A Penny Saved Is A Penny Earned

At dinner Saturday night our host was remarking on his reluctance to spend time in Manhattan hotels when his wife interrupted to say that since he had all the money in the world (a gross exaggeration but nonetheless having a certain factual economic underpinning) he was just stingy in not wanting to put up at one of the many pricey establishments in that city.  He countered with the observation that he had been raised by low income immigrants in a distinctly poor neighborhood whereupon my husband chimed in with the well rehearsed anecdotes of his childhood of want.  The man's wife and I had to confess that we neither of us had known anything but material comfort and relative prosperity, and indeed we both shared the habit of never inquiring of price when we bought things.  Our dinner companions shuddered with disgust at such a lack of fiscal responsibility.  I have to say other than occasionally going shopping with my mother--to the butcher, the greengrocer, the bookseller--who liked to keep in contact with the community, I never heard anything to do with dollars and cents cross her lips.  Since my father's death meant that there was no so called breadwinner in the household, we were spared observations on pay rises, and other commonplace economic chitchat.  It never occurred to me even when I was the breadwinner of my own household that one was meant to oversee income and outlay, and adjust accordingly, so just as I cooked (and with excellent results) by guess and by golly, my wife and I did more or less the same with our household economy.  In my present life my husband grows testy when I cannot tell him even an approximate number for the price of whatever I have brought home from the store.  Twenty dollars, fifteen dollars, seven fifty, these numbers are not in my mind connected to material goods.  They float in space, not to be mentioned, trained as I was by registering the frown on my mother's face if the questions "How much did that cost?" "What do you suppose he earns?" were introduced.  Although I do my own income tax, I do not retain in my head the sums involved, and thus I cannot tell when reading in the papers something about economic policy whether I am in the one percent, the ten percent, or whatever.  I have been strenuously conditioned not to think of such things.   We live very simply in a couple of condos of less than two thousand square feet (I believe hubby said; actually I have no idea), rarely eat out because of the salt issue, not to mention the way restaurants inflate the wine prices so as to pad out the food bill.  I am a big drinker and it offends me to pay so much for your basic sludge.  The point is that we just don't have the impulse to run out of money.  There is plenty left over to give to philanthropy and to my family.  How much?  Well, who knows?  Next February I will look in a drawer where all the thank you notes from symphony, opera, food banks, etc are stored and set them against check stubs.  That will give me an idea.