While we don’t condone saving money by doing anything unethical, you can’t help but admire the creativity that it takes to pull things like that off.
So naturally I was curious when I saw a question over on “Ask Reddit” asking “what’s an unethical way you save money?”
These fit right in with the loopholes people shared awhile back as well as some of the genius, perhaps illegal, lifehacks we also learned about over there.
People, they sure are a sneaky bunch.
Here are some of the most interesting responses…
I work downtown in a city where monthly parking is easily $150+ per spot. My wife and I both have to drive due to schedules, so it would be double that.
Found out that the casino downtown here gives you free parking daily if you bet $10….so we go and play roulette daily….she bets $10 on red and i bet $10 black and each ask for our parking validation. One of us always wins (which doubles one of the $10 bets)….so we get our $20 back…boom…free parking.
There has been the odd time it has hit 0. In that case we each just lose $5 each and parking costs us $10 total for the day. ~ Rovert1980
I pretend I’m gay.
The gym I go to charges 50 bucks less if you register as a couple and not as a single. I don’t have an SO so my best male friend and I registered as a gay couple. The first day, the manager almost asked us to make out to prove it. He decided it was homophobic so he stopped. When we come in he’s always staring while we use the machines together, like he wants to catch us doing something sexual. ~ swissco
I buy my movie tickets at the automated kiosks in the theater but I select the senior citizen’s price. Spoiler alert: I am not a senior citizen.
The high school kid ripping tickets always gives a slight pause, and then decides it’s not worth the hassle to call me out on it. ~ IAmTheModernMan
I ask to go to a particular convention every year that I don’t care for so that I can vacation on the companies dime in that city. ~ SamsChub
If I am planning on going out and fancy a certain restaurant I go online maybe 2 weeks in advance, sign up to their mailing list and give my birthday as being the day I am planning on going. Most places give you some sort of freebie for your birthday. ~ Steve11280
When checking into a hotel ask if they give Walmart employees a discount. More often than not you get a 10% discount and I have never been asked to prove it. ~ smilelikeadoughnut
Whole Foods trick – Fill your coffee bag with deluxe imported coffee beans … Write down the code for the cheapest kind. Hum thug life as you brew each morning. ~ Carmen_sandora
My girlfriend never put her license plates on her car. 2.5 years in to her lease and she still uses the dealer placeholder. This lets her use toll roads and fast lanes without paying. She’s never been pulled over but I bet that’s going to be an awkward conversation some day with the way she speeds.
EDIT: Just to clarify, she pays her registration and receives her plates. She just permanently stores them in her glove box. ~ VerrKol
I haven’t bought paper towels in two years because I’ve been stealing napkins from Chipotle every week. ~ liddicoatite
Sneaking into meetings you’re not invited to and stealing donuts and kolaches. ~ ArgentStonecutter
Lets say you have a relatively new car (no older than 5 years) that needs new tires. Find a rental car company that has your same car and rent it for the day. Go home and swap your wheels with the new car.
When you return the car they don’t check tire tread levels and unless you swapped with bald tires the mechanics probably won’t notice it.
Also, you’re a scumbag if you do this. ~ usefulbuns
In the 90s, I was starting my last year of school. You could have school dinners, paid for in advance termly by your parents, or you could bring a packed lunch. I was a packed lunch child, but if you forgot your packed lunch you could get a school dinner and pay for it the next day. One day I forgot my lunch, so I got in the school dinner queue and waited to be served. I thought they’d realise I wasn’t a school dinner child and tell me to bring the money tomorrow, but they didn’t. The food was actually not bad, and the next day I tried my luck again. They just assumed my parents had paid and nobody bothered to check. I got free school dinners for about a year. ~ Lady_of_the_Lakes
When I got to the cinema and I bring my own sweets and popcorn I’m always told I cant bring it in, I then ask to speak to the manager and tell him I have a server allergy to nuts or milk or whatever. He then just stands there awkwardly and just let’s me in. ~ OverclockingUnicorn
Buy college textbook as eBook on Amazon. Remove DRM and convert to PDF. Return eBook to Amazon claiming something along the lines of “I decided to drop the class”. Free college textbooks. Super easy with “calibre”.
In most cases where that might not work, I can typically find a torrent, though I’m much more wary of those sources.
Edit: At this point it occurs to me that it may be necessary to warn you all, but DO THIS AT YOUR OWN RISK. It’s not unheard of for Amazon to slam down the banhammer if they’re suspicious of fraudulent activity, and evidently when it comes down, it comes down hard. ~ Hanta3
Me and my wife go to the same University. She attends, and I work there. (A plus to me working there is she attends for free)
A single parking permit is $850 per person for 2 semesters. We did not want to have to pay $1.7K for 2 permits, so here is what I did.
1. Purchase my own permit for $850
2. Go to the Permit office 2 weeks later (At the beginning of the semester the first 2 weeks are free parking) and say either, “I just sold my car and forgot I left the permit sticker on it/I just had my windshield replaced and forgot to take off my permit sticker before they took the windshield.”
3. They charge me $40 for the replacement permit and then mail it to me
4. And there we go, $890 for 2 permits is much better than $1.7K for one.The only risk is that they scan the original permits bar code because it was deactivated when I reported it as lost, but it has been 2 years of doing this trick and they haven’t bothered to check it yet. ~ knwnasrob
Check out the rest of the money-saving confessions over at Reddit.
Dollar signs image by Shutterstock