Are you a despicably cheap bastard? If yes, this thread is for you.

[scoundrel]

I just finished having a shave - first one since Christmas Day [cue Chopin's death march in honour of the fallen stubble].

Shaving off three days stubble is quite interesting when you're using the same single-use disposable razor you cracked out of the packet in October. It's even more interesting when you don't bother with shaving products and just use a bar of soap. It requires patience and technique - you have to make inroads, a few millimetres at a time, a bit like destroying the Brazilian rain forest. Then you have to do the whole thing a second time, just as slowly and methodically as the first pass. Finally, if you did the first two passes well enough, you can go against the grain and remove the fine sandpaper bit.

Being clean shaven feels slightly odd now.

Why do I go to all this trouble? Am I minimising plastic pollution and saving the environment? Well, yes I am, but that's not why. I do this because the unit cost of a brand new disposable razor is at least 10p. about USD 14c, and I begrudge the money I spend on them.

I am a cheap bastard.

Do you -

1. Drive your car into puddles and standing water to save wear and tear on your tyres?
2. Remove the wear indicators from your tyres with a hot craft knife to get an extra thousand road legal miles out of them?
3. Go into neutral on straight downhill bits of the road when there's no other traffic, just to save fuel?
4. Brush your carpet instead of using a vacuum cleaner because you begrudge the electricity?
5. Save your bathwater to flush the toilet even though you're not on a water meter, just because you hate to waste anything?
6. Keep things because you think they'll come in handy even though they never do?
7. Have a cast iron rule never to spend more than £1.50 per cc when buying a vehicle?
8. Never ever sell a vehicle except to a scrap dealer?
9. Use a craft knife to get at the last bit in the toothpaste tube or the cheese tube?
10. Obsessively figure out new ways to cook and eat leftovers?
11. Roll together the tab ends of cigarettes and smoke those as well?
12. Own clothes which you must hide from your wife/girlfriend/sisters or other female relatives because they will throw them into the dustbin immediately on sight?
13. Make a point of using your employer's toilet or using any available public lavatory at a restaurant, supermarket or similar, so that you can make use of someone else's toilet paper and save using your own at home?
14. Possess a large collection of single socks, some of them you've had for years if not decades, but which you continue to keep on just in case the other sock ever turns up?
15. Re-use your tea bags?
16. Have detailed and encyclopedic knowledge of every petrol (gas) station within a 10 mile radius which sells petrol at even 1p or 1c a litre below the average market price?
17. Slipstream behind heavy goods vehicles on motorways and trunk roads?
18. Look at mattresses people throw out in the street and reflect they look better than the one you're still sleeping on?
19. Build yourself a garden waste incinerator out of loose house bricks when the leaves have finished falling, to save the £14 it would cost to buy one from B&Q?
20. Feed other people's cats so that they will hang out with you, thus avoiding the costs and responsibility of pet ownership?
21. Make multiple new holes in your old leather belt so you can continue to use it and not have to buy a new one?
22. Use left over boiling water from the kettle to clean the toilet so you don't have to use the last of that bottle of toilet cleaner you bought two years ago?
23. Only go to the barber when your hair will no longer fit easily into a crash helmet?

If you score five or more from the above, you are a despicably cheap bastard. Come and join the brotherhood.

[Estreeter]

Originally Posted by scoundrel

Do you -

1. Obsessively figure out new ways to cook and eat leftovers?
   

If you score five or more from the above, you are a despicably cheap bastard. Come and join the brotherhood.

Hell, guilty as charged I've even taken leftover food from my brother he was gonna throw out
It's the principal there are starving people around and I can't stand food waste.

That said, I never have or will eat the waste food becomes

Sorry, too much I guess

[scoundrel]

Originally Posted by Estreeter

Hell, guilty as charged I've even taken leftover food from my brother he was gonna throw out
It's the principal there are starving people around and I can't stand food waste.

That said, I never have or will eat the waste food becomes

Sorry, too much I guess

It can be composted.

