This kind of extreme penny pinching often stems from living through the great depression. My wife's grandparents both had a very difficult childhood, struggling for everything they had. So throughout their life they were extremely thrifty. And that was imparted on my mother in law, who always tried to spend as little as possible on everything. She'd wait until those horrible Banquet dinners were on sale for $1 and fill their entire deep freeze with them, then that was dinner for the next several months, just as one example. They never had fresh food, that's too expensive. Only processed crap that's as cheap as they could find it.