CHEAP people....let's see your stories about those frugal folks that were smart or really annoying!

-
Kern Dog

Kern Dog

Build your car to handle.
FABO Gold Member
Joined
May 23, 2010
Messages
10,828
Reaction score
31,660
Location
Granite Bay CA
WE all know CHEAP people. Some of us are those people.
Sometimes they are really smart and just not being wasteful but sometimes their penny pinching ways are annoying.
Me? I can be cheap sometimes. It sometimes is motivated by money but other times I like a challenge to do more with less.
This car:

2 XH G (2).jpg



Was put together with mostly used parts I saved over the years. Yeah, I could have opened the wallet and bought new things but it was fun to see what I could do with a tight budget. I have a running, driving ratty car for a total outlay of under $10,000.

What about the people that use single ply toilet paper or that recycle used engine oil to lubricate door hinges?
Who has stories of family members or friends that were so CHEAP that they annoyed the heck out of you?
 
One Saturday many years ago I told my wife, "I'm going out and am gonna find a Rampage, Turismo, or Charger ('80s FWD) for my new daily driver. Wanna ride along?" Of course she said, "Sure, why not." Of course she didn't have great expectations.

We drove for at least an hour when I stopped the car on a dirt back road and said, "There's my car!"

"Where? I don't see anything."

"Back over there. It's red."

"I still don't see anything."

As I drove back the long lane, she finally admitted, "Now I see it. How in the x@$& did you see that from the road?!?"

"I was looking for it." Actually, I think I could smell it.

To curt the story, I don't remember what the asking price was, but I pointed out he had lots of vehicles that probably had 318's or other small block Mopar. Would he be willing to trade a Magnum top end -- heads, intake, exhaust manifolds, rocker gear, etc. -- for the car? After all, the Magnum heads flowed better than 340 X heads. HE SAID YES! I got the parts for free when a friend did an engine swap in his shop.

Wait, it gets even better! His wife was a Notary and did all the state paperwork -- including title -- for free! I got the parts for free and traded them for the car.

It was my DD for several years. I sold it on eBay many years later. I wrote several articles for Allpar where the Charger was the basis for the article.
84charger.jpg
 
I had a friend that wouldn’t pay $400 for this 1970 Challenger SE, so I bought it.

IMG_1020.jpeg
 
If you're willing to wait you can find deals

The engine in my Dart was a drop off a complete engine at the machine shop for a rebuild,
, that Sat beyond the if it sits more than 1 yr, we will sell it for what we have in it.

92. 360 Magnum, complete, without Accessories and a dual plane M1
intake for $750

SB 904 trans with a Cheetah RVMB and a 3500 converter $200

Newer MP bronze shaft distributor
$80

Etc, etc
 
On July 11, 2016 I found this Hornet Hatchback on a Craigslist ad in North Carolina and I live in Indiana.

I had been looking for almost a year for reasonably priced Hornet Hatchback.

When I called Steve about it he told me the interior had got wet and he figured the floor pans were gone.

Since he could get $200 for it at the scrapyard I offered him $200 and he accepted the offer. I told him I couldn't pick it up for awhile and he was okay with that.

About mid October my friend Aaron that I got a job on an oil rig in the Gulf shows up at my house with a brand new pickup truck and want's to go on a road trip.

Aaron says, "If I pay for fuel and food we can take his truck."


I call Steve and tell him I ready to come pickup the car. He tells me he's in Florida on vacation, but come on down and he'll let the neighbors know we are coming.

Now it's a 600 mile trip one way and we leave about 2pm in the afternoon, we stop a few times and get down to Bakersville, NC about midnight.

We are on a skinny dirt road, on top of a mountain, and it's pitch black. The exhaust is still hanging down from the 6-cylinder removal, but we can't see it.

It hooks on the underside of the trailer (I didn't mention we had no tools with us) so it takes us an hour to get it broke off and get the car loaded on.