[seldomseen]

I too am a bit of a freak when it comes to saving. I had an ex girlfriend who said that I could live up an Alley. (Not sure that she meant as a compliment, though I took it as one)
On the shaving issue, I too shave every other dayish using the same razor for months, though I do use hot water and a cheap foam. (only because if I don't I tend to cut my face to ribbons)

On selling a car. I normally buy second hand diesel at auction with low road tax and therefore great fuel economy. (My current car is a Kia Ceed) But I usually sell within a year so as
A. Cut down on maintenance fees
B. I very often make a profit or minimise the depreciation.
Most of my food I buy is when the supermarket has reduced it to rock bottom prices. (just a matter of knowing when they do their final reductions in the day l

I think that I can be a non-paid up member of the tight fisted bastard club)

[Estreeter]

Originally Posted by seldomseen

(My current car is a Kia Ceed)

Is that even a car I'd rather walk

[seldomseen]

Originally Posted by Estreeter

Is that even a car I'd rather walk

It cheaper than walking. (mind you not much faster)

In an ideal world with money no object I would probably have an Aston Martin but am so tight that I would still drive the Kia most of the time.

[scoundrel]

Originally Posted by Estreeter

Is that even a car I'd rather walk

You'd rather walk? How cheap is that?

[scoundrel]

Originally Posted by seldomseen

I think that I can be a non-paid up member of the tight fisted bastard club)

There is no such thing as a paid up member.

[Estreeter]

Originally Posted by scoundrel

You'd rather walk? How cheap is that?

Depends on how expensive your shoes are

[scoundrel]

I have had to replace a pair of boots I bought in 2018 and wore virtually every day for over three years. They're walking boots, but I used them mainly as motorcycle boots, because when you put the word "motorcycle" or "marine/yachting" in front of anything, the item is identical but the price doubles.

Motorcycle trousers
Motorcycle jacket
Motorcycle gloves
Motorcycle boots

I have to buy the jacket because it actually is a specialised item, designed to minimise wind chill and with armour and toughened fabric to minimise gravel-rash whenever you throw the bike away. If you ride motorcycles, you will occasionally crash them, it is a law of nature.

I buy cheap helmets because actually they're just as safe as the expensive ones and the main difference is in comfort and wind noise. Cotton wool deals with wind noise and provided the crash-hat isn't heavy [which is why I don't buy the very cheap ones] and the visor works cleanly, that's all I need.

I have the same motorcycle trousers I bought in 2015. The waist elastic gave up the ghost, so I sewed a crimp into the waistband and they fit snugly and don't fall down. There were really big multiple tears on both legs where they snagged the footrests; so I sewed them even though that takes hours and hours. That brand of trouser used to cost £30 a pair and there's no decent ones in the shop now for less than £70 a pair, and they can combine sex with travel if they think they'll ever see £70 from me for a pair of motorcycle trousers.

I use the boots because you must have something strong to shield your foot if the bike falls over. I once had a 220kg bike pin me to the road by my foot, and thanks to stout walking boots I hobbled a bit for a couple of minutes and then I walked away. I had a skip-lorry roll over my left foot at a traffic lights and got away with that because i had strong walking boots on. Also, "motorcycle boots" are nearly always crap for walking in, and I don't choose to spend money on a pair of boots I have to carry around when I'm walking, which means one pair of boots must do both jobs.

The deceased pair started to leak water in heavy rain after an hour's continuous exposure - so I put carrier bags onto my feet before donning the boots and carried on. Then the bootlace on the left boot broke. I tied the two broken ends together and carried on. The sole on the left started to split from the upper - this is the foot which changes gears and so is constrantly being flexed. I superglued it back on and continued. A split began in the upper so I patched it with a bit of leather sewn in and carried on. But eventually, the whole left sole fell off and I admitted defeat.

RIP my £44.99 walking boots. The new pair (same make and model) cost me £46.99. I am in deep mourning.

It is important to get value out of walking, so I always buy the cheapest walking boots I can find which are still water resistant, comfortable and strong.