20 Times People Showed How Being Too Frugal Makes One A Cheapskate
Times can be sometimes tough, leaving us with no choice but to tighten our belts and save some money. If you’d look at the current situation, the whole world experiences inflation in varying degrees, and each government, alongside its citizens, is actively trying to ease the situation a bit. For common people like us, we try to save by reducing or completely opting out of some things we used to buy.
It doesn’t hurt to be frugal at all, especially when we’re trying to budget our way through the times. However, too much frugality and you’ll become an irrational cheapskate. A frugal person would reduce the number of items in their grocery lists to save money, while a cheapskate would choose not to go grocery shopping at all. But where do we draw the line between the two? This Reddit thread comes to answer.
More Info: Reddit
#1
When you waste significant amounts of time to save money. I’m thinking of those people who drive across town and wait in a long line to save five cents a litre on gas.
#2
Frugal people go above and beyond saving money, they logically limit expenditures and try and maximize income.
Cheapskates illogically limit expenditures and try to maximize income, and probably 75% of the time they are doing this to subsidize a personal expense.
Limiting your monthly expenditures to save up for a trip, college, or a slush fund for some unknown expense down the line is frugal.
Rationing an entire family’s worth of electricity, water, and single use products so you can blow $450 on a part for your hobby car is a cheapskate.
#3
Frugal: Ordering cheap items on the menu
Cheapskate: Ordering anything on the menu, then purpotedly claim you forgot your wallet, you’ll pay me tomorrow, your credit card doesn’t work, your puppy ate your money…
#4
Frugal: Saving the three ketchup packets that the restaurant had put into your carry-out bag but that you didn’t need for that specific meal.
Cheapskate: Grabbing five dozen ketchup packets from the condiments counter at a restaurant, and taking them home so that you won’t have to buy a bottle of ketchup for a few weeks.
#5
when you ignore a cost/benefit analysis and always opt for the “cheaper” option.
#6
Frugal is taking half your meal home from a restaurant to eat for lunch tomorrow. Cheapskate is taking half your date’s meal home from a restaurant to eat for lunch tomorrow.
#7
Being frugal is about taking more control over your money. Being a cheapskate is your money taking more control over you.
#8
Frugal is compromising and cutting out extra things in your life. Cheapskate is squeezing pennies on things you actually need.
For example washing all of your clothes at once, maybe once or twice a week and using a dollar store detergent is frugal. Wearing your clothes into the shower to wash them and you at the same time is cheapskate.
#9
When you avoid your share of the Bill. When you inconvenience others to save money. When you go to even moderate lengths to justify either one of these behaviors.
Frugal folks make PERSONAL consumer decisions that have Long term money saving benefits. Cheapskates pass their bill on to others.
#10
Frugal is doing a year’s worth of research to buy the best priced, longest lasting air conditioning unit available to the average consumer.
Cheapskate is not letting anyone actually use it. In Texas. In the summer.
Dad please I don’t want to die of heatstroke at 20 years old.
#11
I have a relative who is too cheap to pay for trash service or to buy a dryer so she takes all of her trash and wet clothes over to her father’s house. This is a woman with a family and a house, not a starving student or something.
So yeah, that.
#12
1 ply
#13
Frugal: not eating out at a restaurant
Cheapskate: eating out at a restaurant, but leaving $0 tip because “sorry I can’t afford to tip”
#14
My grandma once bought me and my sister USED UNDERWEAR from a garage sale for Christmas. The worst part? She has a LOT of money. My dad was pissed.
#15
When you own a restaurant and refuse to buy a knife sharpener or working air conditioner and your employees pass out from heat stroke and almost cut their fingers off cutting raw fish.
#16
My grandpa will buy a roll of paper towels (like the cheapest single roll you can get) and then have my grandma rip off each sheet and cut that into fourths for “napkins”
Napkins that are already napkins cost like…. 5 cents more than the roll of paper towels.
It takes her like 2 hours because she’s becoming arthritic.
Nobody else sees why this is stupid.
#17
I knew a guy once who’d buy a package of lightbulbs or batteries, take the fresh ones out, replace them with the dead ones then return them to the store claiming they didn’t work and get his money back.
That guy hadn’t legitimately bought lightbulbs or batteries in years.
#18
For me, purposely getting yourself destitute so you can live off others.
He also made a comment about how he couldn’t wait to knock up my cousin and get her to quit working so he could get her on WIC.
He was a obese, lazy, pervy piece of scum and I was never happier than when that marriage fell apart (thankfully w/no children).
#19
When the time you waste or the quality of life you lose are worth more than you save in money.
#20
So you know how when you have a get-together where people will be drinking, most people bring a few drinks to share, right? Or contribute in one way or another? Bring some beers, or a bottle of booze, or mixers, whatever?
I buy a huge bottle of vodka, my friend brings ice, and we ask our notoriously cheap friend to bring some orange juice so we can all enjoy some screwdrivers.
Upon arrival this m**********r pulls out an 8 oz recycled Poland Spring plastic bottle that he filled like halfway with some orange juice.
And it should be noted that this friend of ours is by FAR the most wealthy of ALL of us.
Yeah, cheapskate.
