infrugality
Explanation
The Joke
A man is telling a scary story, presumably at a campfire or similar setting. His tale of horror is: "And then... when he beheld the electric bill... it turned out the entire attic was poorly insulated!" A child in bed (or listening) responds, "That's not scary!" and coins the word "Infrugality isn't scary?" The man reluctantly concedes: "It... no, it's not."
The comic then jumps forward ten years. The child, now a young adult, tells their father that the bank says there is nothing in their college savings account. The father, now wearing a crown and gold chains (suggesting he has spent lavishly on himself), laughs maniacally and says, "Good thing you aren't scared for your future! HAHAHA HA HA!!" The father has turned the child's earlier bravado about not being scared of financial irresponsibility into a twisted justification for having blown their college fund.
The Humor
The comic plays on the generational divide in what constitutes "scary." To a financially responsible adult, a poorly insulated attic and the resulting energy costs is a genuine source of anxiety. To a child, it is laughably mundane compared to monsters and ghosts. The ten-year time skip delivers the real punchline: the father took the child's dismissal of financial fears as license to be spectacularly irresponsible with money. The father's transformation into a gold-chain-wearing, crown-sporting spendthrift who emptied the college fund is the ultimate revenge of "dad horror" -- the scary financial story the kid refused to take seriously came true in the worst possible way.