Nana was right: It's never too late to put a little aside for a rainy day.
I've always been a ridiculously hopeless saver. It's decidedly plumbers-house-has-the-leaky-tap that I was a business journalist. Still, no one is irredeemable.
Recently I have been able to squirrel a bit away. And I like it so much, I wonder why I never managed it before. I'll have a guess. All those usual dysfunctional reasons - self-loathing, a self destructive streak, a desire to live for the moment, a Goth's pessimism about the future, a deep resentment of people who are sensible and clean their cars with toothbrushes, a love of the grand gesture and a fear of being ordinary, a six-nights-a-week Prego habit, a weakness for arty losers.
There were reasons bigger than my own wonkiness. I had a mortgage, which I considered forced saving. Selling at the bottom of the market demonstrated that was not a failsafe strategy. And of course I was part of the cheap credit generation that believed you should get everything now, dammit.
Also, once I started working as a financial journalist I believed all those edicts about how it is efficient to be leveraged. I remembered former Herald boss Michael Horton boasting how Wilson & Horton had $55 million in the bank and no debt. It sounded so admirable but then Brierley swooped on the cashbox and the Hortons lost their family heirloom. What lesson did that teach about having no debt? I loved the argument that your money should be working for you. That justified me buying a $1000 pair of Dries van Noten shoes - surely that would help me look the part and become more successful, and thus wealthier, in future? I had other justifications for not saving.
Post 1987 I recognised that one could lose one's savings at any moment so the most important thing was to have the emotional resources to know that you could survive come what may if it all turned to custard. I still believe this, but once you have children your attitudes to financially security change. I recently had to call on $4000 of my savings to buy my son a new hearing aid. (The delinquent dog ate it, as regular readers might remember).
But I wonder whether it might help if we demonised debt again, just a little. In my parents' day it was shameful to be in debt. Now it's considered a form of sensible financial management - if you take your cue from the corporate world. Look at those ghastly private equity firms like Ironbridge who come in here and buy our assets all leveraged up the wazoo. When the market changed suddenly, then vampire-like they have to suck the life out of them. Why should TV3 and ACP, both profitable ventures, be reduced to paupers because their media neophyte owners don't know the difference between red and black?
All those people who complain about us selling land to foreigners might like to ponder how selling our media to foreigners who bleed it dry works for us.
There is a do-what-I-say-not-what-I-do aspect to the corporate world telling civilians they should save more. Private equity firms - as well as us - could do with a Nana lesson about risk. Not that Nana would have called it that. It was simply sensible to put a bit by for a rainy day. I'm a late learner, sorry Nana.
dhc@deborahhillcone.com
