29 People Who Were Really, Really, Really, Really, Really, Really, Really, Really, Really, Really, Really, Really, Really, Really Cheap And Embarrassed Their Friends And Family

We recently asked members of the BuzzFeed Community to tell us about a time someone was SO CHEAP they took note and then shared the story later. Here’s what they said:

1.“My coworker lived alone and made a decent salary. Once, she went to get her car serviced, and the staff were celebrating a birthday. They told her she could grab a slice of pizza, but since she’d already eaten, she asked if she could HAVE SOME TO TAKE HOME. She was very proud of her free lunch the next day at work.”

—xschx

2.“My old boss told me a story that has always stuck with me. While he was in college, he had a dog who ended up escaping. While the dog was out, it was hit by a car. A neighbor called my boss and told him the dog was hurt and where it was. My boss didn’t want to pay the vet bill for his dog, so he picked it up and took it to the shelter. He told them that he had driven by and seen the dog hurt and mentioned that if they couldn’t find the owner, he’d be open to adopting him. A few weeks pass, and the shelter pays for multiple surgeries, and his dog pulls through. They call him and ask if he is still interested in adoption. My boss said yes, drove there, and paid $55 to readopt his own dog. I understand vet bills are expensive, but this always felt so low to me. Shelters can barely stay open for lack of funds, and he willfully stole thousands because he didn’t want to spend his own money to save his own pet that he chose to buy.”

“Needless to say, he’s not a good person, and I’m glad I quit.”

—morgandemkey

3.“I had a former boss that would have me look at the mail we received. If the stamp on the envelope did not have the post office inked machine marks on it, she would have me carefully and slowly remove the stamp for reuse. Stamps were under $0.50 each at the time!”

—officialturkey314

4.“I worked at Kohl’s when their return policy was basically encouraging you to steal from them. A woman came in with 10-year-old clothing that was so heavily worn and washed that it was paper thin and starting to become see-through. She had kept the original tags and receipt, and because company policy was ‘Yes, we can,’ we returned it all and she got her money back.”

—monikap6

5.“My husband and I attended a really nice wedding; during the cocktail hour, a couple of older ladies had a personal shopping cart (I don’t know how they brought it into the catering hall). In the cart were about a dozen plastic food storage containers. They kept taking trips to the food stations, filling plates of food and then emptying the food into the containers, and going back for more. No one said anything to them. “

—Anonymous

6.“I worked in a luxury boutique where only the elite went; the owner was an extremely rich woman who didn’t need to work; she only opened the boutique because she was bored and didn’t know what to do with her life. One day, on one of the employees’ birthdays, she said, ‘Let’s celebrate, she bought two cupcakes, one for her and one for us to share among three employees. I tell this, and people don’t believe it, and I understand because it was shocking, hahaha”

—Anonymous, 33, Brazil

7.“Coworker and I were at Tim Horton’s many years ago. He didn’t have enough for his coffee, and before I could offer him some money, he took some change from the counter to pay for it. That change was left as a tip for the workers.”

—jungumper

8.“My grandma, who was very financially stable, would take extra restaurant napkins, then go home and cut them in half. LMAO, Grandma!”

—elizabethg20

9.“I was sitting next to my mother-in-law one Christmas when she opened a gift from her mom. It was a set of accessories in a gift box bundle of a wallet, a checkbook cover (it was the 1990s), a keychain, and a zippered coin purse. She oohed and ahhed over it and how much she loved it and the color was nice. The following year, she handed me a gift and when I unwrapped it, it was just the wallet from that accessories bundle she’d gotten the year before. It makes me wonder who she gifted the rest of it to since I got the wallet.”

—Anonymous, 55 NC

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10.“My parents weren’t well off, but they were stable enough. My dad, after my mom passed away, took to taking the food we put in the trash can after we were done eating out of it and finished it. My siblings and I told him that he didn’t need to do that, that there’s plenty. He said that we were wasting food and money. I think he tried this while Mom was alive, and she put her foot down! We tried to stop him, but he never did.”

—tritonequeen

11.“My ex-best friend and I shared a taxi home after a night out. She was paying, as I had paid for the taxi there. I was starting to feel a bit poorly in the backseat when the driver revealed he had a whole little kit available — water, oranges, mints, etc. and that I could take whatever I needed. It was really sweet! I think I just took some water (making sure it was safe, unopened, etc. ofc) but it was great. Anyway, I know this friend is extremely cheap, so as we were pulling up, I whispered for her to leave him a tip as thanks (I had no cash), and I’d send her the difference. The fare was something like £16.73; she said, ‘Here, you can keep the extra,’ and gave him… £17. LOL. Naturally, she wanted her 27p back from me as well.”

—golddustniamh

12.“Whenever we would go out to eat as a family, my grandfather would steal all the sugar and jam packets off the table, and I mean allll of them.”

—Anonymous, 35 Connecticut

13.“My brother wears his underwear multiple times to avoid ‘wasting water.’ My Dad also does the same thing. They wear it the regular way first, then backward, then inside-out, then inside-out and backward. Don’t ask me how I know that. “

—Anonymous, 29 MD

14.“Had a friend that lived in mobile home park. Had PLENTY of money! To save on his water bill he would walk over to the pool bathrooms with his shower caddy every day to use their facilities! Tighter than a tick!!”

