Ways to Save and My Mom is So Cheap

My paycheck is meager especially for a lawyer.  To afford luxury products and extra payments on my law school loans I have to make choices.

(1) Instead of a gym membership I go running by the east river.  I do yoga with videos I find on hulu.  For strength training I work with a ball and use random products from my apartment as weights. 
(2) If I have a monthly bill, like cable or my storage unit, I contact them periodically threatening to stop using the service if they don't reduce my price.
(3) I use my sister's netflix to watch movies via my laptop which I hook up to my tv with an HDMI cable.
(4) I don't go to the movies unless I have a coupon or it's half off because it's an A.M. movie.  I prefer to
rent one from the blockbuster kiosk for $1 rather than pay $13.  Don't even get me started on the three course meals I sneak into movie theatres.
(5) Hot chocolate is something I crave every day in the winter the way most people crave coffee.  I would love to go to Starbucks or something but I go to Gristedes and get a box filled with packets and have that instead. Whole foods also has a delicious dark chocolate peppermint flavor for $9 that makes 11 servings.
(6) I would rather dehydrate than buy bottled water.  I use a brita.
(7) I only take cabs when under serious peer pressure. 
(8) I don't have a pet even though I want one.

These are the least embarassing ways that I save money.  My friends have no clue how unbelievably cheap I really am.  I think it stems from my parents' (particularly my mom) "frugality."  I have no qualms about embarassing my mom and she doesn't embarass anyway.  My Mom is So Cheap . . .

• she goes to Ross on Wednesdays so she can get her senior citizen's discount, because Ross is not cheap enough already
• she saves every last morsel of food and puts it in tiny Tupperware containers (or old margarine containers) to eat later. I got her tiny spatulas from William Sonoma so she can scoop the very last drop from jars.
• she washes baggies and reuses ziploc bags until there are holes
• she keeps the blinds closed on hot days so that the AC won't come on as much.  It's pretty dark in the house on a summer day.
• If she's not using it, she unplugs it. 
• One day while on the phone with my mom she exclaimed excitedly that it had started raining.  She got off the phone with me right away so she could put buckets underneath the drain pipes to catch the rain.  She uses it to water her garden.
• During the drought in Atlanta, she even put a bucket in the shower with her so she could reuse the water for her garden. 

If I didn't know better I would think she's some sort of environmentalist.