Things Your Parents Said

Quote: Evenbob

I'm telling you, it's generational. People
from the WWII generation were raised
to be frugal. And there weren't a lot
of frivolous things to waste money on.
No fast food chains, no Starbucks,
no cell phone bills. I only remember
eating out twice in my childhood, and
never with my dad. All we would have
heard is how he could buy a weeks worth
of groceries for what the dinner cost.

I had dinner out with my dad about 1995. Used a 2-1 deal, couple beers each with dinned, and it was around $22 or so. He was going nuts. I told him it was a good deal for 2 dinners and his logic was and I quote, "When your mother and I we going out it was $8! (or whatever.)

I explained how long ago that was to him. Minimal help.

Quote: AZDuffman

I had dinner out with my dad about 1995. Used a 2-1 deal, couple beers each with dinned, and it was around $22 or so. He was going nuts.

My dad, for some reason, got ready
made sandwiches for all of us at
a deli once. We never heard the end
of how he got ripped off and should
have bought a loaf of bread and a
pound of salami instead.

Quote: Evenbob

My dad, for some reason, got ready
made sandwiches for all of us at
a deli once. We never heard the end
of how he got ripped off and should
have bought a loaf of bread and a
pound of salami instead.

It was even crazier around my dad's family. Years back my brother and I were talking with wife (might have been fiancee then) in the room. Not excluding her, but she was kind of listening in the background. Eventually she had a look on her face that normal people cannot behave like we were talking.

I channeled Alec Baldwin and said, "you think we are making this up? We are not making this up!"

Ya'll are reminding me of an entry about stingiest person in the Guinness Book of World records. She had millions, but reputedly did things like run around for an hour looking for a 2 cent stamp that she lost.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hetty_Green

Yeah, I read about her when I was in high school. Women rarely fared well on wall street. Even Sylvia Porter had to start out signing her column as "S. Porter".
That Texas oil tycoon depicted on tv recently was nearly as bad. He spent money, just not on his friends or family. Spent a great deal on lawyers to fight against supporting his drug-addled earless grandson.

Quote: rxwine

Ya'll are reminding me of an entry about stingiest person in the Guinness Book of World records. She had millions, but reputedly did things like run around for an hour looking for a 2 cent stamp that she lost.

I think she had a sick son that she
refused to take to a doctor because
she was a tightwad. She was a crazy
person. She had millions and she
and her kids wore rags. She was worth
$100 mil when she died, yet refused
to turn on the heat in her house in
winter. She invented the phrase 'buy
low, sell high'.

Rockefeller was somewhat like that.
When he ate out, he would check
every penny on the bill to make sure
it was right. This from a guy who gave
away half a billion dollars. Whereas
Sinatra carried nothing but hundreds,
when he tipped, you got a hundred
dollar bill. And he tipped everybody.

Rockefeller got a great deal of mileage out of giving schoolboys shiny dimes. Dimes!!
He once objected strenuously to being kicked out of a charity shop in Manhattan.

Sinatra rarely forgot people even though he met so many. At Caesars dealers were at one time not allowed to interact with passersby even if they were standing at an empty table but one dealer when called by name by Frank Sinatra waved back and got a stern lecture for it.

you guys are making me feel better, my parents were raised during the Depression and were pretty bad about this cheapskate stuff, but I can't come up with anything to top some of these.

Sometimes it was not just the 'no nickles' but the utterly inescapable hopelessness of seeing no end to the situation. And of course some parents just like to yell at the kids.

Depression life often involved barter rather than money. The bank holiday really hurt some people, others just had no money. Many were tied to the land such as a dairyman whose cows needed milking every day. At one point dairy farmers were pouring milk into the roads because it was too expensive to drive the milk to market. Eating cottage cheese all the time is not fun. Once the depression ended, one dairy farmer never ate cottage cheese again.

So its not really a matter of a few pennies but a long unrelenting ordeal.