How to be poor

But he explained that he refused to “be taken advantage of”. Why
not? What is wealth for? And in any case, what sort of people did he invite to
his house? What sort of friends did he have who “took advantage” of their host?
No poor man would have uttered the exact equivalent of this, namely: I invite
you for a three course meal but if you want cheese, too, you must pay for it.
    Ferenc Molnár, the playwright, was an
immensely rich man. When a play reached its hundredth performance in pre-war Budapest, it was the custom for the stage-hands to line up and greet the successful
author, who gave them a hundred pengös. All authors, even penniless beginners
whose first play it was, coughed up the hundred pengös with pleasure. Molnár
gave them twenty-five. Sometimes fifty. He wasn’t even ashamed of his meanness.
“Some people like spending,” he said. “I like saving.”
    He spent his last years in the United States. There was a law there (perhaps still is), protecting the small man; the US
Treasury promised to indemnify savers against loss, up to $20,000, should a
bank go bankrupt. So Molnár divided his vast fortune into units of 20,000 and
placed them in innumerable banks throughout the land. He refused to make a will
(he was very superstitious and thought if he made a will he would die). He also
refused to keep a list of his banks for fear that it might fall into the wrong
hands. He thought he remembered them all. He died in spite of the precaution of
not making a will, and now that list cannot fall even into the right hands. His
heirs cannot get hold of the money, because no one knows where it is. The US
Treasury will get it all in a hundred years’ time.
    A few years ago I used to visit a
friend’s office frequently and kept meeting there an old man of Romanian origin
who was a millionaire and had some connection with my friend’s firm. He aways
hung out there in the late afternoon. One day my friend explained the reason.
The old man was waiting for the Evening Standard, which he refused to
buy. He was not interested in the events of the world, only in the TV
programmes. So he xeroxed the TV programmes on my friend’s machine, and left — provided
it was past seven. Being an old age pensioner he could travel free of charge on
the buses after 7 p.m., so he would not leave earlier. He had a daughter who
often came in to pick him up, and who was livid with him. She could not
persuade the old boy not to waste half an hour in order to save a few pennies,
or not to stand in a bus queue for a long time in the rain and get pneumonia.
The old Romanian adored his daughter, but he too was angry with her, because of
her extravagant tendencies. To waste a few pennies just in order to stay alive?
Never!
    I once met a girl whose uncle was one
of the richest men in Britain. “They say,” I told her, “that your uncle is the
meanest man in the country. Is it true?”
    “No, it isn’t,” she shook her head
firmly. “He is the second meanest. The meanest man is my father, his brother.”
And she told me that she had been keeping a secret from him for four years.
When she and her husband weighed in at the airport at the start of their
honeymoon, they had to pay a small sum for overweight. “For Goodness’ sake,”
she told me, “never tell him this. Never. Even after four years it would create
a major turmoil in the family.”
    Meanness runs in regions or
countries. It is infectious, in the sense that if most people adore money, it
becomes a state religion. In ancient Rome everybody was pagan; during the
Reformation subjects of Protestant princes were Protestants, subjects of
Catholic kings were Catholics. In West Germany every German is anti-Communist;
in East Germany everybody seems to be a devoted Communist. Money is the state
religion of Switzerland. The Swiss are fair people, who give value for money;
Swiss workers — I know it sounds incredible — are ready to put in a decent
day’s work for their high wages. But to waste a few pennies would make a
normal, decent Swiss go berserk. A Swiss businessman once meant to ask me a
favour — let this be clear: he was asking the favour from me — and
invited me to meet him in a coffee-house in Zurich. So he invited me.
After our discussion he called the waiter and paid for his coffee,
letting me pay for mine. I was quite ready to pay for both — indeed, I made an
attempt to do so — and would not have given the matter another thought, but to
split the