Around 1:30am we start for Indiana. Now I went to grad school in Johnson City, TN and there is an all night joint called Mid City Grill that has great hamburgers.

We stop in and the owner Jeff who I know lets us wash up in the back and we get some food. Now it's 3:30am and we leave J.C. for Indiana.

We drove all night and got to Indianapolis around 10:30 am so I stopped at a carwash and cleaned it up a bit and then ran by a friends house to show it off.

Around 1pm we roll in with neither of us ever sleeping. Total cost of fuel and food $178, so I now have the car home for $378.

Over the course of about 5 months I sold everything off the car that I didn't need or want for around $925. At this point I've made $547 profit and had a great story to tell.

After I stripped and sold the parts I cleaned the body up and then life got busy and it sat in the garage for years with me working on it here and there.

First thing I did was cut the drip rails off and TIG welded the skins back together and then it sat for a few years while life went by.

Then in the spring of 2023 I got the time and interest to start working on it again. I started working on it by cutting the windshield wiper pivots out and filling in the cowl vents.

Since I am making a fiberglass hood mold that extends all the way to the windshield, this had to be done, but then winter came and I didn't play with again until April of this year.

This year I removed the dent in the C-pillar, welded in 23 trim holes on the passenger side, removed a dent in the passenger door, sanded the roof down, did all the bodywork over

those areas, primed and block all those areas. Between the materials it took to get to this point am probably just now to the breakeven point and I have ZERO dollars in it.

That's my story of how cheap I am and I am sticking to it.

Tom

amc hornet - $300 (Bakersville nc)

rolling chassis
no motor no transmission no title

call: make / manufacturer: amcmodel name / number: Hornet

☎ (828) ***-XXXX

Posted: 12 days ago

1729920455521.png



20160929_111238.jpg


20160929_115940.jpg


20161116_171817.jpg


20161004_143155.jpg


20240721_211514.jpg


20240902_222218.jpg
 
Last edited:
At work, we decided to have a group lunch with BBQ'd burgers. One guy did the groceries and another guy BBQ'd. When all was said and done, each guy owed $5 bucks. This one dickhead said he didn't like tomatoes so he only left $4.50 on the table.......
 
Kern Dog said:
WE all know CHEAP people. Some of us are those people.
Sometimes they are really smart and just not being wasteful but sometimes their penny pinching ways are annoying.
Me? I can be cheap sometimes. It sometimes is motivated by money but other times I like a challenge to do more with less.
This car:

2 XH G (2).jpg



Was put together with mostly used parts I saved over the years. Yeah, I could have opened the wallet and bought new things but it was fun to see what I could do with a tight budget. I have a running, driving ratty car for a total outlay of under $10,000.

What about the people that use single ply toilet paper or that recycle used engine oil to lubricate door hinges?
Who has stories of family members or friends that were so CHEAP that they annoyed the heck out of you?
Click to expand...
Nothing cheap about that. Nice paint causes stress.
 
ALL us old Mopar guys are cheap not because we are old, but because we remember when these old cars were cheap and everywhere, parts were everywhere and CHEAP, we drove these old cars to work or where ever, and we did not make $80 K a year and did not need that anyway!!! Before the puter, BJ on TV selling insane priced overly shiny stuff, and Mopat ECUs were NOT all , made in CHINA!!
 
When I was the IT project manager for the county, whenever we replaced remote site servers or core switches (usually in batches of 10, 20, 30, etc), I'd keep at least two working examples of each model for models we still had a fair amount of in production. I even had a room dedicated to my "spares" collection.

About 3 years before I left, we had a department admin change (that resulted in mass chaos and ineptitude), and six months later I got demoted back to line/area support. One of the first things the person that ended up in my old job did was throw out all of my spare parts.

Three weeks later, an older remote site server lost its main board. "That person" came looking for me to see if I still had a spare. I said "I used to, but you threw them all away".

