There's a great post on MamaMia at the moment about tight asses. I think everyone can make claim to a tight ass friend, and while the offenders may think that they get away with it, thriftiness rarely goes unnoticed! I've had many long-winded rants with friends about the frugal peeps over the years, because it drives me CRAZY!!

Everyone has different values and whatever when it comes to cash, but I can't help but equate a person's money behaviours with their generosity and thoughtfulness as a human being.

There are so many thrifty scenarios that give me the irks, and when a friend displays particularly loathsome tight ass qualities, I'm afraid it sticks in the memory bank for life. The same goes for generous acts too - if a friend buys me a treat simply because they think I'll like it, or shouts lunch "just because", that gets logged in the memory bank as well!

I've had plenty of thrifty friends over the years, and I've learnt to take cash with me when hanging out with the worst offenders. If I'm not packing small notes, then I know I'll end up stiffed with the entire bill while they hand over $7 in shrapnel and promise to fix me up next time.

But the absolute worst is getting stuck with thrifty people at a group dinner. One night in particular comes to mind, when six of us went out for dinner, including a notoriously tight friend. When the bill came we all chucked in our cash, and he/she waited until the end and said, "Put whatever's left on my credit card".

Of course by then, "whatever's left" was about $9, because we'd all thrown in an extra few bucks each to cover a tip. When I pointed this out, he/she replied full of faux sincerity, "Oh no! Well it's too late, I've already given them my card and I've got no cash on me..."

I made a big deal of rummaging through my purse to find another $10 to cover the tip, but I think this person was so busy inwardly celebrating their cheap night out that they didn't notice. Needless to say, these days we keep a closer eye on the bill when dining with this person - and I can't help but have a different opinion about them since that transaction. (It was one of many similar scenes, but for some reason this one night sticks out as being the straw that broke the camel's back!)

I think Jill, a commenter at MamaMia, sums it up best:

"I had a [thrifty] friend that I’d known since high school. She wasn’t going to change and couldn’t understand what my problem was at all. It reduced our friendship to a dollar value, which really sucked. In the end I realised she had different priorities than me. Money was hers, not my friendship."