Tightass #101

When you have been bitten by the "tight" bug you will know it. It's when you remember the last time a 12oz can of soda took a 10-cent jump clearly, but you cannot remember what you had for lunch yesterday. If you are not naturally as tight as bark on a tree like I am, it's a pretty hard trait to learn. The last time I checked OSU does not offer a "Tightass #101" course in their economics department. Which by the way I COULD teach, teaching certificate notwithstanding. I could make Clark Howard and Dave Ramsey look like rookies. Being a penny pincher cannot necessarily be learned, it must be inherited like cowlicks, ingrown toenails, various veins, and a proclivity (in your youth) to date lose women. If these parameters sound weirdly specific that's because they ARE. I remember vividly the woman that made my dating practices change directions quickly, I think her quote to me was "Let's get it on big boy, you can't be first, but you can be next." If a conversation like that won't make you turn and run nothing will. The thing I couldn't shake out of my head after that was, she might give me something Comet couldn't remove. I inherited my cheapness from the one and only Leland Chester Lightcap who was my dad's father. The old man could figure out how to make a week's pay last a month. I once saw him offer to pay for the whole family to eat out and when the bill came, I thought he was going to have the big one like Fred Sanford when he figured out the corner liquor was out of Schlitz Malt Liquor. People who naturally squeak when they walk try to be generous, but that trait cannot hold to a candle to their inclination towards self-preservation in keeping their wallet fat.

A part of me wants to give the old man a pass because he grew up during the depression but that only leaves me with one question: WHAT'S MY EXCUSE? The short answer to that question is I don't have one. Not unlike a junky looking for his next fix I am totally hooked on the idea of finding that next big clearance rack sale. Truth is, I don't even really have to get a good deal, I only need to be made to believe I got a square deal and I'm satisfied. It makes me think I may soon find myself shopping regularly at Goodwill. Sometimes when a salesperson is very shrewd, they are able to put one over on me. But that would require algebra, cause if it can be done with simple math they won't beat me at my own game. In these cases, I lean heavily on my community college education. However, I still consider myself a Master Jedi of sniffing out a bargain. "There is NO try, there is only do or not do."

But sometimes saving coin is not so much about getting a good deal as it is making the most of what we are compelled to purchase in the first place. I have taken a rubber spatula to the inside of a peanut butter jar. You'd be surprised just how much left in the jar after it has been deemed "empty." I've actually scraped enough off the sides to make a whole sandwich. I have been caught using all of my strength to squeeze every drop out of a tube of toothpaste when I was gently reminded that it only costs a dollar. But you see, that doesn't matter because my sickness to save has no monetary boundaries. I usually just hear this little voice in the back of my head that keeps repeating "Don't throw that tube out yet, you can still get one more brushing out of it." I once found myself cutting the top out of a liquid laundry soap dispenser and just dropping it in with the last wash. It's astonishing how much more you can squeeze out of everyday products if you are creative. The next problem that usually comes up is that when you are innately tight you tend to hold on to clothes forever. I have shirts in my closet that are old enough to vote. This is a practice that my wife has tried (to no avail) to breed out of me. But what she has failed to remember is that fashion always comes back around eventually. My cheapness gene is far more powerful than the possibility of being embarrassed wearing a shirt that is twenty years out of style. Women believe in the fashion police, men just figure those laws were made to be broken.

I can teach you how to cash in you bonus points on a credit card for free groceries. I could have (at one time in the 80's) shown you how to double up on each purchase for S&H Green Stamps and get a Walkman for 20 books, I know I could because I did it. At one time in the 90's the Best Buy people sold me a hundred-disc CD changer for $300 and then the following week cut the price by HALF. I tried to renegotiate the price with the clerk, and he wasn't having it, so I just packaged it back up in the box, returned it for a full refund, and then bought a new one off the shelf for the new sale price. Some might consider this practice illegal, but I prefer the term unethical, illegal is such a dirty word. Just so you understand the difference in the definition; taking your derelict cousin a file in a cake in jail is unethical, helping him saw the bars in half is illegal. Just remember that stepping on the line and stepping over it are distinctly different practices. You should also remember that if you are going to take a chance on getting your hand slapped you should make sure the infraction is worth the pain.