We live in a world where it is important to save money. We may sometimes struggle to make ends meet, so saving a little here and there is really going to make a difference.
Then again, there are some people who take saving money to an extreme. These are the people who cross the line from being thrifty to being cheap. Sometimes, it’s the children that get caught in the middle.
The stories we have for you here are from children who had to live with big cheapskates. I’m sure some of this will ring true for you, especially if you had frugal parents.
1. How My Dad Scored a Free Bar of Soap with a Clever Trick
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.
My dad called at least four 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, which worsens as he ages. But I just let him do his thing.
2. My Dad’s Attachment with Paper Towels
My dad hoards his paper towels. To this day, he still expects me to ask permission to use them (I’m 21) because he doesn’t want me to waste them. I remember thinking it was $100 bucks for a roll because he was so concerned about me wasting them.
He is a cheapskate and spends twice as much money on everything because he only gets the cheapest thing that breaks or doesn’t work as well. While my girlfriend and I were at his house, I dropped a gallon of milk everywhere. She grabbed paper towels and used the whole roll to soak up the mess.
I felt so sinful helping her, but the look on my dad’s face when he found out we used a whole roll, was priceless. I knew he wouldn’t yell at us because he was too polite to yell in front of my girlfriend. But, he was visibly holding back his pain, anger, and heartbreak over the “wasted” roll.
3. My Dad’s Unique Approach to Saving Every Coin
Oh my God, dads are terrible. Mine hates paying for electricity, so he hangs his clothes up outside, which would be fine if he didn’t do it year-round, even when it’s below freezing.
Whenever my sisters or I cleaned our rooms, he would go through our trash, looking for “valuables” we had thrown away (money or recyclables). He’s obsessed with gas prices, and I once sat in the car with him as he drove around town for half an hour searching for the cheapest gas.
When he wants to drive down a hill, he literally puts his car in neutral, opens the door, and pushes himself down the hill with his foot. One time, we went to a Burger King, and I was only allowed chicken fries because a burger was “too expensive .”
4. Meet the Return Policy Maestro
My father took insane advantage of the Costco return policy. He returned an outdoor furniture set we’d had for about eight years. It was weather-worn, and a couple of pieces were broken. They took it, and he used the money to pay for most of a new patio set from Costco. Unbelievable.
5. Unveiling the Frugal Achievements of My Grandmother
When I was a little kid, I spent summers at my grandparents’ house, and one of my chores was setting the table before dinner every night. Whenever we had company for dinner, I was instructed to use “the good napkins.”
That meant the napkins that didn’t have restaurant logos printed on them. We only went to restaurants when my grandmother felt she could come out ahead on the deal, and there were many ways to accomplish this.
She clipped coupons, of course, but that was kids’ stuff. Whenever she did anything for someone, she’d get them to take her to dinner to “return the favor.” She had an enormous purse, which generally returned stuffed with napkins and food from the buffet.
She didn’t see much point in going to any restaurant that didn’t at least have a salad bar. One year, when my mother and I offered to take her to dinner for her birthday, we had to drive over an hour to get to a Sizzler she hadn’t been banned from.
6. Rolling in Savings
My dad discovered where the giant industrial rolls you see in some shopping centers are sold and moved us over to that. It’s like one giant roll with about three or four normal rolls’ worth of toilet paper. I’ve never been so embarrassed having friends over.
7. My Grandmother’s Unbeatable Sears Lifetime Guarantee!
When my grandparents got married, they did their gift registry with Sears; that was back in the day (Late 1940s) when they had a ‘lifetime guarantee’ on almost everything they sold.
My grandmother has moved house almost ten times since then, but she has kept every flattened box and warranty for every appliance she got when she was married.
I drove her to Sears about two years ago to replace her iron. She brought all the boxing and paperwork from back in the 1940s to get a new one. Surprisingly, they fulfilled the guarantee and gave her a new iron!
I think it’s hilarious, but she hasn’t had to pay for a new appliance in over 60 years because she’s so cheap! She’s a Ukrainian immigrant to Canada and always insists, “Lifetime guarantee means lifetime guarantee.”
I feel bad for Sears because our family is notoriously long-lived (her father lived until 104). I sometimes think that maybe this is why Sears is doing so poorly: a ton of cheap old women cashing in on their lifetime guarantees.
8. My Dad’s Budget Home Became a Renovation Adventure
My father is pathologically cheap. I have tons of stories, but I’ll share the biggest. My dad only looks at the dollar amount and nothing else. If he sees a six-pack of toilet paper for $5 and a twelve-pack for $7, he’ll buy the $5 pack every time, guaranteed.
So you can already imagine how any major purchase goes with him. When I was about eight, he decided to buy a house. One could buy something relatively decent in my area for $110k back then. We’re talking newer cabinets, floors, interior appointments like trim, newer doors, windows, etc.
He ended up buying a low-quality house for $89k. It had been built in 1947. The guy who built the place was just as cheap as my dad. All of the windows and doors were original. It still had its original asbestos siding.
On the inside, there was no trim. No interior doors except the bathroom door, which itself had no knob. No kitchen cabinets or counters.
The living room floor was bare plywood, and the ground floor bedroom had linoleum haphazardly unrolled onto it. So essentially, my dad “saved” 21k when buying the house but has had to put way more than that into it over the years.
9. Beating the Heat on a Budget
I’m from Georgia, the land of humidity and heat. My dad wouldn’t turn the AC on until the temperature exceeded 100F. He bought these styrofoam pads that were metallic foil on one end.
