Up Against It

Cromwell Argus, Volume LXVIII, Issue 3484, 30 August 1937, Page 2

Up Against It

£ A FRIENDLY TALK

Recently I had to watch a friend’s house being sold up to pay for his debts (writes a well-known journalist). Foolishly, when he was in a fix, I lent him money; so now I have lost not only the money but a friend. What annoys me, and perplexes me, is that we worked in the same office and earned much about the same salary. But he always seemed to be in money difficulties, owing this tradesman and that tradesman and finally running foul of the Income Tax people. Some people always seem to be up against it for no sane reason whatever. It has been said with great truth; "More difficult than the earning of money honestly is the spending of it wisely!” So many of us are bad spenders, thanks to that pernicious characteristic called “possessiveuess,” which makes us unable to do without —or to the snobbery of keeping up appearances, which tempts us to new economic hazards —or to a mere lack of that sense of responsibility which, when all is said and done, should support us in our spending by the realisation that the art of happy living is our ability to balance our outcome with our income. It is a blessing to have the intelligence to shape our spending to the precise pattern of our purse and to be able to beam with satisfaction like Micawber and say: “Income one poijnd, expenditure, 19/11%; result, happiness,” r ' ,f I "often think, when I hear people talk of their gross indebtedness —because of their own excesses or foolish frittering—that if they could only realise the heroism, self-sacrifice, thrift and Ingenuity implicit in the average workman’s pay packet they would quickly see themselves in their own light and learn a valuable lesson that would assure not only their own happiness, but the happiness of others. A doctor friend who once told me of his anxiety to make both ends meet — thanks, not to his own thriftlessness, money who is often last to pay his patients—said: “It is the man with the money who is always last to pay his accounts. My best paying patients are those who, because of grim necessity, have learned how to spend two hundred and forty pennies so that twenty shillings will go the length of a pound!” And in a recent bankruptcy examination, when a grocer was explaining his failure, he said It wouldn’t have been so bad if his debtors had been poor. But they were people with comfortable incomes who were foolish enough to try to make a pound go the length of twenty-five shillings! Happily, the great majority of us pay our way and have the utmost satisfaction in doing so, even if ■we do grouse a bit at times. We know that bad debts are the expression of extreme selfishness —except, of course, when they are real debts. For all of us are liable to be financially embarrassed through no fault of our own, owing to sudden and prolonged illness, the loss of a job thought to be secure, the collapse of a so-called safe investment.

A real design for living that incorporates a wise plan for spending is not only the foundation of personal happiness; it is also a primary moral duty to our family and a social obligation to our fellows.

A,f]Ler all, somebody has to pay in th&'end!