It cost the county almost $10,000 to buy a new server, and they had to load it and restore backups under emergency conditions for about 36 man hours, plus that site was off line for almost a week and basically closed for business- not a good look to the public.

Had "they" kept me or at least my parts, it would have been about an hour of labor to install that free part and the site would have been back in business.
 
Sometimes it is fun to try to make things work without just defaulting to buying new.
I've worked for bosses in construction that were stubborn to where they'd spend a dollar to save a dime. I did learn from the smart bosses though.
I got to where I'd use a lot of lumber that would otherwise get thrown away. I'd pull nails and cut the 2 x 4s down to smaller size. Lumber was cheaper a few years ago but it was never free.
One boss instilled measures of efficiency in me. When driving the forklift, if they needed something on the other side of the job, after I delivered a bundle of lumber, I'd look for something that needed to be hauled back the other way. Ron said I should always have something on the forks.
Oddly, my fat ex wife followed the same principle with forks but in her case it pertained to chickens, pasta and potatoes.
 
Back in the sixties when I was a teenager, my dad would pull nails and straighten them and reuse.
And IF low on gas going down a country road with a little down hill, he would turn of the engine and coast a ways in that darn '49 Chevy!
He ate the chicken wing and got the drumstick. Yep than the tail!
 
My wife says I'm cheap, I say I'm frugal. Always had what I really needed, not very often what I wanted. Had lots of friends, and nice people I met in the "hobby". Thay gave me their "castoffs", or sold me parts for reasonable prices. I built my current drag car on a shoestring. Took 3 years of chasing parts, bought the car from a salvage yard, did all the work myself, and had it to the track for $1500 total into the car. 66 Valiant, slant six. First night out, ran high 15's.. That weekend doing some track work got into the 13's. I now have about $3,000 into the car, and runs mid to high 12's
 
PROSTOCKTOM said:
On July 11, 2016 I found this Hornet Hatchback on a Craigslist ad in North Carolina and I live in Indiana.

I had been looking for almost a year for reasonably priced Hornet Hatchback.

When I called Steve about it he told me the interior had got wet and he figured the floor pans were gone.

Since he could get $200 for it at the scrapyard I offered him $200 and he accepted the offer. I told him I couldn't pick it up for awhile and he was okay with that.

About mid October my friend Aaron that I got a job on an oil rig in the Gulf shows up at my house with a brand new pickup truck and want's to go on a road trip.

Aaron says, "If I pay for fuel and food we can take his truck."


I call Steve and tell him I ready to come pickup the car. He tells me he's in Florida on vacation, but come on down and he'll let the neighbors know we are coming.

Now it's a 600 mile trip one way and we leave about 2pm in the afternoon, we stop a few times and get down to Bakersville, NC about midnight.

We are on a skinny dirt road, on top of a mountain, and it's pitch black. The exhaust is still hanging down from the 6-cylinder removal, but we can't see it.

It hooks on the underside of the trailer (I didn't mention we had no tools with us) so it takes us an hour to get it broke off and get the car loaded on.

Around 1:30am we start for Indiana. Now I went to grad school in Johnson City, TN and there is an all night joint called Mid City Grill that has great hamburgers.

We stop in and the owner Jeff who I know lets us wash up in the back and we get some food. Now it's 3:30am and we leave J.C. for Indiana.

We drove all night and got to Indianapolis around 10:30 am so I stopped at a carwash and cleaned it up a bit and then ran by a friends house to show it off.

Around 1pm we roll in with neither of us ever sleeping. Total cost of fuel and food $178, so I now have the car home for $378.

Over the course of about 5 months I sold everything off the car that I didn't need or want for around $925. At this point I've made $547 profit and had a great story to tell.

After I stripped and sold the parts I cleaned the body up and then life got busy and it sat in the garage for years with me working on it here and there.

First thing I did was cut the drip rails off and TIG welded the skins back together and then it sat for a few years while life went by.

