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Those very rich people who are extremely thrifty are not maximizing their money, because their cognition is better spent on their work than on a hundred dollars here or there. But I think what’s going on is psychological: those small moments of spendthriftiness increase the perceived valuation of money, thus increasing their motivation to work harder (even though they already have enough money for multiple lifetimes of satisfying any whim). They go into work after picking the cheapest gas station, then when they see the dollar signs on their monitor it is imbued with salient meaning that is otherwise lost through habit.
Alternatively, people just like saving a buck regardless of their financial position.
I’m thinking specifically about those for whom “where should I get gas” or “what’s the least expensive bag of spinach” is genuinely less productive than spending that same amount of time at work. Even if you make 500k, two minutes of your time is $8. But it’s probably more than that, because decision-based willpower depletion etc
You've made a very common error that people make when discussing this: your time is only worth $x if you would've otherwise gotten paid that money for your time. If I make $1000/hr at my job, and I spend an hour of my free time to save $10 instead of watching TV, I haven't lost $990 because I wasn't going to make that $1000 to begin with. As @Walterodim points out, a whole lot of people earn no marginal income if they spend more time at their job. And you can only "lose" money by way of opportunity cost if you were going to make the extra money to begin with.
But the topic is the very rich, and approximately all of them “would've otherwise gotten paid that money for their time”, either through additional hours related to their position proper or through networking and continual learning. Heck, even just exercising or going on a walk in nature saves more money in the long run for the super rich than nickling and diming. But yeah, you and @Walterodim are right regarding not super rich, salaried engineers or whatever.
As I've written in another comment, I doubt that these thrifty billionaires are really actually anally obsessive about the price of their frozen broccoli. It's a combination of general ascetism and having a detailed mental model of what things cost. f3zinker has covered the latter, and I have a few things to say about the former.
I know people who went into business with the explicit goal of being able to raise their standard of living and maintain it with passive income alone. A thrifty billionaire would be their opposite: he really enjoys making his business grow but doesn't really care about his standard of living.
Like, I could be paying $5 for a haircut, but I pay $30 instead. Is the haircut itself really six times better? No, but neither place really puts a dent in my finances, and I enjoy the more premium experience enough to prefer it. However, I can imagine someone who simply doesn't care about shiatsu massage chairs at the hair washing station, terrycloth vs waffle towels or not having to listen to whatever radio station the barber prefers. Just like I can imagine someone whose life would be meaningfully improved by a brand new royal blue BMW Z4, while I don't really want a new car at all.
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