Here recently, I started a thread on a message board, listing cheapo tips for people to see what their reactions would be. Many people got a laugh out of it, but others could relate to what I was saying, because they have had experienced such behavior from their parents, other family members, spouses, and friends. It was kind of like Jeff Foxworthy's claim to fame; "You know you are a Redneck, if".
One man wrote me back and said they were great ideas and he was taking notes.....OMG!!!
My mother actually practiced a few of these tips, and they were rituals she lived by. I never understood why, because she worked for Hewlett-Packard and made an above average income. I guess being born during the Depression had a lot to do with it.
Here's what I wrote:
Call it thrifty, or frugal, or tight. It still means the same thing....CHEAP!!!!!
Here are ways to know for sure if your husband/boyfriend is too cheap:
1. He reuses the same tea bag for another cup of tea.
2. He reuses the same plastic sandwich bags to put his lunch in for work.
3. He recycles paper towels.....yuk!!!
4. He buys two-ply toilet paper and goes through it separating the double ply into more toilet paper.
5. He insists on doing ALL the food shopping and gets generic EVERYTHING, as well as buying half a cart full of ramen noodles.
6. He takes Navy showers instead of Hollywood showers. (A Navy shower is running the water on you long enough to get wet, then you shut it off to soap up, then turn it on to again to rinse. A Hollywood shower is running the water the entire time of the shower)
7. He wears the same clothes for days until he washes them.
8. He insists that you buy all your clothes at a second hand/pre loved shop.
9. He doesn't like for you to have spending money and makes you give any spare change you have to him, so he can hide it under the mattress.
10. He never takes you out to dinner or a night on the town, because he complains about the prices being too high.
11. He never runs the heat in the winter time, but makes you go out and chop fire wood instead.
12. You go summers without air conditioning because it will make the power bill increase.
13. He insists on cutting yours and his hair to save money and does an awful job.
14. Makes you drink tap water instead of buying spring water or a water purifier to save money.
15. Burns the trash in a steel barrel instead of taking the trash out and having it collected. (That really smells in a residential area).
16. Makes you drive the same car for years (regardless, that it's a hunk of junk and it has no trade in value, but spends more money throughout time, on it keeping the thing on the road, than buying you a new car).
17. Can live without cable, a VCR, or a DVD player.
18. Keeps the factory made AM radio in the car and never gets an FM radio, tape or CD player for the car.
19. Family time consists of taking the kids to the playground all the time and never to an amusement park, because it costs money.
20. Going out to dinner on your birthday to a privately owned, hole in the wall restaurant, only to find out you got a free birthday meal with his purchase.
21. Letting the garbage pile up, only to be smashed down into one garbage bag, that's half ripping to shreads, than having to waste another garbage bag. (I'd rather waste another garbage bag, thank you.)
22. Calling someone collect, just so they will say no and or give you a quick message with the operator, so no long distance rates are charged. Or worse, calling them collect and hanging up, so they call you back.
23. Trying to use two or more coupons with the one same product at the store.
24. Living on a everyday diet of Ramen noodles and Kool Aid.
25. Going to an all you can eat buffet once a week with a backpack and big purse, just to steal the food.
26. Stopping off at every drive and revive stations along the highway for the free coffee and chocolate bar.
27. Instead of staying at the hotel with the pool, you stay at the cheaper roach motel next door and still use the pool at the other hotel.
28. Tearing out the tobacco from old smoked cigarettes in dirty ash trays and on the ground, only to reuse that tobacco for your own rolled up cigarettes.
29. Going to a party and collecting used beer cans with a bit of beer left, to pour into a container to take home.
30. Doing your Christmas shopping at the "Everything's a Dollar" store and not taking the tag off the gift before you wrap it.
31. Ordering around the food server at a restaurant, and coming up with lame excuses not to tip, and stiffing the poor food server out on a tip.
32. Yelling at you for breaking any of these barbaric, inhumane rules, he lives by.