Then in the spring of 2023 I got the time and interest to start working on it again. I started working on it by cutting the windshield wiper pivots out and filling in the cowl vents.

Since I am making a fiberglass hood mold that extends all the way to the windshield, this had to be done, but then winter came and I didn't play with again until April of this year.

This year I removed the dent in the C-pillar, welded in 23 trim holes on the passenger side, removed a dent in the passenger door, sanded the roof down, did all the bodywork over

those areas, primed and block all those areas. Between the materials it took to get to this point am probably just now to the breakeven point and I have ZERO dollars in it.

That's my story of how cheap I am and I am sticking to it.

Tom



call: make / manufacturer: amcmodel name / number: Hornet

☎ (828) ***-XXXX

Posted: 12 days ago

View attachment 1716319894

amc hornet - $300 (Bakersville nc)

rolling chassis
no motor no transmission no title

View attachment 1716319895

View attachment 1716319897

View attachment 1716319899

View attachment 1716319903

View attachment 1716319905

View attachment 1716319909
Click to expand...
Unfortunately the "no title" would have been the deal breaker for me.
 
I have always figured that people appreciate what they have MORE if they do the work themselves and NOT with a fat checkbook.
No one is born knowing how to do anything, we all have to learn or figure it out. Learning to do things is fun and satisfying.
 
I save pretty much every PCB and rechargeable battery pack I come across out of scrap electronics and spend leisurely hours in the garage with the stereo on, heat gun going and pliers pulling out anything that will come out of those boards component wise. I got a pretty good collection of capacitors, pots, relays, resistors and MOSFETS and about 200 18650 batteries. I've been known to wash plastic silverware too. I've also got threee 5 gallon paint buckets full of waste oil, Im just too lazy to haul it to the waste oil sites as they are usually "full" and cannot take any more oil.
 
This story may not be quite what the op intended, but here goes.

Back in around 2015 or 2016, I had a coworker who had a couple of fox body Mustangs and a bunch of parts he wanted to get rid of. He had asked me if I was interested on a couple of occasions and I told him I would like to see the cars first.
He said that the cars were in his dad's backyard and that he had to let his dad know before I could go see them. Finally after about 2 months he told me to come by that weekend and I would be able to check everything out.

When I got there, he had the 2 Mustangs, both 1983 GLX models, both t top cars, basically complete, one had a 302 that he thought had a bad cam, plus a 351w on a stand, a freshly rebuilt set of aftermarket sbf heads, a pile of miscellaneous parts, wheels, tires, etc, all for $500.00. Then his dad came out and said he would sell me his 1991 GMC 3/4 2wd pickup for another $400.00. I drove the truck home with a load of parts and had a buddy come down with a deck truck to haul the cars to my house.

2 hours later, my buddy phones and says his son wants to buy the truck so I sold it for $900.00, now I have 2 cars plus a ton of parts free! Over the next few months or so I got the 302 running perfectly, firing order was wrong, and sold off pretty much everything, made about $5k profit.
 
missing linc said:
This story may not be quite what the op intended, but here goes.

Back in around 2015 or 2016, I had a coworker who had a couple of fox body Mustangs and a bunch of parts he wanted to get rid of. He had asked me if I was interested on a couple of occasions and I told him I would like to see the cars first.
He said that the cars were in his dad's backyard and that he had to let his dad know before I could go see them. Finally after about 2 months he told me to come by that weekend and I would be able to check everything out.

When I got there, he had the 2 Mustangs, both 1983 GLX models, both t top cars, basically complete, one had a 302 that he thought had a bad cam, plus a 351w on a stand, a freshly rebuilt set of aftermarket sbf heads, a pile of miscellaneous parts, wheels, tires, etc, all for $500.00. Then his dad came out and said he would sell me his 1991 GMC 3/4 2wd pickup for another $400.00. I drove the truck home with a load of parts and had a buddy come down with a deck truck to haul the cars to my house.

