Comfort with Money

The financial turmoil of the last month or so has touched all of our lives at least in some small measure and will continue to do so in larger measures for a long time to come. Every single action or reaction to the world wide virus by governments, medical experts, idiotic celebrities and individuals must bring to front and centre the fact that “no man is an island”. When I had just turned six I was sent off to a country boarding school. I was unknowingly carrying mumps which

Every so often I remove from their tiny cases, so that I can wear them, a pair of gold cufflinks that I bought in Hong Kong in the days when the price of gold bullion was fixed at $US30 an ounce. I am not going to melt them down (they weigh only 9 grams together) but today even that amount of gold would buy a very respectable case of superior wine. A Dutch friend of mine who grew up in German occupied Amsterdam told me that one of the major items of currency at that time was

The first time I ever went skiing I met an 80 year old gentleman whose personal “bunny slope” was the front lawn of the communal dormitory which gave him a “run” of about 20 metres, including turns. The hundreds, maybe thousands? of 80 year olds who "ski" now, do not don skis and parkas but grab their passports and head off to sun soaked Hawaii or the shops of London, Paris and New York. This kind of skiing is, of course, “spending the kid’s inheritance”. I suspect that the v

The fact that I can remember the attack on Pearl Harbour puts me in a clearly defined age bracket. The first time I meet them people often ask me “What did you do?” There is a basic assumption in our society (set in concrete by the government paying age pensions to 65 year olds) that we all have a use-by date. Our society is structured in such a way that a very high percentage of our population who have a career (as opposed to a job or a series of jobs) aspire to and maybe ev