How to be poor

it the wrong way — forward instead of
back — he also had to pay an electricity bill of £600, instead of his usual
£35.

On Poor Millionaires
     

     
    I am no brooder, particularly not over money. Money
spent is money gone.
    But there is one single financial
riddle in my life that I should like to solve. As a young journalist in Budapest I had quite a reasonable income. I have already mentioned a popular song of those
days according to which a man with a monthly income of 200 pengös was a happy
and carefree man, indeed happy and carefree pater familias. My monthly
income was over a 1000 pengös, so I should have been five times happier and
more carefree than the average happy and carefree married man. In fact, more than five times, as I was living in my parents’ house, paid no rent and got
my electricity, gas, laundry etc for free (it was only much later, in London,
that I learnt that such items existed). I always had breakfast at home and as
many other meals as I chose to have. Most of the expenses of my car were borne
by my step-father. When I used public transport — trams, buses or even trains —
as a journalist, I was carried free of charge. On top of all that, I was never
a reckless spender, I never had expensive habits. I did not drink, I did not gamble,
I hated night clubs and I always looked down upon men who cared too much about
their clothes. I ought to have been rich; yet I was always penniless. I often
had to ask my mother for tiny sums — a single pengö sometimes — so that I could
buy a black coffee when I visited the coffee-house. I still wrack my brains
from time to time in an attempt to solve this riddle. How was it that others
could keep families on a fifth of my income, while a reasonably modest bachelor
like myself, who did not even have to pay for the necessities of life, found it
insufficient?

    I tell myself that I was too young
and inexperienced to know how to manage money — but that is not the answer,
because the mystery, in a slightly changed form, accompanied me to England. In my early days I had a salary from my Budapest papers. The money often failed to
arrive on time but then I would get my salary for two, three or four months in
one lump sum. In subsequent years — when contact with my papers were finally
cut — I was sometimes badly off, and at other times I made quite considerable
sums. And whether I was penniless or well off, it made absolutely no difference
to my life-style. Sometimes I did not know (and usually I did not really care)
where my next meal was coming from. On the other hand, even when I had lots of
money, I never indulged in eating — and still less in drinking — orgies.
Usually I could not afford posh restaurants; when I could, I carefully avoided
them. I must repeat: whether I had the money or not, I did not drink, I did not
eat a great deal, I did not gamble, I had no expensive hobbies. On the other
hand, however poor I was I do not remember missing one single meal because I
could not pay for it. This unchanging life-style drove me to one important
conclusion, indeed to the first mikes law of economics: Your life-style has nothing to do
with your financial situation.
    People are born either rich or
poor and this has nothing to do with their bank accounts or the bank accounts
of their fathers. It has everything to do with their character. We all know
about the miserly rich who are unable to enjoy their wealth and live in misery.
We all know about the spendthrift poor — and pretend to despise them, although
we envy them. They say: “I wish I could afford to live in the style I do live
in.” And somehow they can afford it. However, we also know the miserly
poor and the spendthrift rich. I know people whose fortune has changed —
indeed, changed several times — during their life-time. A friend of mine used
to be extremely well off and, in those days, he was the most generous and
extravagant host. Later he lived in very modest circumstances, yet he remained
an equally generous and extravagant host. I do not know how he manages. Neither
does he.

Smoked Salmon

     
    It is, of course, easier to be a rich miser
than a madly extravagant poor person. But difficulties can always be overcome.
    It seems to be incontrovertible that
to be extravagant you need money. True. But you do not need your own money. An
important school of thinking on the art of poverty holds that it is wise to
avoid the psychological deformities caused by possessing too much