Our thing is restaurant staff.  My wife and I are both slender and usually prefer to split one dinner item.  We could order two, but I hate having to rush home to refrigerate leftovers, and there's no way either of us could eat a typical American-sized portion in one sitting.  We also usually order water; neither of us has a taste for alcohol, and she avoids sugary drinks because she's type-1 diabetic.  To a server, it might appear that we're just being cheap (until I get my hands on the dessert menu) and that he's going to get a crappy tip.  Quite to the contrary, since our preferences tend to keep the bill pretty low, I don't mind tipping very generously ... I can afford to do so and still walk out having paid less for dinner than all the customers with tables full of food and empty drink glasses; plus I feel good about helping out those who are typically students (who work!) in our college town.

There's just one catch ... I won't tip generously for bad service, and I consider it very bad service when a server's face drops upon hearing that we're splitting a meal or drinking water -- and when we get snubbed the rest of the evening based on our order.  That happens ALL THE TIME.  When a server actually survives our ordering water and splitting a meal without any loss of enthusiasm, we tip BIG; we'll even find the manager to tell them how great that server is.

I have a friend who rides her bike everywhere.  She doesn't own a car and we live in the mountains, she is in her 70's.  Laundry, groceries, library books, etc all go in her backpack or basket.  Is she poor?  Is she frugal?  She is my friend.  She has enriched my life with humor, art, poetry, and nature.  She has given me handpicked walnuts at Christmas,  held my hand by attending doctor appointments with me, and prayed for me at my lowest points.  To my knowledge, she has no money, lives on a fixed income and state assistance but to me she is a rich and beautiful friend.  No, she nor I would go into many stores, but why would we, we have all we need.

A friend never tires of telling about shopping in a well-known high-end designer clothing store where a clerk treated him badly.  His comment to her was, "You may be able to afford to work here but I can afford to shop here."

Just because you can afford to shop somewhere does not mean you should.Shopping at a high-end store of any type does mean you are better or worse than the person who works there. It just means (to me) that you have less common sense..

Point taken, i learned not to judge a book by its cover when i was 7 years old. My family is originally from Mexico about two hours north of Ixtapa (big tourist attraction). My dad took us to meet some of his friends in Ixtapa who were wearing very old, dirty and stinky clothes. They were out on the open laying down in hammett's like if they were homeless. They also had a fire going on and they were coking oysters they were caching them self from the ocean. To top it off they were selling there left over oysters. Guess what all those people had, they own the land were most of the major resorts were standing. In other words they were pretty rich (keep in mind this is over 20 years ago when i was little).

Sometimes dressing down can get you unwanted attention: in a ritzier store we were watched like a hawk by the salespeople, who must have thought we were potential shoplifters.  When we bought a pkg. of Men's socks they warily rang us up.  And yeah, one of us was wearing a plaid shirt!

I have handed unused ride tickets at the fair to a family with lots of kids just becasuwe were leaving...only to be told they really needed more than that!  We asked them 3 times if they could use our 10 ride tickets, and the mom just kept saying...."well, we need way more than that!"  I finally just gave them to the lady behind her.  And then she was mad!!!

My dad was always flashing large bills making eveyone think he was a big spender.  My dad never owned a house but managed to drive a flashy car.  From that I learned to be just the oppisite.  What I have is only what I need and my 3 kides are the same and I love that.

I remember shopping with a friend of mine at a major department store. She was dressed in jeans and a tshirt. Me, I look "disabled " to some....therefore, poor. We waited 20 minutes until the consultant came over and asked if we'd like help. I spent a little and got a gift with purchase. The lady gave my friend one too...for nothing. Now THAT is class!!!! We ended up laughing and having great time....

I am "the poor relation" of some fantastically wealthy relatives (large farm, found OIL...you get the picture)--and I can tell you that nobody that ever laid eyes on my Uncle Benny for the first time would EVER in a million years imagine that he is worth, not just millions, but many, many, TENS of millions.  Jeans, old work shirt, John Deere tractor baseball cap (many years old), old pick up with a good motor but a faded paint job---being around him and his friends taught me that only a fool would judge the size of a man's pocketbook by the pants he's holding it in.  Frankly, I've pretty much found the opposite holds true--the bigger the "plumage" on the bird, the less "meat" there is under all that fuss.  And besides, as Thomas Jefferson said:

The measure of a man's wealth is in proportion to the number of things he can do without.