Why I Don't Like Watching The Show "Extreme Cheapskates"

As someone who claims to be extremely frugal, you might assume that the TV show "Extreme Cheapskates" would be right up my alley.

You wouldn't be the first.

In fact, I was contacted by them a while ago, because they wanted me to appear on their show, and after going through the whole interview process, they realized I wasn't in the US and so it wasn't doable.

Until tonight, I'd never seen the show Extreme Cheapskates. I watched two episodes on Youtube, thinking that I might get a few new tricks, or at least see some like minded people. I thought I'd enjoy it.

I didn't.

In fact, I got really mad at the people on the show, because so much of what they were doing is very wrong in my books, and it gives frugal people like myself  a bad name! 

So, what exactly did I not like about the show? 

The people on the show, for the most part, seemed not to be frugal or extremely frugal because they needed to be or because they were trying to save up for something specific; they saved money for the sake of being able to say they saved money, even when they were saving money in ways that were morally wrong, or they spent a lot of money to be able to "save money" instead of actually doing cost cutting measures. They're not frugal- they're cheapskates. Misers. Tightwads. And not in the positive sense of the word.

This is the first episode I saw of Extreme Cheapskates.

Abdul is the first guy in that episode.

Now Abdul likes a good deal. And I like good deals too. And that's just about where all our similarities end.
See, Abdul's way of getting a good deal isn't by going to cheap stores, buying what is on sale, or doing without.
Abdul's way of doing things is that he'll go wherever, and when he's told a price, he tries to get the people to lower the price. And usually they say no. So he pressures them and pressures them and nags them and nags them until they lower the price. But thats not enough for him. He tries to get them to go even lower and lower.
He did that at a fast food place. He did that at a party shop. He did that at a bakery. He did that when he was shopping for clothes with his wife in a high end clothing shop.

I don't think that what he does is right. When a store advertises a certain price, that's the price they're willing to sell the things for. If you ask them once for a bargain, not something I'd do, but its still ok in my books, and they say no, leave it!
The way I see this type of haggling is as if you see a friend, see she has something you like, ask her if you can have it, she says no, you beg and push and plead, and finally she gives in and gives you the thing. Yes, you didn't physically force her to give her thing up at gunpoint, but in my books, what you did is stealing. She parted with something she didn't feel comfortable parting with, and you basically took something without really getting permission.
Same with this type of haggling. The sellers afterwards will really resent a person like Abdul. They did not feel comfortable giving him the price he was asking for, but he wouldn't leave them alone and drove them crazy until eventually they let him, but certainly not with a full heart. That money that he should have paid for the item but didn't? He pretty much stole that money from the seller.
It's wrong.

Is any type of haggling acceptable?
Yes. There is a time and a place for haggling. Upscale stores are not the place, nor at any place where prices are set in stone.
At my local farmer's market, its accepted to haggle. The shopkeepers haggle with you from the start, offering to give you a bargain if you'll stop at their stand. You definitely can haggle back there.

But even when haggling, there's ways to do it and ways not to do it, in my opinion. If you want a lower price than what is listed, just say "Oh well, I saw that same item for $X at another place." They may offer to sell it to you for that price, or they may not. But pushing them to give it to you for that price isn't acceptable in my books.

Abdul- I have a hint for you. You want to save money? How about cook things from scratch instead of going to a fast food place, or ordering fewer things? How about baking a cake from scratch, instead of asking the bakery to give you a cheaper cake by leaving off the frosting, or giving you cake pops made out of leftover cake and leftover frosting? How about buying clothes from the thrift store, or at least not at a store that charges 150 dollars a shirt, so you don't have to ask them to lower the price from 150 to 130?
Now THAT's frugal.
What you just did was wrong.

Abdul, you know what my other issue with you is?

You're married. You have a wife. You're not a single person anymore- you're part of a unit- a married couple. Your first priority should be your marriage, not saving a dime.
When your wife is embarrassed by your haggling, when she cringes when you haggle, please, respect your wife's feelings and at the very least, don't haggle in front of her, especially when she asks you to please not haggle! You're putting your desire to be a cheapskate before your marriage, before your wife's feelings. Not only are you disrespecting the shopkeeper, you're also disrespecting your wife. Why do you not care?

You should know that as much as I like foraging, as much as I have no problem rescuing food from the trash, I know my husband is uncomfortable when I do such things when there are people watching and he's with me. Guess what? When I'm with my husband, I don't do that! Part of a marriage based on love and respect is respecting your partner's wishes, even if you don't feel the same way about those things. (P.S. He's cool with me foraging and rescuing food, so long as I'm not with him in front of a crowd while doing so.)

