cheap and shocking

I stole a roll of toilet paper from a Pemex station in Ensenada so I wouldn't have to pay a quarter for two sheets at the loo at Bufadora.

I darn socks.

Partly because it's cheap - partly because my socks are like old friends (no matter what your mother says!)

Cheap and shocking? Probably done lots of things. I was a college student once.


The title of the thread was misleading, I thought you were talking about. . . ummm, my little friend.

Fun thread. And shakey, though I haven't quite done that, I've come close. Darn pills are expensive!

Hmm... shockingly cheap... tonight, I taped over a radio interview I did just because I didn't want to buy another cassette tape.

shakeysix said:

on my way to bed just now. had a wrassle with one of those child proof medicine caps. i won but the damned thing popped off and spewed tiny but expensive meds over the kitchen floor. i am down to five so i actually fished one out of the dog's water dish and took it. i figured that if i saved it for another day i would lose my nerve. they figure out to something like 11$ a pill if you factor in the doctor's visit. now it doesn't seem like that much money. still can't believe i did it. which brings me to my question:

have you ever done anything so cheap that even you were shocked? ==s6

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I haven't done that.. but I would.. Don't be so hard on yourself..

Hey, I love prowling the neighborhood on junk days! I'm using plates right now my mother wanted to send to thrift stores. I've got a shirt I saved from being thrown away at work. Don't think of it as being cheap, think of it as being thrifty, think of it as recycling. It feels a lot better if you think of it as being green. And hey, you're bound to have your pet's germs anyway.

I have many cheap moments. I can't even count.

Then I turned around and threw money away. Yeah, I can be like that. I would stress about a $0.25 difference in cereal, then go and grab a $3.99 cup of mocha without even thinking.

I'm not even sure what cheap thing it would take to shock me. I'm the girl who upon opening some cottage cheese and finding mold will simply scrape the mold off and eat the cottage cheese. Taking a pill out of the dog's water? I wouldn't even have to think twice about it. Espesh at $11 a pill! My grandfather used to make me sandwiches out of congealed bacon fat, and I don't do that as an adult, so maybe that's where I draw the line.

i once sold a kidney for $10.

fortunately, it wasn't mine.

Thank you, by the way. It's proven quite resilient.

I sold my own plasma on a few occasions when I really needed money.

Hope those bloody expensive pills are curing what ails ye, Shakes.

Redzilla said:

I'm not even sure what cheap thing it would take to shock me. I'm the girl who upon opening some cottage cheese and finding mold will simply scrape the mold off and eat the cottage cheese. Taking a pill out of the dog's water? I wouldn't even have to think twice about it. Espesh at $11 a pill! My grandfather used to make me sandwiches out of congealed bacon fat, and I don't do that as an adult, so maybe that's where I draw the line.

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LOL! That reminds me, a couple of days ago I found a fly in my soup. First I tried to drink around it, then I tried to spoon it out, and that's when someone said to me, "You know, it's a buffet. You can get a new bowl of soup."

Dog's drinking dish is nothing. Try taking it out of the toilet bowl, rinse it, and...

Yup, done that. I'm cheap.

I'm not too cheap, I'm more of a money-waster (which is why I'm always broke), but on many broke occasions, I've made mac and cheese without milk, just adding more butter.

Not really cheap move, just disgustingly foolish

Spent my last two bucks before getting next grant payment on a package of red licorice to quiet a craving and had to live on handouts from friends and ketchup mixed with water for a week in college

Foolish indeed. Two bucks can get you quite a lot of ramen!

Ray, who so totally lived on ramen in college

WerenCole said:

Cheap and shocking? Probably done lots of things. I was a college student once.

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I'm so cheap - my memoir will tell the whole story...

JennaGlatzer said:

Fun thread. And shakey, though I haven't quite done that, I've come close. Darn pills are expensive!

Hmm... shockingly cheap... tonight, I taped over a radio interview I did just because I didn't want to buy another cassette tape.

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You still have a cassette tape recorder??? Those things went obsolete years ago! Maybe you've heard of these newfangled things called MP3 players, or iPods? Some models (all? I dunno) do recording too, and hold a lot more than a cassette tape.

You can also "dump" the interview onto your computer before recording over the cassette. If you're going to continue to use that device, there's the idea of being pepared - they still make those little boxes with the ribbons in them: http://tapewarehouse.com/

I'm so cheap, I know THIS website: http://www.thethriftshopper.com/
Cassette recorders are as cheap as a dollar, but you have to keep looking, because there aren't that many around anymore.

Ah, college. My sophomore year my cousin and I roomed together. One not-to-be-forgotten (and barely remembered) weekend we both spent our entire following weeks' food allowance on pizza, two cases of top-shelf beer and a quart of kick-butt grain alcohol. On Monday when we pooled our pocket change we found we had just enough between us for one big box of store-brand Minute Rice knockoff, and one large can of truly wretched, no-name, possibly horsemeat chili. We cooked it up in our Mirro aluminum popcorn popper and stretched the stuff out for six days. Yea, verily, on the seventh day it had departed, but by that time we could buy groceries again. Good times...

I have one which was cheap and could have been shocking in the voltage sense of the word, but I didn't do it. Someone I knew who shall for obvious reasons remain nameless wired himself, well, not his actual self, into the power pole nearest his property and enjoyed free electricity for well over a year. This was in 1972 when people often did risky things while under the influence of the green green grass of home.

I've employed cheap shocking tactics in the past during dark broke days but all involved food items and no one wants to know, trust me. shakey, for 11 bucks I too would have fished the pill out of the dog's dish, yes.

Reading these answers about college is giving me some hi-larious flashbacks.

In grad school, a friend of mine lived in a professor's basement and on the last few days of the month when we were dead broke, we used to rifle through the prof's garbage. Slightly stale loaves of bread, yogurt that was a day past its expiration, leftover Chinese food. Untold riches! Those tenured faculty members threw out better food than what we could afford to buy new!

Oh, and we used to pool our money to buy 20-pound bags of potatoes, and then steal dozens of butter pats from the student union cafeteria. For under $4, four of us could get nearly a week of food.

ETA: And why were we so broke we were dumpster diving? Because we were stupid grad students who spent our teaching assistant stipends on beer and weed and concerts and books.

OMG, one more. Just talked to an old college buddy of mine and she reminded of the other truly cheap and shocking thing I did in college:

She said, "Hey, aren't you the one who used to steal animal food from your job at the zoo?"

I did!! I used to steal chunks of apples and bananas and whole monkey biscuits. And by steal, I mean eat, while I was preparing the chimpanzees' lunch. Monkey biscuits taste good.

OMGosh, I have to dork you guys.

I would have fished that pill out of the dogs bowl in a flash. And slamming it down immediately was good too. You didn't give your critical self a chance to talk your frugal self out of it.


My daughter dropped dinner on the table last night trying to pass it, spilling the main dish I slaved over for an hour across the middle. We all sat there looking at it then my husband reached in with a spoon and began scooping it onto his plate. Since I already had my portion, I simply dug into the mess with my fork. Our kids just looked at us and each other while we ate from the table.

Before we had kids, there was a time when all we had in the house was oil, catchup and flour. We fried flour balls in the oil and dipped them in catchup.

Oh, I also shopped from the dollar store with five dollars to eat for a few days.

Wow. You guys are cheap.

Hey Shakeysix!
Last year they declared that the "thirty-second rule" has been extended to "the five minute rule." You need not worry.

I remember the staple foods: Ooodles of Noodles and Kraft Macaroni and Cheese. Those Ramen noodles come five for a dollar. They're tasty too.

Hey, Monkey Biscuits!