Part of the answer is strategy. if you go out for drinks, make one a beer, the rest lime and water.
Or if you go out for a meal have half a buffalo wedges, or half a nachos and eat dessert (its often cheaper) or have a main and a coffee instead of dessert. Or share the bread with someone and have a dessert.
And have something to eat before you go out.
Drinking - If everyone is buying rounds, get there early and drink slowly, they'll soon learn.
And if you feel you need to buy something, but a bowl of chips to share, it's cheaper than a round.
Agree with vireoes, A pot luck meal or barbeque works. (everyone brings salad and meat or dessert and meat)
Any other ideas for social solutions?
And eight children - they'd have to be pretty dumb to not understand you're economising.
How to stop caring what other people think, when that's how you're wired
I'm an INFP, so I may not belong here..or anywhere for that matter 
But I too struggle with all of the things in this thread. It's hard to be different, even when normal is just a fiction. I look around at my work and no-one is the prototypical normal office worker..yet they all are..and so am I. They each are doing what's important to them based on their upbringing, social adaptation, etc. And everyone varies to a degree.
I try to keep that in mind at all times and view people from what I can imagine it to look like living out of their brains/eyes. What I see is that they are just as insecure and seeking of approval as I am.
The only difference may be that I've started a process of thinking recursively about all this and therefore may be able to step outside of that insecurity at some point. We'll see..still a work in progress.
I find a good grounding in some concepts of reality construction and non-dual thinking, zen, and the like, can go a long ways towards flipping the switch on conventional stuff. It makes it easier to deal with most people and see through the pretense..but it can also insert a layer of frustration when you struggle to hold that view with people you know more closely: spouse, parents, etc. Again, still a work in progress.
Complete, but improving towards further harmony.
But I too struggle with all of the things in this thread. It's hard to be different, even when normal is just a fiction. I look around at my work and no-one is the prototypical normal office worker..yet they all are..and so am I. They each are doing what's important to them based on their upbringing, social adaptation, etc. And everyone varies to a degree.
I try to keep that in mind at all times and view people from what I can imagine it to look like living out of their brains/eyes. What I see is that they are just as insecure and seeking of approval as I am.
The only difference may be that I've started a process of thinking recursively about all this and therefore may be able to step outside of that insecurity at some point. We'll see..still a work in progress.
I find a good grounding in some concepts of reality construction and non-dual thinking, zen, and the like, can go a long ways towards flipping the switch on conventional stuff. It makes it easier to deal with most people and see through the pretense..but it can also insert a layer of frustration when you struggle to hold that view with people you know more closely: spouse, parents, etc. Again, still a work in progress.
Complete, but improving towards further harmony.