Cheapskate: Champagne on Beer Budget

NEW YORK â€”  Howard Seibel is so cheap that unless it’s a bargain, a gourmet meal tastes bad, a designer suit fits funny, a hit musical hurts the ears.

He’s a cheapskate. But that’s a deserved compliment to the publisher of a new, nearly monthly newsletter called Manhattan Cheapskate.

Just two issues old, Manhattan Cheapskate already is establishing itself as an authority on how to get quality food, clothes and entertainment that’s inexpensive in a city that isn’t. The proof lies scattered on the floor of Seibel’s Greenwich Village apartment--hundreds of letters, many from converts guilty of consuming conspicuously in the 1980s.

“With the decline in the economy, the time is right for something like this,” Seibel said. “People now are bragging about how little they spend on things (rather) than about how much.”

Becoming a cheapskate “doesn’t mean you’ll deny yourself anything,” he said. “It just means you’ll be more aggressive about finding a good bargain.”

Produced on a personal computer on Seibel’s dining room table, the newsletter is geared toward people with champagne tastes and beer budgets.

The latest issue includes tips on how to get frequent flier miles by buying potato chips, renting cars and going to movies; self-defense techniques for dining in notoriously pricey New York restaurants; and strategies for beating parking tickets.

It also gives Bronx cheers to major car rental companies that lowered their rates everywhere but New York, and to Universal Studios theaters for quitting a half-price Tuesday promotion after only two months.

Thrift comes naturally to Seibel, a 34-year-old Brooklyn native whose parents grew up during the Depression and never let him forget it. When his family moved to the Long Island suburbs, they were the last on the block to get a color TV.

During the ‘80s, Seibel amassed the credentials of a yuppie: degrees from Cornell University and the Wharton School of business at the University of Pennsylvania, a job in marketing at American Express. He has maintained his penny-pincher’s sensibility, however, and with his reputation for thrift, he began getting more and more calls lately from friends asking him to recommend good, cheap restaurants.

From this, Manhattan Cheapskate was born. So was a cheapskate’s guru.

Raising an authoritative index finger, he’s quick to recite cheapskate affirmations like “Upscale doesn’t mean it’s not a good bargain,” “Just rely on your common sense,” and “Don’t patronize restaurants that still think it’s 1985.”

For $15 a year, subscribers can expect more words to the cheap. Although his advice is specific to New York, the strategies can apply to any overpriced city, Seibel said.

He says he’s willing to send an introductory free copy, since no true cheapskate would “just send in money without seeing the product.”

Of course, he requires a self-addressed, stamped envelope.

“I have an image to maintain,” he said.

EDITOR’S NOTE--For a free copy, send that self-addressed, stamped envelope to Manhattan Cheapskate, 61 E. Eighth St. 170, New York, N.Y. 10003.