"My neighbors know me, but I get lots of either pitiful or concerned stares from strangers."
Growing up without much access to money can impact our habits and perspective on the world. And if we do get the opportunity to make more money later on in life, some of those habits may still stick. So when I saw that Reddit user u/hopelessmoderate asked: "'Well off' people of Reddit, what is the 'poorest' thing you still regularly do?" over 12 thousand people provided their insights on the matter. Here's what they had to say below:
1. "Research every purchase for hours and hours to 'find the best deal' before pulling the trigger."
"Yes! I’ll save stuff in my Amazon cart, too, for a couple of weeks to see if I change my mind. Usually, I do."
2. "Eat leftover sandwiches from corporate lunch meetings. Even if I'm not in the meeting. I'm not poor, but a free meal is a free meal."
3. "I must extract every last bit of toothpaste from the tube. Shampoo? Add more water, shake, and get another few days out of it."
"This is my wife. I made the mistake of throwing shade her way about the toothpaste last month, telling her that we had about a week at best left of toothpaste and we might as well just buy a new tube. She confidently told me that I'd be surprised at how long she could make it last.
She spent the next month collecting all the tiny toothpaste tubes we had amassed from the dentist and slowly refilling the original larger tube. Slow enough that I didn't notice for a month! Sometimes, my wife scares me a little bit."
4. "Wash and reuse plastic ziploc bags."
5. "Wait for sales. Use coupons."
6. "I am dressed about 50% of the time in clothes that make me look like I live in my car or maybe the woods. I am retired. I have what I call 'house clothes,' which are 20 years old, from Marshall’s, that were $9.99 when new. They are clean and laundered. I wear them to the garden, drink my coffee, walk my dog, etc. My house clothes are faded, some stained. I don’t care. I walk around my neighborhood to get steps in. My neighbors know me, but I get lots of either pitiful or concerned stares from strangers."
"All my shirts have four holes in them..."
7. "Costco hotdog."
8. "I can tell within $2 what my grocery cart total is going to be, including tax. As a kid, I used to go shopping with my mother, and I was always so embarrassed when we had to put stuff back because we didn't have the money. When I was about eight, I got in the habit of keeping track of how much we had spent; I would tell Mom what we had to put back. She was so grateful she used to save a bit to get me a treat. Now, I can buy anything I want, but I still budget myself and never go over it. My wife thinks I'm nuts, but I'll ask her, 'Those artichokes are out of season; they must be expensive.' I get a lethal eye roll."
"Oh man, I am the same way nowadays. I was always the best at mental math in my family, and I think it was partially because I was the walking grocery cart calculator. I would calculate tax, too, based on items that were taxed and items that weren't. Mom would always periodically ask me what the total was so she knew how much was left in the budget. The cashiers were always so impressed at my totals, and mom usually bought me a tin of mints for my efforts."
9. "I still have a drawer dedicated to fast-food sauces."
10. "Hang on to crap I don't need in case it might be useful someday, and I'd have to buy it again and couldn't afford to. I do a 'purge' every few months (i.e., A stack of unburned CDs from around 2000, really?), but the packrat instinct runs deep."
11. "Take the sliver of soap and press it into the new bar."
12. "Divide paper towels to use what's actually needed."
"Shit, I let clean ones dry after wiping up water or drying my hands, then use them for dirtier jobs later.
My kids use half a roll to dry their hands, so my frugality gets canceled out."
13. "Look at my bank account for a $2 purchase."
14. "My guilty pleasure is getting Maruchan Ramen every so often, but I make it more like spaghetti, draining all the water, mixing in some olive oil with the noodles, and then adding the beef and pork powder directly to the noodles. It's sooooo good that way."
15. "Use plastic shopping bags to line trash cans at home."
"My wife bought smaller trash bags specifically for the bathrooms a couple of months back, and I was blown away. 35 years old, and I didn't know that was a thing. My entire life, in every home, there's been an empty cardboard box in one of the bottom cupboards filled with empty grocery bags to reuse. I remove them from the shopping cart every two weeks when we grab groceries. I won't stand for it, haha."
16. "I still cut my own hair."
"Same. I’m a woman in a high-cost-of-living area, so a cut and color would run me a few hundred.
My husband gets angry when I mess up the towels with my hair dye, but I have to remind him that doing my hair at home can save me almost a grand a year."