Frugal or tight: Where's the line?

First, let's settle on definitions. What might seem perfectly normal to one "frugalite" (washing sandwich bags, say, or Dumpster diving) might seem beyond the pale to another.
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Washing sandwich bags is in the same category as dumpster diving? :ROFLMAO::LOL: OK...
 
To me frugal is when you use a sandwich bag twice. Tight is when you staple the used bag because the seams have torn.
 
bbbamI said:
To me frugal is when you use a sandwich bag twice. Tight is when you staple the used bag because the seams have torn.
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...sandwich bags!?! Anybody remember wax paper or plastic wrap? Guess that's too old school...
 
bbbamI said:
To me frugal is when you use a sandwich bag twice. Tight is when you staple the used bag because the seams have torn.
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What if you use Tupperware instead of plastic bags? A box of sandwich bags will last us for years, we use them very rarely.
 
Ditto on the Tupperware or Rubbermaid containers. I just wash them out and reuse them. I will reuse bags if I have just stored bread or something like that in them. Otherwise I toss them due to squeamishness about something bacterial lurking.
 
I say I'm frugal.
dh2b says I'm tight.*

I will repair things that really should be thrown away with my infamous tube of Marine Goop. I will repair something once or twice. When it fails again, out it goes.
I save all sorts of plastic containers for re-use in the garage. I re-use them regularly to avoid clutter and then recycle them.
"Use your plastic twice" is a favorite motto.
I use half a paper napkin at the table and half a tissue for wiping my eyes after eyedrops. He gets the other half. :LOL:
I buy only items on sale inless it is a food item I need now, like milk or eggs.

* watch it, peanut gallery members at large :bat:
 

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My most frugal (okay cheap ) thing is I will not join Sam's club . I search for a one day pass and then I load up on all the Sam's club items I like . I do this a few times a year .
 
Want2retire said:
Washing sandwich bags is in the same category as dumpster diving? :ROFLMAO::LOL: OK...
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Hey, let's not impugn our dedicated dumpster divers. I resemble that remark.

I don't make the time to live completely freegan. But it's a nice skill to know if I need it.

I think frugality is just simple living-- a lifestyle that avoids waste. Extraordinary frugality, however, can be deprivation. Everyone understands how to avoid waste, but everyone also has a standard of living they're not willing to give up to achieve that level of avoiding waste. ER benefits from frugality, but it doesn't require extreme frugality. Except possibly for this guy.

Everyone has a line between frugality & deprivation that they choose not to cross. The difference is that frugality feels good and makes you enthusiastic about reaching your goals. It's a challenge, and when you're doing well then you feel like a winner. You might not even miss the materialistic lifestyle that you're doing without. Deprivation is always doing without for a higher priority, willingly or not. Frugality matches your values and usually frees up quite a bit of savings. You're living a life that you enjoy and you're making progress toward your goals-- it's easy to feel good about it. Deprivation, however, rarely matches your values and feels more like slavery than volunteering. You may be making great progress but it's definitely not easy and you will not feel good about it. Prolonged deprivation is extremely difficult to voluntarily sustain and it usually leads to unhappiness...
 
Maybe we should start a thread on what each of us specifically consider frugal vs tight. Has it been done (recently)?
 
As for dumpster diving, many years ago, when I was newly married and living in a roach infested studio apartment in NYC, my husband and I used to take walks on the evenings the trash went out on the sidewalks for collection the next day. We picked up some nice things: clothes hangers, a suitcase, a kitchen table, a floor lamp, working manual typewriter. I think I am frugal but not cheap. I try to get the most bang for my buck but I also give a lot of things to friends and donate to the thrift stores. I gave the newly married daughter of a friend an oriental rug, some chairs and a lot of kitchen stuff that I no longer have room for since I have downsized into a smaller house. It is great to see those things in her home where she is making use of them. I hate to see waste in anything and feel good about things being used.
 
Oh, and REWahoo, I LOVED your sandwich bags. Had a chuckle over them. Your sandwich would have been summarily pitched from our office kitchen fridge, name or no name on the item. Unless we knew about your penchant for bag artistry of course.
 
Frugal...Buying inexpensive toilet paper

Cheap...Recycling your toilet paper :yuk:
 
When you decide something isn't worth spending money on, you're frugal. When you don't spend money other people wish you'd spend, you're tight... :)
 
I can relate to the part below. Our TV does a flickery thing occasionally, and when it does, I'm hoping it will fail completely. This has been going on for about eight years.


Poster "mwz_2410" yearns for a flat-screen TV, for example, and briefly rejoiced when the sound went out on a 27-inch monolith purchased a decade ago.

"I was thinking to myself, 'Woo hoo! I can get a new TV and not feel guilty,'" mwz_2410 wrote, "but then my BF (boyfriend) came up to visit me, smacked the TV on its side and it worked again . . . still have that stinking TV."
 
My mother liked to say "careful." She felt "cheap" and "tight" were insults, and "frugality" was the result of desperate financial need and was to be avoided. Frugality involved things which she knew something about, from her Depression youth, like eating kinds of food that you hate, because they are cheap to buy and will sustain life. Or maybe wearing hand-me-down shoes that don't fit, and hurt your feet.

"Careful" implied buying only after you have thought carefully about your needs and how much you can afford.
 
Amethyst said:
My mother liked to say "careful." She felt "cheap" and "tight" were insults, and "frugality" was the result of desperate financial need and was to be avoided.
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Some Texas oldtimers I knew-(past tense because most of them are dead) used the term "short". It took me a while to figure out what they meant, as they would refer to some 6 foot guy as short. It meant what many of us mean by "tight"someone who is happy to let you pick up the tab, but somehow never reciprocates. Clearly the only people who fit this desription were in-laws or family members, as everyone else had been banished.

Hey Texans, is this term still used?

Ha
 
Our Krups coffemaker is just about right for us - no clock, no doodads, stainless pot (i have a penchant for breaking glass pots as i rinse them, swirling out the water in a cast iron sink). A couple years ago the plastic handle broke at the upper connection point. Priced a new carafe ($38+), looked for a replacement coffeemaker that was the equal of the Krups, and repaired the handle. My repair failed a couple months ago and we went through the same exercise with the same result - another invisible repair. Is that frugal or tight?

Last night we were watching an ad for answers via cellphone - "is there a stupider mascot than the Ardvark?" - at $0.99 per answer! Neither of us would think of using that service - or paying for ringtones or horrorscopes delivered to our cellphones. It's only $0.99!

When leaping up and down in the apartment dumpsters to compact the trash and keep it looking good i often remove towels & clothes & launder and reuse - if nothing else as cleaning rags. Bulky broken wood furniture gets cut up and burned in our stove. Increases the room in the dumpster, makes the dumpster area look better, and heats our home.
 
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