Tight people and the things they do to save money
Discussion
My uncle, who was a millionaire, used to go to my nans once a month, to scrounge hearing aid batterys for his hearing aid, as my grandfather, was deaf, and being a poor 80 year old collier, he qualified to have them free, where my loaded uncle was not.
I also worked with a team of blokes who hung used tea bags on a rail to dry, to re use them.
I also worked with a team of blokes who hung used tea bags on a rail to dry, to re use them.
J4CKO said:
I am not a tight arse but I love efficiency and a good deal,
Buy in bulk from Costco
Shop at Aldi
Plan journeys in the car to maximise the use of fuel, i.e. more jobs in one trip
Do as much as I can at home and on the cars myself
Take packed lunches to work
Use LED bulbs
Manage money well
Save
Being "poor" is expensive, pre pay meters, expensive credit etc, not having money forces you into a spiral of bad decisions, as does living beyond your means as you end up paying money to service debt, so I tend to avoid credit.
I save on the boring stuff so I can afford the interesting stuff, people at work moan about being skint and spend 2 or three quid int he morning at the coffee shop, then five or six at lunch for a very mediocre lunch they have to queue for, easily forty quid in a week, I save £100 a month by taking my own, possibly more.
Packed lunch thing gets me every time. You can spend £5 a day on a meal deal for a floppy, half filled, processed sarnie, some pop and some crisps. Or, you can spend £10 on a gammon joint and a loaf of bread and do proper sarnies for the next 2 weeks nearly.Buy in bulk from Costco
Shop at Aldi
Plan journeys in the car to maximise the use of fuel, i.e. more jobs in one trip
Do as much as I can at home and on the cars myself
Take packed lunches to work
Use LED bulbs
Manage money well
Save
Being "poor" is expensive, pre pay meters, expensive credit etc, not having money forces you into a spiral of bad decisions, as does living beyond your means as you end up paying money to service debt, so I tend to avoid credit.
I save on the boring stuff so I can afford the interesting stuff, people at work moan about being skint and spend 2 or three quid int he morning at the coffee shop, then five or six at lunch for a very mediocre lunch they have to queue for, easily forty quid in a week, I save £100 a month by taking my own, possibly more.
Forget the pop and the crisps altogether, you don't need them, they're not good for you. Some water or a cup of tea and some fruit. Aldi apples and bananas are dirt cheap. At Uni the snack bars would sell you a banana for 50p, at Aldi you can get a bunch for that!
We often buy a whole chicken for a Sunday dinner. Roast it, I have some breast, Mrs has a leg. The rest then gets cut up and the meat does for sandwiches, cat treats. The carcass gets boiled up and a load of veg bunged in. Hey presto chicken soup that will nearly do 2 peoples lunches for a week.
Same goes with Beef joints. Ok you can't make soup out of the left overs, but you can slice whats left for sandwiches. Proper top side in your butty, not reformed or pressed scrapings from the abattoir floor.
TheInternet said:
rgv250ads said:
These people have multiple investment and probably circa 150k dotted about in various pots.
gottans said:
Apparently he is a millionaire...
baldy1926 said:
I know someone ... he bought his last house for 200k with cash and is looking to buy another one as a cash purchase.
Gareth1974 said:
My mate has a reputation for being tight ... he paid his mortgage off by the age of 40 ... he's accrued c£400k in savings, and is packing in work at the end of the year.
Hmmmm
t than truth.giger said:
Friday lunchtimes many years ago, the management team used to go down the pub for lunchtime drinks. Occasionally mere mortals would get invited. All the management were loaded, but this one chap, if ever he was leading the pack down to the pub, would always stop and tie his shoe laces outside the door, thus making sure he was the last one in and avoiding buying a round.
He built his own house on a large patch of land recently....
First out of the taxi yet the last one to the barHe built his own house on a large patch of land recently....
Otispunkmeyer said:
Packed lunch thing gets me every time. You can spend £5 a day on a meal deal for a floppy, half filled, processed sarnie, some pop and some crisps. Or, you can spend £10 on a gammon joint and a loaf of bread and do proper sarnies for the next 2 weeks nearly.
Forget the pop and the crisps altogether, you don't need them, they're not good for you. Some water or a cup of tea and some fruit. Aldi apples and bananas are dirt cheap. At Uni the snack bars would sell you a banana for 50p, at Aldi you can get a bunch for that!
We often buy a whole chicken for a Sunday dinner. Roast it, I have some breast, Mrs has a leg. The rest then gets cut up and the meat does for sandwiches, cat treats. The carcass gets boiled up and a load of veg bunged in. Hey presto chicken soup that will nearly do 2 peoples lunches for a week.
Same goes with Beef joints. Ok you can't make soup out of the left overs, but you can slice whats left for sandwiches. Proper top side in your butty, not reformed or pressed scrapings from the abattoir floor.
