Living in genteel poverty

Every year at the beginning of April, I tell myself I must top up my ISA (a British retirement savings plan) say, a before the April 5 deadline. And all my friends tell me I must. My financial advisor tells me I must. Articles in the press and ads on social media tell me I must. And every year on April 6 I ask myself: why didn’t I top up my ISA?

Yes, I know investing in an ISA is the smart, sensible thing to do — so why haven’t I done it for the past ten years? Every year I have an excuse. Capitalism is about to collapse; it’s government-sanctioned tax avoidance; I should give the money to some worthy group of activists. But the real reason is fear. I can face almost anything — childhood trauma, root canal work, prostate examinations — but when it comes to personal finances, I’m a coward. Like many people, I belong to the Ostrich School of Personal Finance. Our motto is: Ignorance is Bliss.

I belong to the Ostrich School of Personal Finance. Our motto is: Ignorance is Bliss

But it’s also costly. This week I actually did take a closer look at my finances and I discovered that I was $55,000 poorer than I thought. I won’t bore you with the details, but there was a separate banking account that turned out wasn’t separate.

My fear of personal finances wouldn’t be so costly if I was loaded and could afford the luxury of not looking. But I’ve never been wealthy. When about fifteen years ago I inherited money from the sale of my parents’ house, I had a nice lump sum that, had I used it wisely, could have meant I was nicely off today. I should have looked for the best rates of interest, increased my pension pot, listened to Radio 4’s Money Box and paid attention to Martin Lewis and Warren Buffett.

I didn’t do any of that. I’d like to say that I blew it all on drink, drugs, women and weekends in Vegas. Instead, I used the money so I could avoid work and just faff around for ten years trying to write a novel that I never wrote.

Consequently, I’m now a man of very modest means. I’m only a few steps from becoming one of those freelance freeloaders. That is, one of those men (and it’s usually men) who never buys a round of drinks or picks up the tab for dinner, expecting someone else — a girlfriend or a best mate — to do that.

In my defense I must say at least I’m not one of those entitled freeloaders who suffer no shame or embarrassment about being impoverished. The entitled freeloader is usually someone who thinks he’s being rather bohemian by announcing he’s skint, so you will have the great privilege of buying him lunch/dinner/drinks! He chuckles. You groan. Of course, I’m not poor like poor people are — at least not yet. I have the poverty of many creative freelance people: genteel poverty. That means we can afford good coffee, expensive butter and a bottle of something good to drink and nothing more. At lunches with friends, we claim to have already eaten — though we are starving. As for drinks, we tell people we’re on the wagon. 

Genteel poverty means your suits start to collect stains. Your apartment that was once shabby chic is now just shabby. The furniture looks distressed, and so do you when you notice more moth holes in the carpets.

The worst thing about genteel poverty is that it’s disastrous for your sex life. Single women over fifty find broke men over sixty unappealing. During the summer you can always take a date on a stroll through a park and sit on a bench drinking coffee. Try doing that in mid-winter.   

The worst thing about genteel poverty is that it’s disastrous for your sex life

How did I get into this wretched state and who is to blame? Ultimately me, of course. But I think the 1960s fostered a negative attitude to money for which I’ve been paying the price ever since. There is the popular belief — best articulated by the likes of David Willetts in his book The Pinch — that Baby Boomers are a bunch of greedy bastards who have ended up well off at the expense of the younger generation. Yes, many are. But what is less discussed are the downwardly mobile Boomers who have ended up broke but not too broke. I belong to that class: the undeserving not-quite-poor.

We Boomers in poverty believed that saving money or having a pension was for the “squares.” Save for the future? What future? If nuclear war didn’t get us, eco-disaster would. We thought it was enough to get through life by being well-read, charming, witty and a good conversationalist. We laughed at all those sensible people who saved money.

I still believe that you don’t need money to make you happy. Only now have I discovered you do need a certain amount of money to avoid misery. I’ve also discovered I didn’t have enough money to top up my pitiful ISA anyway.

This article was originally published in The Spectator’s UK magazine. Subscribe to the World edition here.