Some people go above and beyond when it comes to pinching pennies.
TLC’s upcoming series,So Freakin Cheap, follows four families — the Tran family, the Watson family, the Clayton family and the Guiles family — who all have an extraordinary ability to turn everything into a deal. However, their bargain-hunting lifestyles sometimes lead to tension when their loved ones urge them to live more “normal” lives.
PEOPLE’s exclusive sneak peek at the season premiere introduces the Guiles family: mom Becky, 41, dad Jay, 39, and their two young sons, seven-year-old George and four-year-old Colden.
“I am the most frugal mom in America,” Becky says, introducing herself. “You can take anything in the entire world, and I can figure out a way to get it for 80, 90 percent off or even free.”
In the clip, she’s shown filling up buckets with snow to melt and use for water — because “water from the sink actually costs money,” she explains. “Down the street we have this really pretty creek; I would use the creek but it’s frozen, because it’s freezing out.”
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The mom of two then sets the buckets above her heating vent inside. “That heat is used to heat the house and I’m going to use that heat to heat the buckets so that we can have warm water,” she says.
Her husband Jay says Becky’s instinct to save goes back to before they were even dating.
“When we were just friends and we’d go out and we’d split the bill, it wasn’t just, ‘Okay, here’s the card, split it 50/50,'” he recalls. “If we ordered, say, mozzarella sticks and there were, say, four mozzarella sticks and I ate three, she ate one, she’s like, ‘Jay, you’re paying 75 percent of this.'”
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“I’ve always been a little frugal, but I think that when I had my first son, George, I kicked up my frugalness to the max,” Becky reflects. “In that first year I was able to save $30,000 to $32,000, and that gave me the ability to be a full-time mom. I’ve been in that mindset for seven years now.”
She also gives a tour of her 100-year-old home, which is mostly devoid of furniture “because I only buy things if they’re cheap,” she says.
“This is the bathroom — [my sister] Pam came over one night and we drank a couple glasses of wine and we painted,” Becky says as footage rolls of her and Pam painting the walls with a pool noodle/clothes hanger contraption instead of a paint roller. “The floors I painted myself as well. In total, this whole bathroom cost me $60. If I paid someone to do this, it would easily be $2,000.”
Next up is the kitchen, complete with a broken dishwasher and broken cupboards.
“A bunch of our cupboards don’t shut all the way,” she says. “And the reason for that is that there’s about a 2-inch slope on our floors.”
Keep reading to learn more about Becky’s family and the three others featured inSo Freakin Cheap.
The Tran Family (Orlando, Fla.)
Rosanna and Danny Tran look as if they live the life of luxury in their upscale neighborhood and large, beautiful home, but they still find a way to be self-proclaimed “Crazy Cheap Asians.” They each immigrated to the United States in pursuit of their American Dream, built a successful business from the ground up and raised four children, 28-year-old Alex, 26-year-old Elizabeth, 19-year-old Brandon and 13-year-old Charisma. The women of the family have made a tradition of participating in pageants and finding a way to do so cheaply, but there is trouble brewing in the Tran home when Charisma wants to strike out on her own as a fashion model, instead of being a fashionably frugal pageant queen like her mother and sister.
The Watson Family (Mesa, Ariz.)
The Guiles Family (Minoa, N.Y.)
The Clayton Family (Stonecrest, Ga.)
So Freakin Cheappremieres Monday at 10 p.m. ET on TLC.
source: people.com
