re: What's the cheapest thing you've ever seen a wealthy person do?

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My grandparents were pretty wealthy but lived in a 1400 sq ft house their entire lives that my paw paw built himself. They drove old vehicles, grew much of their own food etc. They both grew up in Great Depression and living any other way would have been entirely foreign to them.

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My grandparents were the same way except it was a 950 sq ft house (plus basement). And they only ever had one vehicle, always a sensible GM sedan, because my grandmother never learned how to drive.

as others have mentioned a lot of the older generations lived with zero waste. my grandparents canned a lot of vegetables because they were probably bored to be honest. my grandmother put water in the ketchup to make it last longer. When my grandfather passed away they discovered a retirement account worth half a million no one knew about. everything they had they paid for with cash. Christmas gifts were always cash, it was from the interest their CD's had earned that year. we could all learn a lot from their generation.

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The now deceased, fomer board chairman of a local bank used to pick up cans on the side of the road. When somebody asked him about it, he said, "that's why I'm rich and you're not."

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That reminds me of a story the guy I worked with at the small Tulsa bank told me.

He was a long time banker, all over the place. he went to Tulsa after doing some of the Whitewater S&L stuff for RTC (he didn't get in on the Clintons himself though was another on the team exclusively). He had also formerly been a VP in a Central CA bank.

He said out there in CA there was a "homeless" bum that would come around every day and dumpster dive for cardboard, rain or shine. For like 5 years he saw the guy every day, spoke to him a couple times, enough to know he wasn't all there in the head. He suddenly stopped coming around and then saw the guy had an obit. Turns out he died in his sleep in a local apartment on a mattress stuffed with nearly $1M from the cardboard he collected and sold. Then he found out the guy was one of the banks largest depositors too with over $3M in savings. The apartment he lived in? He owned the complex! Not bad for a dumpster diving homeless bum.

A Dr.I knew gave me a tour of his office after hours.One of his partners had several large garbage bags of aluminum cans in his office.He said they had security camera videos of him digging through trash cans at night,picking out the aluminum cans.

I know an old retired financial advisor that walks through gas station and restaurant parking lots to find coins.