Tuesday, March 16, 2010

My Childhood Frugality Obsession

I have a confession to make. I have been picked up by lots of people for my frugality. Not, it's just not my friends or an acquaintance, even my family some-times teases me for my frugality.

I still remember how when in my childhood days I'll not buy a candy for Rs 1 because I don't want to give away Rs 5. for this and get some change back. Till date when I go for window shopping, I take all big currency with me to avoid any kind of silly temptation.

I used to make notebooks from the papers that have one side blank, be it printouts, bills, envelopes, newspaper. This is something I do till date. My friends in college and some distant cousin used to call me cheapster to take out such papers from News Paper or from any other source for that matter. Yes, when I was a kid I was doing it primarily for saving my pocket money, but today I do it because I don't want to waste paper.

I used to wear hand-me-down clothes when in college and have been picked by my classmates more then once on not buying any new clothes even on birthday. I was absolutely OK with it because my sister is super-generous to hand-me-down very good quality clothes and besides I had tons of other things to do with my pocket money.

I never ever bought a pop-corn in theatre in my college days. No way could I afford it. Buying popcorn meant 1/10th of my pocket money. I rather will eat one burger in cafeteria to avoid even temptation. My friends never let this chance pass away to tell me how cheap I am.

If I'll list all other incidents off the head, this post will be the longest ever written. :)

How about you? Have you ever been teased for your frugal ideas?

1 comment:

  1. I want to let you know about a fellow who worked as a night watchman and he banked $70,000 CAD in 2 years working also other survival jobs on the side like delivering pizza, telemarketing, and parking enforcement. That is 70,000 after taxes, saved in the bank making anywhere from 9.00 to 13.50 an hour from his job. You know, these are the kind of jobs that virtually anyone can get. He ate free food at the Sikh Temple, took free napkins from McDonald's got free unlimited refills day after day by putting the coffee into a thermos that someone gave him that no longer keeps warm. He even took the ketchup into his empty Naked Juice bottle which has a wide enough top and short enough to sqeeze the ketchup into. Want milk? Head over to Starbucks and get pour milk into the paper cup after you get hot water with double cup. He uses the hot water to make your tea where he got for free teabags from his bank and the car dealerships that gives it away, and the bottom cup to pour milk into it and take it home.

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