NARRATOR: Barbershop owner Barry Cozart lives in Queens,
New York with his fiancee.
And although his customers tolerate him cutting both hair
and costs, Gabriella does not.
BARRY COZART: To save on toilet tissue,
I use 10 pieces, 10 squares every day.
That's a daily routine.
Sometimes, Gabriella, she's like, no.
And we get in a little, little argument
over that, little petty.
But this-- I try to save as much as possible.
GABRIELLA COZART: Barry can be so cheap.
It drives me crazy.
Barry leaves me with 10 pieces of toilet paper.
Now my payback to Barry, I leave him with absolutely nothing.
I'll use all of it, just so he can
see how it feels when you're stranded on a toilet bowl.
BARRY COZART: Gabriella is the woman for me,
because she's not too hard on me.
She shows me a good time.
And I think we're a perfect couple.
If I want a drink, I make my own alcohol.
One night at a bar, if you buy liquor and beers,
it can run you up to $50 to $75 to $100 a night.
All these ingredients here, it's no more than like $5.
The sugar, the candy, it makes it really sweet
and helps fermenting.
If I go to the liquor store and buy real wine,
that'd be about $15 to $20 or more.
So I save a lot with doing this.
Let it sit, room temperature, and there go the hooch.
Mmm, hooch.
NARRATOR: Barry has significantly
trimmed down the $582 the average couple
spends on alcohol each year.
But its actual food costs, which can eat up approximately 12%
of a person's annual income, that he finds hard to swallow.
Do we want to go out to eat?
Or are we going to come back home?
Because I know usually you don't like to go out when
there's food in the fridge.
How about we actually go out and eat?
All right, let's go eat then.
NARRATOR: But rather than going out to eat,
Barry has discovered a way to go out and then eat.
It's going to be good.
NARRATOR: Driving for as little as 15 minutes
can heat a car engine to temperatures
of approximately 200 degrees, as hot as most stove tops.
By cooking simple ingredients on the engine,
he saves on home utilities like gas and electricity.
I'll cook that food on the car engine.
Cooking eggs, sweetheart.
GABRIELLA COZART: You know, I know Barry.
And I know how he is.
And I don't know why I expected something more than this.
BARRY COZART: Gabriella hates my cheap ways.
But she know that's just how I am.
I just love saving money.
I love being cheap.
That's just me.
Barry will never change his cheapskate ways.
I don't think he's capable of it.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
JENI COX: I like to go and spin on my little bike
to get my workout on.
Getting on it and pedaling, I'm just in that zone.
And I get burning, you feel the burn.
I'm listening to my tunes.
It just feels good to exercise, and I just love it.
ED CONKLIN: All right.
Here's your stuff.
I see Jenny probably two times a week.
When Jenny first came, I thought she
was in the market to purchase a piece of exercise equipment.
Most customers will come in and demo
the equipment maybe two or three times before making a purchase.
All right.
Thanks, guys.
I appreciate it very much.
Good luck this season.
After six or seven visits, I realized that Jenny wasn't
here to demo the equipment.
JENI COX: My habit's maybe extreme to some people.
But I show it off to everybody, whatever it is.
It makes me happy.
Bye. - Tell her bye.
Bye.
Instead of going to gyms, I just go
to these sporting goods stores for about 45 minutes a day.
ED CONKLIN: All right. JENI COX: See you Ed.
Going to a gym, paying for a membership,
I mean, that's like $75 a month.
It doesn't cost me a dime to work out
in that sporting goods store.
I've always been really cheap.
And it's just kind of been something
that I have always done.
I just get a good feeling out of not spending a lot of money
but yet still accomplishing whatever goal I have.
I absolutely hate spending money on things
that I can't see the next day, if it's gone.
On the average, most people, they fill up
their tanks once, twice a week.
It can cost $60, $70 to fill up a tank.
And then you go home and park your car in the garage.
And you might not go nowhere.
So you just spent $60 to sit.
Hey, can I get $3.36 worth of gas?
GAS ATTENDANT: You sure can.
JENI COX: When it comes to gas, gas is kind of like makeup.
You know, less is more.
When you buy less, you use less, and you save more.
When I get gas, I only get a gallon at a time.
One gallon of gas, one gallon a day
saves me money, restricts where I go.
NARRATOR: Stephanie's job as a flight attendant keeps her
traveling for 20 days a month.
But when she's not up in the air,
her home is in Dallas, Texas.
STEPHANIE: My mother used to say,
make sure you turn out the light before you leave the room.
And, of course, nobody pays attention to that, until I
started paying the bill.
Before I leave, I turn off all the electricity
at the circuit breaker.
Even though I'm not using my appliances,
they're still sucking up electricity.
NARRATOR: Standby power can draw as much as 250 watts a day
from major appliances.
By cutting the electricity to everything
but the refrigerator, Stephanie saves an average of $30
a month on her electric bill.
STEPHANIE: When the passengers leave the plane,
I go through and check for a meal that's
left by a pilot or a passenger.
There's really neat stuff here, like ravioli, pasta primavera.
JIMMY: Stephanie's idea of fine dining
is bringing home what the airlines left over.
