What are your funny cheapskate habits?

If I am in a restaurant (casual restaurant like a diner), and my daughter wants to take home the leftover bread, I will also take the individual pats of butter.

If something is on sale, I’ll buy a few, even if I don’t necessarily need it. Soap, shampoo, coffee K-cups, whatever. Even if it’s from Costco, when they have a “money off” I’ll pick up more than one so when I need it again, I don’t have to run out in desperation and pay full price.

@Aster: “Use bath towels half a dozen times before washing?” I’ll use them two weeks before washing, sometimes. I figure my body is clean when I dry it off after the shower.

I make coffee at work, too, so that’s a money saver. I’ll bring milk from home (buy a gallon at Costco for $2 and change, and bring a quart in to work for the week).

Clipping coupons from the Sunday paper. It more than pays for the paper and we just use the ones for the products we were going to buy anyways.

I remember as a teenager taking melted butter to the movies! Now I just don’t even go to the movies.

My mom used to rinse out baggies and reuse them. She also wiped off paper plates and reused them.

@jca taking home the butter patties is funny!

If I use a paper towel only to dry my clean hands, I’ll reuse it for something else (drying clean hands another time, or wiping something like the top of the garbage pail cover or dust on the floor.

@jca I am going to start doing this today!

@Aster: What, the butter or the paper towels?

When I was a kid, my job was straightening nails and sorting them to size when my Dad was deconstructing or re-using lumber. I still have my little anvil and hammer out in the garage. I still do it a little.

I love our used goods stores. Because Norway is such a wealthy country, people donate brand new things they just don’t like, tags still on them. I am able to buy brand new jackets and brand named clothes for my kid for a fraction of the price and clothes for work that I don’t have to worry about if I get kids paint or markers on. Our community also has an annual flea market to raise funds for the community hall up-keep. I find beautiful crystal glasses still in their boxes, brand new shoes and this year there were more electrical appliances than I had ever seen. This year I found a new knife block and some small soy sauce dishes for when I serve sushi. I had been looking for ages in regular stores just never found anything I liked, then, tada! I found the most perfect ones at the flea market for almost nothing.

I never buy coffee out because I never like it the same as I make, so I always take some with in the morning. I don’t buy lunch at cafes, only at the grocery store and then I’ll sit somewhere quiet and eat it, which I prefer to noisy crowded cafes and the food here in cafes generally is pretty awful anyway. I cut and colour my own hair.

In our grocery stores, things have prices on them and then it also tells you how much per/kg that product costs, so you can easily comparison shop. I always pay attention to them because, oddly, buying the larger pack is more expensive in many cases. The refill packs for cleaning products, for example, cost MORE than just buying another spray bottle of the product.

@cazzie: Great reminder. Look at the cost per oz (oz in the US) and often, if the smaller one is on sale, it’s cheaper per oz.

I buy beef bones instead of beef steaks.

I take money out of the church collection

I turn those expensive freezer bags with the real zippers inside out , put them in the washer with my clothes then dry them for later use. To me, it’s insane to toss out those bags when they can be washed and dried out.
@jca if I use paper towels for my hands, which is rare, I’ll dry them on the porch! That’s where I dry out our thick flannel sheets and bath rugs. Nothing is visible from the street.

I reuse q-tips, paper towels, food packages, part of usued food. Can they count?

Q-tips, ewww. You rice ballers are bad.

I can’t even begin. Let’s see…
1. I take an extra long trip to a grocery store that’s further away because the prices are less
2. I buy certain things at certain stores because I know where they’re the cheapest
3. I maximize the amount of free food I get at work
4. I’m a pro at public transportation, so no need for cabs or a car
5. I walk a few blocks down the street to go to a laundromat further away because they charge a lot less. It’s because it’s coin-op, but I have tons of quarters from tips.
6. I never buy napkins or ketchup. I get them from restaurants.
7. I use day-to-day things as storage and furniture. Right now I use an empty cereal box to prop up my fan, and cardboard boxes for shelves. I love them and plan on keeping them as they work perfectly.
8. Most of my leftover containers are from plastic cold cut containers and things like that
9. I also don’t buy envelopes because I reuse the ones I get. If you’re getting mail from me, expect it to come in a duct-taped ADP envelope.
10. When I’m ordering food, I’ll look at the price and the caloric content and make a proportion to find out which one has the best price-to-calorie ratio. I consider the quality of the calories, as well. I rarely order things based on what I “feel like” eating. It doesn’t usually matter to me anyway.
11. I’m basically a male coupon whore
12. I reuse a water bottle for weeks until I get another one for free somehow. I only drink tap water when I’m out. The only drink I buy is a gallon of milk a week.

Yeah I don’t do sit-down restaurants and other lavish food places, either. They kind of go against my morals anyway.
Did you just say you used bath towels only half a dozen times before washing them?

I do a lot of shopping at our local grocery outlet and we grow a garden here and can some items. Just made blackberry jam and pickles recently. I also recycle paper towels that have only been used to dry my hands for wiping down the counters or microwave etc. I wipe off paper plates to feed my cats on when I use them, otherwise they have little ceramic bowls and wipe them out instead of washing for a couple of feedings.
I dilute shampoos and conditioners with water to make them go farther once I have used the first few inches in the bottle.

Shampoo especially does not need to be so concentrated.
I do the same with dish soap, dilute it down and it goes a long ways.

Oh, Coloma, we had dozens of blackberry bushes and I’d make blackberry preserves which were fabulous. My ex mowed the bushes down after he met his twenty year old honey . We divorced quickly afterwards. I miss those bushes but not him!

Irks the shite out of me to pay for plastic bag when shopping. I have thousands at home so if I forget them I just carry everything.