Abdul also threw a party for his wife, making it an ultra cheapskate party, but looking like an ultra cheapskate party. It embarrassed her in front of her friends  She may have said otherwise, but seeing her face on the camera, you can see how uncomfortable he made her feel. You can throw a party, a nice party even, without needing to spend a lot of money. Show your wife you care by throwing her a party she'd enjoy, not a party in which it is reinforced in front of her friends that her husband is a tightwad.

The second woman I saw (same episode as Abdul) was a woman named Vickie.
In a way, Vickie reminds me of myself. She's frugal. She makes homemade toys (as the paper dolls on the table show), she forages for veggies, she eats meat that other people would pass over (though my religion forbids roadkill like she eats, but I have eaten cow lips that I got free), she tries not to waste anything.
I think her intentions are in the right place.

But...
I think that when it comes to parenting, she has some ways to go.
Her daughter, Saraya, is 13. 13 is the age when peers matter a lot to you, where your self esteem is probably not at its best, and a parent really needs to work hard to build up her kid emotionally.
And then you have a woman like Vickie with a 13 year old daughter who claims she has nothing to wear. A look into her closet confirms that- she has only one thing to wear.

As Saraya says, its a dress meant for a 4 year old.

She hates it so much that she wants to burn it. But her mom makes her wear it. And her friend comes over, and makes fun of her for wearing it. And ok, maybe the friend shouldn't have, but come on. Have you taken a look at that dress? Wouldn't you chuckle, at least inwardly, if you saw a 13 year old girl walking down the street wearing that, and think that maybe there was something wrong with her?

Finally, she convinces her mother to let her go clothes shopping, and mom comes along to make sure she doesn't "overspend". Saraya picks out 3 shirts and 2 other items, which add up to a grand total of 10 dollars. And despite Saraya having so little clothes that she is forced to wear something that she hates with a passion, mom doesn't let her buy more than 2 things.

Hello, Vickie. Let your daughter have some self respect! She's going to hate you for this when she grows up.
You don't have the money for clothes? Then give her the option to work so she can earn her own money and buy clothes. Because a teenager, of all people, needs clothes. And clothes she likes. Its important for her self esteem that she feels good about herself, and its hard to do that when you feel embarrassed by what you're wearing.

Vickie and her family went driving around, hunting for roadkill to serve for a meal. While I don't know the exact price in her area, I know that nowadays gasoline really isn't cheap anywhere. There's a good chance that they spent more on gas looking for free meat than they would have spent if they went to buy cheap meat. Or better yet, made a vegetarian meal out of beans or lentils.
Especially if you're having guests.
Because in the show, they had a family over as guests. And I saw the revulsion on the guests' face when they found out the meal was roadkill and foraged greens. And Vickie made them gifts out of the rabbit's pelt. Which again, was followed by that look of revulsion.
When you have guests, respect your guests. Respect their feelings. Don't serve something that very easily might gross out your guests. And if you don't know them well enough to know if it will or won't, play it safe and serve normal, cheap food, not strange, extremely frugal/free food that adventurous eaters won' t like. More on that in a minute.

The next show I saw was about this guy named Jeff Yaeger, a pretty famous guy, who wrote the book "The Ultimate Cheapskate". He and I are in touch- we're Facebook freinds, and I think he has a lot of good ideas. I really don't have much issue with the episode with Jeff, other than the fact that he visited another family as a guest, and promised to make them a frugal feast for supper. What did he serve them? Salmon carcass soup and baked salmon heads.

I mean, Jeff, I would eat those foods, and I would probably enjoy them just as much as you. But when I'm cooking for other people, my point isn't to make the meal as frugal as possible, whether or not they'll like the meal. As a host (or as someone cooking a meal for a hosting family), I think the right thing to do is to try to make something that they'll enjoy, and especially not a meal that will gross them out.

I mean, I have guests a decent amount. And while I'm perfectly happy to have all sorts of interesting, exotic, and strange frugal meals, when I have guests, I make normal food. I make food that they'd want to eat. The worst thing I think a host can do is to gross out their guests at the table. (Ok maybe not the absolute worst, but its definitely high up there.) Because of that, when I have guests, I ask them what foods they dislike, if they're picky eaters in general or more adventurous, etc... and plan my meals accordingly.
Yes, I like to keep my meals frugal. But not at the expense of my guests. Of course I try to get the things that I do serve as frugally as I can, by buying things in season and on sale, making things from scratch, etc... But I don't ever serve things that would gross out my guests.
And when someone leaves the table and goes to throw up, or at the very least feels queasy, you've missed the point.