We open up her refrigerator, and it looks like a deli.
STEPHANIE: The food is perishable.
Items, they're going to throw it away if I
don't take it home and eat it.
I'm saving myself about $15 on every meal.
In first class, they serve mixed nuts.
In main cabin, they serve the regular nuts.
Now if they're unopened, you're not allowed to take them.
But, of course, if they're open, I bag them up.
I bring them home.
A jar of mixed nuts is about $8.
I don't have to pay for them.
They're good for snacking.
And they're really good for protein.
That's nasty.
I don't know what to tell you.
STEPHANIE: They're still good.
They didn't touch them.
If they were going to touch them,
they probably would have eaten them.
JIMMY: Whether they're stale or good,
she will continue to eat them until they're all gone.
STEPHANIE: The covers that go on the airline pillows
are thrown away at the end of the day.
Most flight attendants don't want those dirty pillows,
but I've found good use for them.
Before I do anything, I make sure that I boil them down.
By boiling the pillow covers, you're basically
sanitizing them, getting rid of any germs or lice or anything
that passengers might have left behind.
These are the ones that have already dried.
What I do with them is I cut them into little triangles.
They make, voila, the perfect coffee filter.
JIMMY: Every good deal is not a good deal.
The airline throw them away, they
throw them away for a reason.
NARRATOR: These pillowcase coffee filters
save Stephanie about $6 a year.
And she's able to save even more with the pillows themselves.
What I've determined is, to make the perfect fluffy pillow,
you need four little airline pillows.
JIMMY: Stephanie has, what I thought from a distance looks
like a nice blanket, until closer investigation,
it's a bunch of little airline blankets or something she took
and she sewed them together.
There's four grey airline blankets on the top.
And then there are four red ones on the bottom.
So it's reversible.
JIMMY: I'm not sleeping on that.
I don't think it's a good idea, because other people
have been on those blankets.
You don't know what they've been doing on them.
And on the inside, I made my comforter
filling with airline pillows.
I tolerate Stephanie being tight, being cheap, being
frugal because I love her.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
Hey, welcome back.
You have a good rest of your day, OK.
Let me get back in.
Sometimes the tenants in this building will drop stuff.
And it's, you know, kind of good to double check.
You never know what you're going to get.
Got a nickel, got a quarter, and a stick of gum.
As a doorman concierge in New York City,
I have the key to the city.
Hey.
Being a doorman, it's freebie land, like 100%.
I've never approached a tenant to ask for anything.
It's just my charm.
DERRICK MACINNES: I've given RJ mostly clothes,
pants, some running sneakers.
OK.
Now I look like Derrick on the weekends.
You know, it is what they say.
One man's trash is another's treasure.
The average rent to live in Manhattan is around $3,900.
But I have managed to live rent free in New
York for the past two years.
I'm not homeless.
I have a lot of homes.
Right now, I'm staying rent free at a beautiful home
in the Upper West Side.
Instead of renting or subletting or whatever these other people
do, I've managed to live rent free
like from place to place, babysit, dogsit, plantsit,
I sit for everybody.
I do not sublet, I no-let.
NARRATOR: The average American moves twice a decade.
RJ typically housesits in over 50 places each year.
And after three months in this loft, today is moving day.
RJ ANDREWS: For me to survive in New York City,
all I need is my base.
It happens to be on wheels.
It's my foundation.
And it's my mobile cart.
I use this cart to kind of go from place to place to place.
You know, when I'm house sitting or cat sitting or plant
sitting, I just kind of have this with me,
and all my stuff's in here.
All the gear and clothing and stuff for work
are going to be over here.
And then I have like my photos, just
so I could kind of make everywhere that I'm at feel
like home for a little bit.
If I'm not supposed to use a kitchen,
in my mobile contraption, I've got it all taken care of.
Everything on this card goes with me everywhere.
When you try to push the mobile cart around New York City,
that's not fun.
That's not easy.
I get every look in the world.
Cars honk at me all the time.
[HONKING] I've had my altercation with a cab or two.
But I keep it moving.
Hey, RJ.
I've been to places that I don't
even think are on the map.
Really quick, the brief rundown.
This is the rabbit.
His name is Sir Winston.
Winston, OK.
So house plants, pretty easy, just water as you see needed.
Mail would go here.
I prefer to have somebody stay in my house
whenever I leave town.
In case an emergency happens, someone breaks in,
there's a small fire or something like that,
then there's somebody on site who can take care of it.
Your house is in good hands.
Don't even worry about it.
Thank you, RJ.
Bye.
The rules of being a no-let, very, very simple, if you
move it, you put it back.
If you mess it up, you clean it up, just have some respect.
My no-let lifestyle, it affects the personal and social aspects
of who I am like tremendously.
I mean, I don't even have a permanent place to live.
That's the sacrifice that doesn't allow me to say,
hey, everybody, let's come to RF's place, you know.
Let's have a nice dinner party or whatever.
There's certain bonds that I maybe
won't have with other people because I don't
live the same life they do.
OK, silly rabbit, here we go.
OK.
OK, baby.