What's it like to be married to a guy so cheap he "re-cants" inexpensive boxed wines into fancy bottles to deceive your dinner guests, brags about buying you a thong at the dollar store and soft-boils eggs when he runs the dishwasher to save turning on the stove?

The Start of Something Frugal

For Denise Yeager, 55, wife of Jeff Yeager, author of The Ultimate Cheapskate’s Road Map to True Riches: A Practical (and Fun) Guide to Enjoying Life More by Spending Less, it's a match made in (fiscal) heaven — she's a skinflint, too! "People always talk about how hard marriage is. Marriage is the easiest thing in the world if you find the right person," says Denise, who lives with Jeff, 49, in a debt-free Accokeek, Md., two-bedroom house that they have gutted and are rebuilding themselves.

Denise is thrilled that her husband, a former fund-raiser for a nonprofit turned writer and thrift-minded commentator for the Today show, has unearthed a career that celebrates his penchant for checking the coin slots of pay phones. But she jokes that all the hoopla around her tightwad hubby has shortchanged her: "I was a cheapskate before he was!" Because she is six years older than her husband, argues Denise, she's even closer to the waste-not-want-not values held by their Depression Era elders.

The couple met in 1979. Denise, a graduate student who subsisted on food stamps, took a bike tour guide course taught by Jeff, and promptly cadged $3 from him to buy herself two drinks. The next day, Jeff called up and told her she could pay him back by taking him out to lunch. But Denise told him she was too broke. Jeff bit the bullet and instead took Denise out — for a $1.75 meal at a local restaurant.

On their first evening date, Jeff presented the aspiring health educator with a gift he'd purchased at a flea market for 25 cents: a health book published in 1912. "How romantic is that?" gushes Denise, who was instantly smitten. Three and a half years later, they tied the knot.

Their Two Cents

Their compatibility, says Jeff, stems from shared values and mutual recognition of each other's flash points. For instance: Long ago, when Denise expressed an interest in drinking a Diet Coke, Jeff — an obsessive cherry picker of grocery store sales — used to point out that if she waited a couple days, the product could be obtained on sale for $1 off the price of a 12-pack.

He has since learned that the promise of a beverage in days to come is of little solace to a person who is thirsty now.
For her part, Denise has only one complaint: "Jeff cooks cow's heart because it's only 59 cents a pound. I told him that if I dissected it in an anatomy class, I'm not going to eat it.”

The two live comfortably on less than $40,000 a year, in part because they can and do fix almost anything themselves. When putting up drywall, for example, “we’re like a well-oiled machine,” says Denise. And just because they’re frugal doesn’t mean they don’t have fun.

Last summer, Denise and Jeff spent two months in Greece — their fourth trip there. They could afford to go, Denise explains, because they scrimp on things they don’t care about (clothes, food, cars and anything that might be construed as a status symbol) in order to finance activities they love — traveling the world, making crafts, volunteering and enjoying the outdoors.

Cheap Thrills

Denise and Jeff are avid canoers and kayakers, and sponsor a 15-year-old girl in the Philippines through the Christian Children’s Fund. The child, notes Denise, "bought a pair of shoes and a piglet" with the birthday money they sent her. The operating creed in the Cheapskate home, she continues, is that "the best things in life aren’t things."

Rather, pleasure is obtained by performing good deeds, mastering new skills, crafting and bonding with loved ones. Living cheaply, says Denise, has allowed her to continue working part-time as a teacher — a low-paying job with no benefits, but one she adores. “If you do what you love, you don't work a day in your life. It doesn't make any difference how much money you make because you're already happy,” she explains.

Is there anything she won’t do to save a buck? "I have never Dumpster-dived," says Denise, alluding to one of Jeff’s suggestions in The Ultimate Cheapskate. "I may be cheap, but I have my limits!"