You want to make them a frugal meal? Make some chili and cornbread. Not some fish carcass soup and baked fish heads.

Speaking of throwing up, there's another person on the show named Kate Hashimoto, and she also made her guests throw up.

See, Kate dumpster dives a lot. I think the fact that she does so isn't bad; I dumpster dive as well. The things I have issues with is how she dumpster dives. She dumpster dives for food, and yes, I sometimes am willing to rescue food from the trash, but I get it before it gets into a dumpster, and I don't dig through bags of gross garbage to try and find food. And she specifically puts on what she calls her "hobo clothes" before dumpster diving to get people to feel sorry for her.
And the food I get is always stuff that can be washed off, and then cooked. Nothing that comes out of a dumpster should be eaten as is- at the very least, cook it again before you eat it, but she doesn't do that.
She had guests over that she hadn't seen in a year, and fed them dumpster dived food. And she didn't try to present it nicely- just dumped 4 different containers of food into the same pot, so that her pot itself looked like a garbage can...
Her guest did throw up from her food.
Don't do that!!!

But there were two things that bothered me more than that even, if you can imagine.

You see, Kate actually is rich. She has lots of money. But despite having money, she won't spend anything. She is a money hoarder. What is the purpose of frugality if there isn't a goal at the end? She seriously has an obsession with saving money, and an unhealthy one at that. See people tell me that they think I'm unhealthily obsessed with saving money. I'll tell you why that's not so. I am frugal largely by necessity. Because we don't have a large income, and I want to be able to have enough money for the things that are important to me, and have a savings to fall back on during emergencies and other stuff.
I save in order to spend as needed. I save because I need to.
Kate saves for the sake of saving, and is willing to risk her health, gross people out, make people think she's a hobo, just so she can save and save and save and save, with no goal in mind.

But I think one of the things that bothered me the most about the show with Kate is that I think all is not right with her in her head; she demonstrated on the toilet in from of the camera how she washes herself after going to the bathroom, and she took a shower naked in front of the camera to show us how she washes her clothes in the shower. There is something not right about that. She has social issues at the very least, mental problems at the most, and I don't think its right for TLC to exploit that to have her show.

The last person I'm going to talk about today is a woman named Victoria.

My issues with Victoria are many, but most of them I've already addressed above, so just some key points.
Firstly- she pees in a jar and pours it in her compost instead of flushing the toilet, to save 10 dollars a month. Victoria- you can save just that much money by following the maxim of "If it's yellow, let it mellow; if it's brown, flush it down." There's no need to keep your pee in a jar, sitting around your house, especially carrying it from room to room like you do- unsanitary!
But ok, you want to be crazy? Be crazy.
But her boyfriend moved in, and he's not as crazy as she is. But she was pushing and pushing for him to pee in the jar also to save money, and he really was grossed out by it, and she was still pushing and pushing; her compromise was going to be "I'll get you your own urine jar so you don't have to pee into the same jar as me".
Lady. Leave it. He doesn't want to pee in a jar! Why make him? I mean, I do some extreme stuff like using family cloth, but my husband doesn't like to do the same, and so he doesn't, and I don't try to get him to change how he does things. People's bathroom habits are their own private business, and no one should try to tell someone else how to use the bathroom, especially not try to convince them to do something that grosses them out, like peeing in a jar!

And just as bad- she treats him like a baby, and not with respect. He enjoys taking hot showers, she thought he was taking too long, so she asked him to end his shower. He didn't end it fast enough, so she turned off the water to the house so he'd have to come out of the shower before he was finished- he still had shampoo in his hair.
Where's your respect for your boyfreind, lady? He's a grown man, not a two year old that you should be disciplining. And he's allowed to take normal showers, even if you want to be ultra frugal. And if you want him to change, talk to him about it, come to a compromise, but don't turn off the water on someone while they're in the shower!

And oh, did I mention, she is a millionaire?

She says she is obsessed with saving money.
That is so.
She saves for the purpose of saving, for no real reason, and at the expense of her relationship with her boyfriend.

And that, in summation, is my problem with the people on the show, Extreme Cheapskates.

The people on the show, for the most part, have missed the whole point of frugality.

Frugality isn't the be all and end all of life. Frugality should be a means to an end and not an end in and of itself.
And frugality should not come at the expense of your relationships with other people.

Frugality is nice, but there are more things in life than just saving as many cents as possible, no matter what, no matter how.

Do you watch Extreme Cheapskates? What do you think of the show? Did you have the same observations that I have, or do you disagree with what I said?
Have you learned any tips from the show, or just things not to do, or are most things that they do things you're already doing?