2 hours later, my buddy phones and says his son wants to buy the truck so I sold it for $900.00, now I have 2 cars plus a ton of parts free! Over the next few months or so I got the 302 running perfectly, firing order was wrong, and sold off pretty much everything, made about $5k profit.
Click to expand...
I bet that was "back in the good old days!!!!" Even prior top 2015 maybe!???? But yes things were way more plentiful and cheaper even then!!!!

Funny story. WAYyyy back about 1983 ( yea I am older than that even) I lucked up on a Mo. farmer with a 69 Roadrunner roller for sale. Yep the price was $50, complete roller, almost no rust and a 383 bare block to go with (turned out to be a 361). Scrap. F8 green. I sold it to a guy for $500 to part out.. And so started my Mopar world. About 3-4 years later, he calls me and tells me his wife wants all the parts he took off that car GONE plus all the other parts stored in their basement. Also she wants the 69 Roadrunner roller he had bought gone also and like NOW!!!! $1000 for it all. The car was originally black with a blue interior ( not offered but yes the fender tag verified it.)
Included with all the parts off the RR he parted he got from me, was a couple of 440s with complete 6 pac setups, 2-3 A 833 trans, some BB TF, and a TON of more parts! 3 trips with the pickup and trailer. Sold it all for around $6,000.

I told him I recognized him from the TV other night. Big crime scene in K.C. He was a young guy. He was a head FBI agent!

They had a really large and expensive home and his wife was overjoyed!!!!!
 
Last edited:
Kern Dog said:
WE all know CHEAP people. Some of us are those people.
Sometimes they are really smart and just not being wasteful but sometimes their penny pinching ways are annoying.
Me? I can be cheap sometimes. It sometimes is motivated by money but other times I like a challenge to do more with less.
This car:

2 XH G (2).jpg



Was put together with mostly used parts I saved over the years. Yeah, I could have opened the wallet and bought new things but it was fun to see what I could do with a tight budget. I have a running, driving ratty car for a total outlay of under $10,000.

What about the people that use single ply toilet paper or that recycle used engine oil to lubricate door hinges?
Who has stories of family members or friends that were so CHEAP that they annoyed the heck out of you?
Click to expand...
Uncle Star Smith, F-15, F-4 Fighter pilot, Commander of an air wing in England, will take his 6 liter, 4 door gas truck and drive across a four lane road (which takes lots of time idling, waiting) to go get gas 1 cent cheaper across the road to the other gas station (which just lowered its price).

Uncle TD, will manage and engineer bridge building in Texas, but drives ANY WHERE, interstates, freeways etc. 49-55mph.

I worked for him as a mechanic and he refused to accomplish preventative maintenance. He thought I could repair his $500,000 cranes instead of someone trained to work on them. We finish work at this remote area last year, I made a bet with another worker… filled up his 400,000 mile, 3 valve, 5.4 ford pickup with over half a gallon of oil and more than one gallon of coolant/water before I let him leave. SMH I just don’t understand how he could manage over a million dollars of heavy equipment assets, all of which half assed worked (so damn dangerous), would never pass any osha inspection, and never do preventative maintenance . Every company truck had bald tires, sketchy brakes, started up with a ritual, engine filled with crude oil…

But he made a great retirement for himself, gave great work to the tax payer (ugh hired illegals to do most of his work-some had papers, most were not citizens), and built many of the overpass freeway sky scraping roads and rural county bridges around San Antonio, and rural Texas. Their father was cheap, but never taught them those behaviors-their father was the head maintenance officer at Kelly Air Force base for over a decade-paba could hear one cylinder misfiring among 20+ cylinders firing. I always wondered how my uncles never fell for harbor freight. We are not Jewish as the stereo type would allude to, but I swear if these men represent my ancestors, then we invented copper wire with two of them pulling on the same penny!
 
volaredon said:
Unfortunately the "no title" would have been the deal breaker for me.
Click to expand...