—Anonymous

15.“In my job, I dealt with the owner of several apartment buildings — he was getting tens of thousands in rent every week, and yet every year, he’d reuse the same old diary/Filofax. He’d just write over the days of the week every year. You can imagine what a cheapskate he was when it came to maintenance of the buildings he owned…”

—mummypig1978

Related: People Are Sharing The Seemingly “Insignificant” Moments That Completely Ruined Their Relationship

16.“My extremely cheap friends make mid-six figures but are obsessed with ‘not wasting’ food. They scoop used condiments back into the jars when cleaning up after meals on the regular, but the grossest thing was trying to scoop together the leftover bits of yogurt from multiple people’s empty bowls to make one more serving. 🤢”

—Anonymous, 38, Pittsburgh, PA

Yuliya Sheynina / Getty Images, Amber Wing / Getty Images/iStockphoto

17.“When I was 16, I finally got asked out by a boy I’d had a crush on for some time. We went for burgers at a Red Robin or something like that. The server came by midway through our meal and asked if I’d like more soda. When I said I would, he gave me a really hard stare. I said, ‘Refills are free here,’ and he relaxed and said, ‘Oh. Ok then.’

—casualaardvark7223

18.“We were 17 and on a class trip. Another student borrowed money from me to buy himself a drink. On the last day, I asked him for my money back, and he said he didn’t have any. I insisted, and he said insisting was a very mean thing to do. He said that he had also borrowed a lot of money from other students and that these other students hadn’t asked him for anything back because ‘they were nice and selfless, unlike me.’ Before you ask, he wasn’t poor, just cheap and selfish.”

—silencesilence

19.“My birthday is the day after Valentine’s Day. My first college boyfriend made no attempt to acknowledge Valentine’s Day, which surprised me. I had gotten him a card and a small gift. Then he kept me up til midnight to give me a dozen roses so he could say he gave me roses for Valentine’s AND my birthday. Then, he actually got upset with me for not being impressed by his ingenuity. He didn’t last.”

—Anonymous, 63 near Philly, PA

20.“My mom collects honey mustard packets from restaurants to use when she makes a salad. She won’t buy a bottle of honey mustard dressing because ‘I have all these free packets.'”

—Anonymous, 25 Georgia

21.“My ex-brother-in-law would flush only after peeing five times. Apparently, it saved 40p.”

—Anonymous

22.“Our neighbor took my husband and me out for drinks with his best friend (who married a millionaire and doesn’t work). We all took turns buying rounds. When it was Mr. Moneybags’ turn, he ordered one beer and four glasses. He then proceeded to split the singular beer into the glasses and that was his idea of buying a round. Did not go out with him again.”

—Anonymous, 38, PA

23.“Years ago, after my divorce, I had my ex take my youngest daughter clothes shopping for the new school year. She was about eight I think. When they got back she gave me her new bag of clothes. They felt kinda hot to the touch, and I asked her why her clothes were so hot. She said, “It’s because dad only runs the air conditioner in his truck going downhill!! He was always cheap but this was too much!”

—Anonymous

24.“Unfortunately, this is a story about my own mother. My whole life, she has been ‘frugal’ to the point where it very clearly annoys other people, especially retail workers who have to deal with her MANY coupons, requests for discounts, and separate orders to maximize those discounts. Last summer, when she was visiting my husband and me, she wanted to check out our local thrift store. Fine, whatever, they’re a nice family-owned shop, and I’ve made donations to them many times. She found a couple of items she wanted and then demanded their senior discount (which they only offered one day a week) on top of my teacher discount (also only offered one day a week, and she’s not even a teacher like me) and demanded that they use the coupon I had gotten from a donation I had made a few weeks ago. It wasn’t the day for a senior or teacher discount, and that coupon wasn’t supposed to be used on top of those discounts.”

“She bullied the poor clerk into combining all three of those. She took her $4 total down to $2.50 and made herself look like a total Karen in the process. I was so embarrassed, and I’m still scared to go back. That poor family that runs that shop are really nice people doing a great thing for our community, and my mom raised hell over less than two dollars.”

—Anonymous, 25, VA

25.“I was in high school in the early seventies and was making good money as a babysitter. I was hired by a nice family in my neighborhood. At the end of the night when the mother was paying me, she ran upstairs to get two dimes instead of just giving me a quarter. “

—Anonymous, 68 in kansas

26.“As a grocery store worker, I’ve seen my fair share of people trying to save money (which is totally understandable!). However, the craziest thing I’ve seen is an old couple who decided that they were going to go to a store 15 minutes out of their way to save ONE CENT on a jar of mayonnaise. At that point, it just isn’t worth it 😭.”

—Anonymous

27.“I used to date an idiot who had a sweet kid. He had her every other week. We rotated weeks for who paid if we went out to eat or who cooked (if we were going to see each other). He expected me to foot the bill for his daughter when it was my week, while he never did that for me on his week. He was so tight with his money, I used to tell him he whistled instead of farting.”

—pissedoffprofessor

28.“A college friend purposely had a Christmas wedding in December. Why? Because the church would already be decorated and she’d save money that way.”

—Anonymous, Violet, 26, Tennessee

29.Finally, “Not a person, but the healthcare system, medical companies make you pay an arm and a leg for the smallest stuff. I gave birth at home (not planned, but third baby, and it happened too fast to get to the hospital)! An ambulance arrived minutes after I gave birth in our bathroom. Luckily, baby was perfectly healthy and breathing great, but they wanted to take us to the hospital for evaluation. We received a bill in the mail for a $4,600 ride to the hospital 20 minutes from our house. Literally, all the paramedics did was check the vitals of the baby and me on our ride. And I reiterate. Four thousand six hundred dollars for that. It’s gross because a lot of the paramedics and EMTs in my area get paid less than someone working in fast food, but the medical bill was outrageous.”

—hellomiriah

Note: Some submissions have been edited for length and/or clarity.

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