There are certain people who could be described as financially astute and money wise and there’s nothing wrong with that. It’s ok to be a bit careful about the way you handle your dosh, it’s a healthy attitude to have. Others though, take that to extremes and could be referred to as tight arses.
They prefer to spend their lives in abject poverty, living on scraps. But that’s their choice. If the highlight of their day is finding new ways to avoid spending money, then so be it. They can do what they like just as long as they don’t interfere with me.
I went to a shop the other day to get a newspaper. There was a guy standing in front of the paper stand and he was flicking through the pages of the various newspapers. He was having a good time and he was in a world of his own. He was also in my way so I asked him if he was going to buy one or if he was going to plant a flag on the spot and stake a claim on it.
He walked away without batting an eyelid. I thought that I might have embarrassed him a little but it didn’t knock a feather out of him.
One of the assistants overheard me and she was grinning from ear to ear. She told me she was delighted that someone had challenged him. Apparently, he’s a regular visitor to the shop and he doesn’t mind clogging up the place. I don’t know this man but I would imagine that what he spends there is unlikely to add significantly to their overall profit margin.
If I was involved in managing that premises I would have no difficulty in telling him to either buy a paper or sling his hook and take his lack of business elsewhere.
My grandmother used to say that if you take care of the pennies, the pounds will look after themselves but there are people who take that to extreme levels and we’ve all met them. I worked with a guy one time who probably takes the award for being one of the tightest characters ever.
It was a very rare occasion when he would buy a newspaper. He would normally only invest if he was in for a long shift. Then he might break out and get one and read the ink off it. When he was finished, he would offer it for sale for half price.
I worked with another character, who was single at the time and he lived in a flat on his own. In fact, it’s wrong to say that he lived there because he only existed. His lifestyle was only one step removed from being a squatter. He had a car but he only used it in emergencies or when the weather was too bad for him to either cycle or walk to work.
He dedicated his life to not spending money and he put a lot of effort into it. He used as little electricity as possible and would rather suffer the cold than pay for heating. What cooking he did, was done at work so it wasn’t costing him anything. Whenever he had to part with money he would become visibly agitated.
We’ve all met the guys who like to skip buying a round of drinks. These people can often be entertaining and they’re generally not taken too seriously. But the extremists are a different kettle of fish and they can be difficult to get along with. Their devotion to counting pennies is an alien concept to most of us and I wonder about the point of it all.
A married scrooge can at least leave a decent will for his family when he eventually departs from his miserable existence and maybe that’s his justification for his self- imposed vow of poverty. Whatever about his reason for choosing to live that way, at least some benefit may come out of it for someone else. But what’s the motivation for the unmarried miser?
Of all the scrooges I have met, none has come close to John Elwes. In 1763, Elwes inherited a fortune of more than £250,000 from his uncle. That would be somewhere in the region of £500m in todays’ money. They say Charles Dickens based his Scrooge character on this guy and when you see how he lived, it’s easy to see how he could be the original meanie.
He wandered around the house in the dark to avoid using a candle and he would sit with his servants in the kitchen to save having to light a fire in another room. He wore ragged clothes and would go for months at a time in a suit that he wore in bed. He would get up in the morning and wear the same clothes during the day. He once spent weeks wearing a dirty wig he found in a hedge.
If he got soaked from the rain he would sit in the wet clothes to save the cost of lighting a fire to dry them. He regularly ate mouldy or rotten food. One rumour was that he even ate a rotten moorhen taken from the river by a rat.
Before his uncle died, they would spend entire evenings together sharing just one glass of wine. He never married but he did father two sons but he refused to educate them because he thought that putting ideas in their heads would only lead to them spending money foolishly.
When he died in 1789, he left £500,000 almost £1bn in todays’ money behind him. He probably would have lasted a bit longer if he looked after himself.
Or, maybe he’s still alive and getting in my way.