A lot of states don't even issue titles for vehicles at a certain age anymore.

I've probably bought close to a hundred cars in my life that didn't come with a title. It was never an issue to get one.

Tom
 
My 1ST cousin once told me i was so tight that if he shoved a piece of coal up my *** it would turn into a Diamond . True story .
 
I used to work for a guy that refilled magic markers. Don would pull them apart and use a little bottle of India Ink to refill the tampon in them. He was the cheapest man I ever met, and I quit about six months after I'd gotten a raise, and that's what he said, "I gave you a raise and you're quitting on me?"

My aunt had 4 kids. They all used the same bathwater, oldest to youngest, then that bathwater got scooped out and watered flowers. She always grew an amazing garden.

Me, on the other hand:
I've washed ziplocs and re-used them. I cleaned out the fridge last month and threw food away. That's the first time I've ever thrown food away that wasn't rotten or moldy (and I'll eat moldy bread if I can rip the mold off), and I'm 46. I legit needed the room and some of it just didn't mold when it should have.

I actually prefer single ply TP, so that's good, but I typically replace tires in pairs and just rotate 'em front to back. I collect the drip oil from my Mobil1 5-qt jugs to use in the lawnmower. God only knows what viscosity it actually is, as I bounce to whatever is close and will work and is cheap.

I fingerbang every coin return I see. I got a silver quarter just the other day. One time I found an ancient Roman coin in one, and one time I found a 1oz silver eagle.

I rotate my underwear and socks in batches. When it gets old, it ALL gets replaced and I mark the whole batch and use them in the 'workin on stuff' clothes drawer, and keep the new ones for nice days. Even then, I still pass for practically homeless.

Every hotel I stay in gets all the tissue boxes, soap, and shampoo taken. If they have cereal boxes at the continental breakfast, I'll take half a dozen to my room every day for home use.

I eat food way past the expiration date. My bath towels get laid on the floor to serve as a bathmat after I get a fresh one (less hair, water, and dirt to mop up and I'm too cheap to buy a bathmat). I set my Tstat to 55 in teh winter and use a room heater to heat the bedroom and live in there if it gets too cold.

I saved the salt from tanning a deer hide for the next one. That's a $3 savings! All cardboard boxes get used twice, even if just to save a trashbag. My trashcan is literally only full once every three weeks. My neighbors are usually overflowing weekly.

I reload shell casings and pick the range clean, including the trash cans, if I do go shoot. Even .22 brass recycles, and I collect metal to recycle.

I save envelopes from bills (I pay online) and use them to mail my own stuff. Bonus if it's a prepaid!

I wear a pair of shoes until they're shameful. Then they're yardwork shoes.

I won't reuse spark plugs, dead batteries, or condoms.
 
My Grandpa Elmer Rife...another frugal German...used used pie tins for reflectors for lights in his shop. His long bolts were in used Prince Albert cigar boxes. (He didn't buy the cigar boxes) The owner of an old country store saved them for him. He used my grandmas old mason jars for nuts and bolts. He screwed the lids with rusty scavenged screws to shelving he made from the old corn crib. Then he screwed the jars into the lids at eye level so he could see what bolt and washers he had in the jars. He was still using a Gleaner 6 row when he retired from farming at 91 years of age. When he had gravel added to the shed he dumped it in one corner and made me wheel barrel each load until the floor was even and level. I used to have to sit in a chair and shoot sparrows that **** on his 73 Buick Electra with used Bbs in a one **** daisy BB gun he got at a farm sale for a quarter until I filled up a five gallon bucket. He trained Prince his German Shepard farm dog to grab ground squirrels that were tearing up his grass when they came out of their hole. He was at the other end flushing the hole with rainwater he caught in an old, elevated fuel drum.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
-

Back
Top