My Grandparents have always been truly frugal people, and they have always been penny pinchers to a fault.
I definitely understand where they are coming from literally.
They lived while I was in the Great Depression era, then people from that era tend to think exactly how to spend their currency in such a way as to save as much as possible, grandma even told me a single time about the kind of desserts that they would make while I was in the depression. Apparently there has something called water pie. It doesn’t sound truly good. Anyway, they also have a tendency to hold on to current appliances as long as they can, as Grandpa has a knack for fixing things. I visited them recently in December to discover that their house seemed quite cold in particular rooms. There appeared to be several cold spots as well as the hallway was downright drafty. I asked Grandpa how the heating system was doing as well as he said it was doing just great in a grumpy voice that advocated that he did not want to speak of it any further; Clearly he had been laboring on it trying to squeeze the last drop of life out of the system. I asked Grandma how seasoned the heating system is as well as she said it was more than likely about 16 years old. I told her that I understood Grandpa’s propensity for fixing things as well as keeping them running for a long time, although I was worried about the kind of things that will begin to happen to an aging heating system. I explained that The metal of the heat exchanger, for example, can begin to crack which can cause a carbon monoxide leak that can prove deadly to the renters of a home. It was time to rest Grandpa down as well as explain to him that a current heating system needed to be bought, as well as I was truly willing to chip in.