We had to shove those into all the windows and exiting doorways when we had the AC on the “keep the heat out” and save on the AC. Also, our city has a natural spring. The water is drinkable and free.
So let me set this scene – There is a line in front of it. Kids wanting cold water on a hot day, moms with a pitcher to get some, maybe a guy with an empty milk jug, and my dad with THIRTY-TWO 5-gallon bottles filling them all up “in case the spring dries up tomorrow.”
10. Gift card
My grandpa was the stingiest man in the world. After he passed away, I inherited a $30 gift card. I was going to give it away, but for some reason, I decided to use it.
My life split into ‘before’ and ‘after’ that moment. The cashier’s face went pale when I handed her the card.Cashier: This can’t be, where did you get this??
Me: Uh… It was my grandpa’s.Cashier: ‘STOP EVERYONE! IN FRONT OF US we have the winner of our store’s decade-long hidden sweepstakes!’ The cashier excitedly explained that the gift card was a special promotional item with a million-dollar prize, unclaimed for years.
I stood there, stunned, as the store manager came over to confirm the unbelievable news. Suddenly, my grandpa’s ‘stingy’ gift transformed into a life-changing fortune, rewriting my future in an instant.
11. How We Ended Up Having Noodles with a Flavor Packet Collection
My dad eats ramen noodles but seasons it with other things, so he keeps the flavor packets in an overflowing Ziploc bag. I swear we have 100 of those things. It does come in handy when you run out of your favorite ramen flavor!
My dad saves every sauce packet we get from fast food places. There’s a bag of them in the fridge, and we use them occasionally.
12. My Dad’s Brick Legacy That Stands the Test of Time
When we demolished our brick garage, my dad made us clean every one of those bricks and lined them up around our house for future use. They are still there eight years later. All $500, one-year time, and back-breaking effort were worth it.
Our cars are worth $2000. My dad buys identical cars and dismantles them for parts. When you think he’s done scrapping, he lifts the engines out of them and stacks them underneath the carport. They have 300,000 kilometers on them.
We sit on these around the dinner table. Our TVs are 20″ in size to save on power. Most of our furniture is stuff people throw out on the street. We use soap for shaving cream and shampoo.
Our Granny flat has cupboards and couches stacked on each other to the ceiling; you have to shimmy through everything; the weight is so heavy the ground has settled, and cracks have started to appear everywhere.
I tried reasoning that the space could be better utilized by renting it out, but apparently, it’s more important to keep faulty treadmills, lawnmowers, fridges, ovens, and washing machines for spare parts.
13. How We Reused Bathwater to Save on Water and Gas Bills
We shared bathwater. My brother would get in first, then me, and then mum or dad would be last. It’s pretty gross thinking about it now, but at the time, my parents did it to save money on the water and gas bills because they were on really low incomes.
14. Dog Bed vs. Baby Crib
My dad is cheap, but my mom isn’t, so it balanced out, but this story always makes me laugh. When I was born, my dad wanted to get me a dog bed instead of a crib or bed for a toddler or whatnot.
15. Here Comes the Cheap Christmas Wrapping Paper
I used to think that Christmas wrapping paper was always printed funny, like a cheap 3D picture. All of the Santa faces were a half centimeter or more off their faces. I later realized that my mom always bought misprinted discounted wrapping paper.
The thing is, when I see really nice paper now, it doesn’t feel like Christmas to me. The cheap, misprinted paper is more Christmasy to me, even 30 years later.
Similarly, my parents and aunt would count the boxes they used to wrap gifts in before Christmas morning. So, if my aunt brought 16 gifts that required the shirt/clothes boxes you would get at Sears/JC Penney, she would start Christmas morning by saying, “I came here with 16 boxes and I am leaving with 16 boxes!”
The funny thing is, back then, you would get the boxes free with your purchase, unlike today, where you usually have to buy the boxes. So, my parents and aunt were hung up on boxes they got for free.
We still have boxes with ancient tape on them, and they’re starting to fall apart, but now my family is more likely to say that throwing them out is okay.
Back then, you box them up for next year and tape the major rips. We even had an old box from a store called Structure that lasted years and years longer than the actual store did.
16. My Dad’s ‘Perfect Bed’ for My Newborn Daughter Turned To Be a Toy Crib
My dad tried to give me the “perfect bed” for my newborn daughter so I “didn’t have to buy a crib.” It was the bed from my childhood doll, which had been sitting in their garage for 20+ years and would not have worked, even if that wasn’t a wildly unsafe idea.
17. Mom’s Magic
My mom adds water to condiments to make them last longer. Sometimes, it feels like eating ketchup-flavored water. It’s funny and a bit strange. In our house, every drop counts; she turns meals into moments of simple, “thrifty love.”
18. Poor girl
While my parents lived in luxury, I hadnothing. They deceitfully stole my inheritance after my grandmother’s death. A 50 dollar Walmart gift card each year is all I get from them. I live so poorly that I don’t even have a phone.
They buy themselves several luxury cars each year and fly off for vacations in the Maldives. But one day everything changed. While my parents were on a cruise, I received a letter. It was written on it ‘Do not open when they are around.’
I looked around and immediately tore open the envelope and began to read. ‘Hey Mary, this is your real father. I’ve been looking for you for years. Your grandmother left you a substantial inheritance, which I’ve been fighting to recover for you. Meet me at the address enclosed; it’s time to claim what’s rightfully yours and turn your life around.
