It’s her the-struggle-is-real meal.
Sure, prices are high and money is tight — but this miserly mama’s daily menu is totally forked up.
“This is what I eat in a day as a frugal person,” said the self-professed penny-pincher, an anonymous woman, exclusively known as @DiaryOfACheapskate online.
Debuting her bargain-basement breakfast to over 1.4 million TikTok viewers, the married millennial, 32, from the UK, sprinkled her whole-wheat cereal with a splash of milk before adding a healthy spill of tap water to further moisten the food.
“I am trying to use less of the milk just to save a bit more money,” said the mom, who’s proudly “mortgage free” thanks to her tightfistedness. “I’ve been slowly watering it down a little bit more, and I can’t really taste the difference.”
“I like it mushy anyway,” she continued, “so, it [doesn’t] bother me.”
But, boy, does it bother the sickened social media sneerers who deemed her chintzy hack “sad” and “diabolical.”
“Life is too short to water down milk,” a skeeved-out commenter reminded.
“Someone tell her the war is over,” teased an equally nauseated naysayer.
“Mortgage free but watering down your milk is… a choice,” a detractor noted.
“May this life never find me,” begged a separate critic.
“This seems like framing compulsive disorder as ‘frugality,’ another spat. “Nobody in their right mind would consider diluting milk with water to be a valid money-saving measure. You’re saving nothing.”
But for frugal people worldwide, cutting costs at every corner isn’t a mental health cry for help. Instead, it’s a socially acceptable way to save.
An April 2025 survey of 2,000 Americans revealed that 61% of people, across all genders and generations, consider frugality “less tacky” today than it was 10 years ago.
However, some skinflints do take economizing too far.
An aggravated woman on Reddit recently claimed that her frugal-to-a-fault husband pretends to be poor to score free groceries from shops and food banks.
And a “Moms on a Budget” Facebook group virtually scolded spendthrifts for blowing big bucks on daily treats such as store-bought coffees and going out to lunch.
“How to waste $5,000 a year…Spend $13.70 per day on things you don’t need,” wrote a finger-wagging mom, who titled her rant “Frugal thought of the day.”
“Those daily coffees people buy — boom, $7000 a year,” she said. “Add buying your lunch another $7000 per year. $14,000 WASTED.”
Unabashed budgeters like the Facebook moms and @DiaryOfACheapstake would rather eat table scraps than eat away their cash.
The proud “cheapskate” even admitted to eating rotten potatoes and wilted salad leaves to save a little extra green.
“I just cut the sprouting bits off and eat them anyway,” she said of the spoiled spuds, noting that most wasteful moms would toss the taters in the trash.
“The salad is a couple of days out of date,” she continued while making her stomach-churning dinner. “But I’ve washed, looked at it and smelled it. I think it’s fine to eat.”
The gross grub may go down without a fight. But will the churlish girl’s expired eats stay down? Only time will tell.