Once I heard a poetry reading on PBS. One of the poems illustrates what you're saying. It's about a woman who's saving everything nice that she has, as the poem says, for "a day that will never come in her life."
My grandmother was one of the people who was saving everything. I think it's partly because of her experiences during the Great Depression and partly because she was simply a very frugal person. There will always be such people, so, instead of buying them a gift, I like to take them out and show them a good time.