What you're missing there is time. When time is short, it has huge value! Forget the pop and the crisps altogether, you don't need them, they're not good for you. Some water or a cup of tea and some fruit. Aldi apples and bananas are dirt cheap. At Uni the snack bars would sell you a banana for 50p, at Aldi you can get a bunch for that!
We often buy a whole chicken for a Sunday dinner. Roast it, I have some breast, Mrs has a leg. The rest then gets cut up and the meat does for sandwiches, cat treats. The carcass gets boiled up and a load of veg bunged in. Hey presto chicken soup that will nearly do 2 peoples lunches for a week.
Same goes with Beef joints. Ok you can't make soup out of the left overs, but you can slice whats left for sandwiches. Proper top side in your butty, not reformed or pressed scrapings from the abattoir floor.
I don't have time for all that Aldi visiting and cooking and washing up and sandwich assembly stuff, when the cafe near the office knows what I like and has it made almost as quickly as i can get from their entrance door to their counter!
kev1974 said:
Not seen anyone mention charging up a USB powerbank battery thing at the office during the day and then taking it home to charge the family's gadgets overnight. I know someone that does this, effectively taking a little bit of her employer's electricity home each day 
I don't do this, as I charge all my gadgets at work! I suppose I'm too tight to buy one of those powerbank things.I don't and won't pay anyone to do something I can do myself. I get irritated at my wife for this as she is one of those that pays £5 for Halfords to fit a headlight bulb "but it was dark and so I could drive it home". Despite a) the Halfords being 2 miles down the road, along a well-lit dual carriageway, and b) her knowing the bulb had blown a week previously and still driving at night anyway (I was completely unaware, otherwise I would have sorted it).
I try to s
t at work to avoid using my own toilet paper. Finally, I try to work at home as much as possible to save on fuel (I love driving, but not the M1). This conflicts with the s
tting schedule. munroman said:
Ex'x former in-laws lived in a massive house, he was an ex Bank Manager.
She was so tight she would wash clingfilm and reuse it constantly.
Apparently the house was always freezing, and yet they had £100,000's in savings, all that money, but miserable....
My Granny was still saving when she died at 97, the house was always cold, she'd sit inside in her jacket, she would eat food that was on the turn rather than waste it and would never spend more than the minimum possible on anything. She was so tight she would wash clingfilm and reuse it constantly.
Apparently the house was always freezing, and yet they had £100,000's in savings, all that money, but miserable....
People who do things like this when they are on the breadline have my understanding.
People who do things this when they really don't need to, remember the story of the 97yo woman eating reduced food because she still saved half her pension "just in case", whilst having tens of thousands in savings and a fully paid off mortgage, apparently it never got rainy enough for it to be worth her treating herself.
kev1974 said:
Otispunkmeyer said:
Packed lunch ...
What you're missing there is time. When time is short, it has huge value! I don't have time for all that Aldi visiting and cooking and washing up and sandwich assembly stuff, when the cafe near the office knows what I like and has it made almost as quickly as i can get from their entrance door to their counter!
Of course if you channel your inner student, buy the bread for 10p a pack at the end of the day and freeze it you can reduce that even further...
RB Will said:
in their house the toilet is only flushed if someone has a crap, with 2 parents and 4 kids it saves quite a bit compared to flushing away 20+ wees a day.
With two adults and three kids in the house, my preferred method of saving money there is to refuse all suggestions from the water company that I might want to consider fitting a water meter! 
The last letter they sent - which was entitled "See how much money a water meter could save YOU" - showed that even by taking their own doubtless parsimonious consumption estimates, our current bill was equivalent to two adults and about two thirds of a child on average metered consumption.
To my mind preventing wasteful spending makes sense. However, I do think that it becomes a bit of an obsession with some people. I know of a couple of examples of individuals who are wealthy. Both live in modest houses - clean and tidy but modest.
One doesn't own a car and rides a very old pushbike to work. He does any overtime going and from what anyone can work out does very little, certainly no holidays. ever.
He could quite easily have a rather nice holiday home somewhere, do lots of travelling - basically have something he really enjoys doing and he'd still be more than comfortably off.
Instead he watches a bit of TV.
He doesn't need to work, much less do overtime. But work is pretty much all he has to keep him going. Its quite sad in a way.
One doesn't own a car and rides a very old pushbike to work. He does any overtime going and from what anyone can work out does very little, certainly no holidays. ever.
He could quite easily have a rather nice holiday home somewhere, do lots of travelling - basically have something he really enjoys doing and he'd still be more than comfortably off.
Instead he watches a bit of TV.
He doesn't need to work, much less do overtime. But work is pretty much all he has to keep him going. Its quite sad in a way.
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