Extreme Cheapskates

I have seen every episode and love each one. Some stuff you see on there is extreme but if you take the things they do and tone it down a bit you to can save a ton of money using less and reusing more things you would normally throw away. I am a very frugal person and this show inspires me to make changes. All that money we spend on junk can go to our kids futures as well as retirement. I'm not about to start using newspaper for toilet paper but I do try and cut back on the amount used. I wouldn't go and ask my neighbors for leftover food but I will use my food wiser and start freezer cooking to save money. These people go to amazing lengths and we could take some tips from them.

Okay, I wouldn't share my bath water with my entire family, and I wouldn't eat rotten food purposefully, but I would bake cookies on the dashboard of my car on a hot summer day and I would cut my electricity at a certain time each day because those are more realistic to me.

I was once called a cheapskate by a girl because I wouldn't buy her drugs. Extreme Cheapskates is an American television series that brings out the extreme reality of what being a cheapskate really is. Each person featured in the episodes gets a chance to tell their side of their extremism when it comes to saving money. I think some people go to extremes just because they are on TV, I doubt they do those things they claim in real life, when the cameras are off.

Ebeneezer Scrooge is a cake walk when compared to Extreme Cheapskates. Kate, in season one reveals how she saves money. She has a really good job as a CPA and a condo but her tendencies are to eat food from classy dumpsters. She also does not use toilet paper but other methods and hasn't bought new underwear in ages. Some people share toothbrushes, some people share bathwater, one wealthy lady begs for food in her wealthy neighbourhood. - Asif Zamir

I think I speak for most viewers when I write that I didn't find most of this extreme and I learned valuable tips.

What's "extreme" on this show? Passing down clothes, even if you have a big family. Taking secondhand furniture that people leave on the curb, a common practice in every city and town. Turning waste into compost for your garden. Shopping at thrift stores. Haggling for a bargain. Just how sheltered, even spoiled, are you if you've never done any of these?

The show is obviously staged, with non actors being told to turn up their noses. And there's an appeal to the easily squeamish with phobias about the human body or germs. You know, the type that are horrified about shaking hands with a stranger.

Here they're told perfectly fine food hunted or gathered from the wild, or leftover from restaurants and groceries, what country people and homeless shelters routinely serve and eat, is yucky/icky/gross, the way a very picky finicky little kid or a germophobe would find it. It's not most people, but here they pretend it is.

It's too bad the producers are so intent on making empty materialism and conformity seem "normal." Not all of us fall for that.

I wanted to like this, I really did. And maybe other episodes are better.

The first woman was/is a CPA. She went to buy a shirt in a thrift store that was $10. When she got to the front, she told the guy that she only had $5 in change and could he lower the price for her. When he said no (as far as I know, stores can't haggle prices), she scooped up her change and said that she would "go elsewhere", as if the guy had been rude to her (and her was actually apologetic and polite). I couldn't after that.

Being frugal or even cheap out of necessity is nothing to be ashamed of. Saving money because you are on a tight budget is nothing to be ashamed of.

But her cheapness seemed to be for the sake of being annoying.

A woman asking that her husband be exhumed when she dies so they can share one coffin. So fake. Didn't make it more than a few minutes in. I thought the show would be ridiculous but maybe have some useful tips. Not entertaining.