penurious

/pəˈnʊriəs/

Don't have two nickels to rub together? You're penurious — a lovely long way of saying you're flat broke.

Penurious also means a general dislike of spending money. If someone accuses you of being cheap, tell them you prefer to be thought of as penurious. It sounds so much classier. It's related to a similar word, penury, which means "a state of extreme poverty."

Definitions of penurious

1. adjective

   excessively unwilling to spend
   “lived in a most penurious manner--denying himself every indulgence”

   synonyms: parsimonious

   stingy, ungenerous

   unwilling to spend
2. adjective

   not having enough money to pay for necessities
   synonyms: hard up, impecunious, in straitened circumstances, penniless, pinched

   poor

   having little money or few possessions