Why I’m proud OLD to be an MISER

Even though I’m richer than I’ve ever been!

AFEW nights ago I woke, shaking, from a nightmare that I’d been thrown out of my lovely home and forced to beg on the streets. The brutal images — and a clinging feeling of utter powerlessness — stayed with me through the following day. Because the recurring dream is more than just a fantasy. It’s something that I worry about more and more these days.

No, I haven’t started gambling or failed to pay the mortgage — I’m simply getting old. There’s a rather nasty stereotype that old people turn into misers, pinching pennies quite unnecessarily. I always thought that was very unfair, until I turned into one myself.

At home, I am always switching off lights, turning radiators down or off, and complaining that I am one of those poor old souls who can only afford to heat or eat, but not both. Then every bill I receive sends me into a frenzy of panic — can that gas bill really be £344?

To avoid this eventuality I haunt pound shops for such things as reading glasses because I’m too stingy to go to an optician, have an eye test and pay hundreds of pounds for a proper prescription pair.

I even go around with glasses with only one arm because I can’t face shelling out on another pair, even at only a pound.

By the same token, although I am now slightly deaf, I am far too tight-fisted to buy an invisible hearing aid at £3,000 — the ‘bargain’ price that the latest digital devices seem to cost. how can they be so expensive, I ask myself? Though at the same time I am too vain to wear a hearing aid you can see. So I exist in an ever more silent world of my own choosing.

It all gets worse. Whenever I am online looking for a holiday, I soon decide that even the cheapest package is far too expensive and so I will stay at home. In fact, I have one retired 70- something friend who rarely leaves his house because he says he can travel to anywhere in the world using Google Earth. YET for me, at least, the whole thing is ridiculous. I am one of those rich old people that younger generations keep complaining about. By anyone’s standards, I have plenty of money and although not a multi-millionaire, I could afford to spend the rest of my life going on roundthe-world cruises if I liked.

So how did I get to be such a mean old lady? I think it comes down to being illogically terrified of running out of money, and also remembering how much things used to cost in the olden days.

Nearly a pound for stamps, I ask in disbelief at the Post Office? I can remember when first class was fourpence! Two pounds to go three stops on the bus? It used to be one and six (7½p)!

And it’s not as though I don’t have a hideous example before me of old-age meanness. Many years ago my ex- husband’s grandmother used to shuffle round handing out ten bob notes (50p) as Christmas presents.

Even in the late Sixties, that was a jolly mean gift. And Nana was a rich lady who lived in a huge house and had oodles of money she would never spend. I vowed I would never be like that — and now I am.

But I am in good company. Joanna Lumley, of the same vintage as me, and certainly not short of money, admits to being so mean that she cuts and dyes her own hair rather than fork out for a hairdresser.

She also says that her beauty secret is Astral, a cheap face cream. She spoke for many of us over a certain age when she declared: ‘I’m mean and I hate spending loads of money.’

Misers are traditionally represented as horrible old people who hoard gold in their attics but go around in rags.

Today, miserliness becomes even more inexplicable when you consider present-day pensioners are the richest old people ever known, sitting in mortgage-free, million-pound homes — even if the houses are deathly cold — and raking in huge pensions.

And I am one of them. At the age of 73, I live, mortgage free, in a beautiful three-bedroom, twobathroom, property in Oxford worth well over £1 million.

My pension is adequate, my savings pot healthy, but will I turn the thermostat up a notch on a chilly day? No I won’t.

Of course, I appreciate there are plenty of old people who are desperately poor, but I also know that, sitting very comfortably at the other end of the spectrum, are four million pensioners like me who are so financially comfortable they don’t have a money care in the world. Pensioners are better off than 60 per cent of younger people.

Our lucky generation, the Baby Boomers, benefited from high employment, being able to get onto the property ladder at an early age and watch the value of our homes rise.

Many also enjoy guaranteed final-salary pensions.

If this were not enough, the Government doles out benefits to older people. I have a free bus pass, the winter fuel allowance and no TV licence to pay after the age of 75. None of this is means-tested.

All over Oxford I see elderly — and extremely well- heeled — retired dons and professors taking full advantage of their bus pass. Why, we can even travel from Oxford to Cambridge and back for absolutely nothing.

Indeed, I am tempted to make the journey even if I have no real reason for going, simply to luxuriate in the knowledge that it’s costing me nothing.

Many medicines are free as well. The last time I asked the price of a prescription at the chemist’s, I was told there was no charge.

But none of this, I’m afraid, alters the elderly tendency to be mean. Looking at it philosophically, I think it has something to do with being near the end of our lives. If we hang onto our money, by association we feel we are hanging onto life. Give it all away and our lives will end.

The more money I have in the bank, the more I feel I am buying myself eternal life. If my money never runs out, why should I?

I love the feeling that my bank balance is growing and that I have more money and assets than at any other time. It’s like a huge fortress protecting me from life’s vicissitudes. NOThING pleases me more than to find I have £2,000 more in my account this month than I had last month. The more I have, the meaner I get, and it’s got to the stage, almost, where spending any money feels like opening a vein.

All my clothes these days, or most of them, come from Primark or some other cheap shop. When I see dresses on fashion pages costing £1,387 or something, it makes me feel ill. Who could afford that, I ask myself? Then I remind myself that I could.

The most illogical aspect of all is that if I die with an enormous bank balance, and lots of fully owned properties, most of it will go to the Government in tax, meaning I’d have been hoarding merely to benefit hMRC.

There may be some method in this madness. With increasing age, there is always the possibility of having to spend vast sums on medical or dental treatments not available on the NhS.

My ex has to have dental implants at £1,000 plus a time, and I know he will struggle to afford them. But the alternative is to be a toothless old man.

One friend in her late 70s decided to go ahead with some highly controversial treatment for early Alzheimer’s costing £2,009 (gulp!) for 37 days’ worth. She believes it has worked like magic and said: ‘I’m lucky to have enough money to pay for this kind of treatment.’

I could also afford expensive medical treatment if I needed it, and it would be worth dipping into my hoard to increase my quality and length of life.

People keep urging me to spend my money and enjoy myself — well it’s not their money — but what they don’t understand is that hoarding cash is in itself enjoyable. It was never possible when I was younger as I needed every penny, but now I have an excess of income over expenditure, and it’s a wonderful feeling.

It is nice to know I could pay off my grandchildren’s student loans or perhaps help them onto the property ladder. That would be money well spent and if I keep hoarding, I will be able to ease their passage into adulthood, for which I hope they’ll be grateful.