High-Level Penny Pinchers: When Saving Becomes an Illness

The colleague who prefers to work five more years rather than lose €1,000 of his monthly pension

At 60, a bank civil servant earning €3,000 net per month (his vvife, group A, another €3,000) has everything paid off, no children, and the option to retire early with minimal losses. His decision: hold out five more years on the job to keep earning €6,000 instead of €5,000-odd. Only declared hobby: mushroom picking "because it's free." When he found out that several municipalities were starting to charge for it, he hit the roof.

This isn't an isolated case, but the archetype of the adult "cheapskate"—who, according to popular taxonomy, is not to be confused with the "lonchafinista," the smart frugal person who optimizes without making themselves perversos. The cheapskate, by contrast, deprives themselves of basic comforts for the mere pleasure of watching the bank account grow. And it has nothing to do with need: the sample of cases collected over nearly two decades describes people with high incomes, multiple properties, and a single life goal: not to spend.

The difference between smart saving and financial pathology

A thread peine more than 17 years ago has accumulated hundreds of examples that draw a subtle but clear boundary. On one side are those who reuse sheets printed on one side, replace chair pistons by picking up furniture from the trash, or fix flickering LED bulbs by changing a capacitor. That's lonchafinismo: initiative, recycling, no wasteful spending. On the other, those who drive with an expired MOT for five years, tamper with the electricity meter, or take water bottles home from work despite earning a chief engineer's salary. There, saving already borders on fraud or pathology.

The most extreme case is that of the surveying assistant who earned more than €2,000 a month and decided to sleep for two years in his car, in the construction site hut, or in the dining hall, to avoid paying rent in Madrid. He cooked with a camping gas stove, ate only pasta (no fridge), and had tap water for breakfast while his colleagues watched. He had two suits: the blue work one and a pair of gray dress trousers. His house in Toledo, paid off. But even so, he wouldn't loosen a cent.

Sociological profile: inheritance of scarcity or pure greed

Most cases share a generational pattern. People who lived through the post-war period or whose parents grew up in it, with an upbringing where every resource counted. But the qualitative leap occurs when the scarcity mindset survives abundance. A recurring analysis describes these individuals as "psychological poor": incapable of enjoying what they have, embittered by every expense, with work as their only identity. When they retire (forced), they shut themselves away or simply let themselves die.

However, not everything is trauma. Other cases seem to respond to a simple desire for unlimited accumulation, such as the senior civil servant who kept accounts of each child's expenses, including wedding gifts, to deduct them from the inheritance. Or the retiree who noted "losses" when he treated others and "profits" when he was treated. An obsession that transcends prudence to become a social pathology.

The startling fact: €6,000 income and living as if in 1960

The banker's father-in-law's colleague, the one who prefers five extra years of work to losing a thousand euros a month, condenses the whole paradox. With €6,000 net monthly (sum of both pensions), no children, and no mortgage, his only leisure is collecting mushrooms for free. When the administration threatens to charge for collection permits, the outrage is enormous. It's not simple avarice: it's a disorder in the relationship with money where any expense, however minimal, is experienced as an existential loss.

The question left hanging: how many thousands of euros have these profiles accumulated without having enjoyed them for a single second? The answer is a secret they'll take to the grave, probably without having spent even a third of what they saved.

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