so she can unwrap them. She never cares so much about the present as she does about unwrapping them, so it’s a lot of fun.

Anyway, there is a member of my family who is RIDICULOUSLY cheap and one year gave Jenny an empty box. Now, Jenny never cares what she gets, but she knows when she’s been given an empty f*cking box, and she started to cry. The member of my family who had been so horrifically cheap as to give a disabled girl an empty box for Christmas started rattling off all sorts of excuses about how she must have ‘accidentally grabbed the display box’ as she squirmed under our angry stares. BTW, her grabbing the ‘display’ box is complete bullsh*t because the toy that was on the box was something heavy enough that she would have known it was an empty box.

F*cking cheap a** skate, man. My family.” brat1979

2. She offered $100 to anyone who found her dog and then refused to reward us…

“When I was in the 6th grade, a woman who lived down the street lost her dog and put up flyers offering a $100 reward. For us kids that sounded like a small fortune, so we were all searching for her poodle.

A friend of mine found the dog, and I helped her take it home. The woman was ecstatic, hugging the dog and crying, and thanked us profusely and then closed the door! We weren’t sure what to do. Neither of us wanted to knock a second time, but there were ONE HUNDRED DOLLARS on the line, so we knocked again and asked about the reward.

The woman suddenly looked angry as if seeing her reunion with her dog was reward enough and just scowled at us. Then she said something like, ‘I was emotional when I made those signs, but I’ll give you whatever cash I have.’
My friend got $8.” DeniseDeNephew

1. They refused to pay $25 for medication that would save their dog’s life

“I was waiting at the vet while someone else was being rung up. The total came to $25 for medication for the dog. The woman looked obviously shocked. She looked at her husband, and he shook his head and shrugged. She looked at her young daughter and her eyes widened as she shook her head no. The woman then told the vet tech they couldn’t pay for it. The vet tech was like, ‘It’s only $25… your dog will die without it.’ They argued a bit, and then collected their dog and left sans medication. The vet tech called out as they were leaving, ‘But your dog will die without it! It’s only $25!”’ workerdaemon

While being too generous can land you in trouble, so can being too greedy. Reading these stories allows us to remember a valuable lesson: that being stingy and cheap are not healthy qualities! Rather, it’s important that we are both generous and conservative with how we choose to spend our money, whether we are spending it on others or on ourselves. Moderation is everything!