And Why Income is Not Wealth
My Dearest Lord Westover and the
mysterious Lady K – My spouse exceeds in being, well, so middle class. Every time
I turn around it’s “we can’t afford this or we can’t afford that”. In fact,
just the other day, I spotted a lovely pre-1917 Faberge work (at an
unbelievable bargain price!) and all he could say was “This costs as much as a new
car. We can’t afford it.”
Well, let’s just say “I lost it” and
stormed out of the room declaring: You are the most miserly middle class person
I have ever known! It’s absurd! Between our “jobs” and estate income, we make a
rather handsome living but reminding Sir Middle Class of this only elicits the
same response: Income is not wealth.
Can you believe this!!!??? What should
I do? Open a secret Swiss bank account and pretend my pre-1917 Faberge pieces
are simply post-modern Fauxperge trash?
Longing for Pre-1917 Faberge but Married
to a Boorish Middle Class Troglodyte
Dear
Longing for Pre-1917 Faberge but Married to a Boorish Middle Class Troglodyte – We know all too well the dilemma to
which you refer above. On one hand you so deserve all those refined objects de art but on the other hand you
have to (dare we say) budget your income! It is indeed the age old conflict of dignity
verse duty.
Yes, duty.
 |
| Their Graces with the most frugal of Monarchs, Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth |
You see, fellow Noble, unless one is
living exclusively off the proceeds of one’s vast estate (like we), whether it
be stock, bonds or lands, one is trapped (as it were) in the girdle of, well,
the middle class. That is to say, someone or some entity with lots of capital
[this means money for our trog readers] elects for a given time to handover said
capital to you until they do not, obviously.
(Yes, this harsh system comes as a
stark and chilling realization for many a Noble.)
In your cases, it seems that your “jobs”
provide a disproportionate amount of household “income”. If this is indeed the
case (as it seems to be for say 99.9 percent of the world’s population) then,
dear friend of Nobility, you need to strap on the middle class girdle for (like
many a trog) your household is dependent upon the tuppence of others.
And, unlike the delightful, yet sorely
misguided advice in that infantile musical about servants flying kites and
cleaning chimneys, it is highly important that you continue to “invest” your
tuppence “in the bank” for if you ignore this sage counsel you will truly find
yourself adorning the constricting girdle of the middle class for a long, long
time.
The great exemplar of this tragic
condition of being forever girdled is a dear Noble friend of ours who once commanded
the heights of reputation and income. This Noblewoman, we shall refer to only as
Baroness B, spent lavishly and justified this thriftless recklessness as a necessity
and indeed a deserved dividend of all her laborious work.
Unfortunately, Baroness B had ceased
to categorize herself as “girdled” and a dependent receiver of tuppence and
thus began her slow decline – the invisible price one pays for this
self-imposed delusional state – into forever girldeddom.
To this day, dear Baroness B must
work, not because she wants to,
but because she has to. Had she
wisely deferred instant gratification and invested her tuppence (in the best
and most prudent manner in which she could eventually reasonably replace her
lavish standard of living), she would have had to buy less pre-1917 Faberge and
embarked on fewer world cruises, but could have retired (or freed herself from
the Gilded
Girdle as we Noble like to say) whilst still relatively youthful.
In other words (for those still too
dense to get the point), Baroness B could have lived the life of a truly free
Noble person by putting off the ethereal amusements and bling of many a trog
and plowed her tuppence into wise investments. Tragically, though, like so many
of us (well, like most of our readers), she toils away dreaming of the day she
will not have to seek tuppence from the proverbial “man.”
Though this “tuppence plowing” is by
its very nature undignified (who doesn’t want their very own Fabarge Egg?),
dear Noble, it is indeed your duty to free yourself from the Gilded
Girdle by dutifully plowing (as it were) your tuppence “patiently,
cautiously, trustingly in the, to be specific, in [the] Bank!” (Obviously!)
Gloriously submitted,
Their Graces
