If not "cheap" then "frugal" to put things more kindly. For starters, wasn't Ricky Ricardo big and established on the night club scene? So what was with all the scrimping and budgets? Meanwhile, the Mertzs owned the building, and yet Fred was even cheaper than Ricky and spent his days in bib overalls with a wrench fixing the boiler.

The first thing that springs to mind as an explanation is that it was used to give story. Lucy always had to worry about going over budget so she'd have to scheme and hide things from Ricky.

Fred likely had to pay crushing mortgage payments, staggering utility bills, and spiraling property taxes.

Ricky, otoh, as the sole breadwinner had to impose some sense of discipline to avoid the "your job is to earn it, my job is to spend it" mentality that I'm sure Lucy would have put in practice, if allowed to.

When it's your hard earned money, it's one thing to be generous, but quite another for some one to take that generosity for granted. So there need be rules to define the playing field.

Both families had TV sets...a luxury in the early 1950s....while their furniture was not lavish, it didn't appear trashy or threadbare, and they obviously were eating well....so for families just 15 years out of the depression...neither was doing too bad.

If not "cheap" then "frugal" to put things more kindly. For starters, wasn't Ricky Ricardo big and established on the night club scene? So what was with all the scrimping and budgets? Meanwhile, the Mertzs owned the building, and yet Fred was even cheaper than Ricky and spent his days in bib overalls with a wrench fixing the boiler.

Also, why was the Mertzs' apartment so drab and why everything Lucy had was so much fancier than everything Ethel had? And Fred always expected Ricky to pay for things. And there was also the episode where Lucy gave Ethel her old used washing machine and the one where Lucy gave them their old furniture.