No Accounting for Cheap Wads
Flavor Of The Week: No Accounting For Cheap Wads
While dating her cheapskate boyfriend, MAURA KELLY received the best relationship advice from the man she hired to do her taxes
The New York Press
April 8, 2009
As someone who's been making a living as a freelance writer for four years, I started fretting about money long before the recession. There are certain months—sometimes two or even three in a row—when I don’t receive a single paycheck. I’m always trying to stretch a dollar. I buy my groceries at Trader Joe’s; I get my underwear at the 99-cent store; I almost never go out to dinner. And last year, when tax time came, what I wanted to save on was an accountant who would help me itemize all the right deductions.
My tightwad boyfriend, a college professor, recommended A & A Brothers’ Legal and Accounting Firm and when I stopped by to drop off the necessary paperwork, I realized that one way A&A kept costs down was by saving on decor.Their office, on the Lower East Side, did not exactly reek of prestige and power. Instead, it just... reeked. Like the house of a very old person. There was no furniture made of polished mahogany, no chairs upholstered with green leather, no wainscoting. Instead, the waiting room was distinguished by a landslide of tattered magazines obscuring a coffee table and a forest of half-dead rubber trees wilting on one long windowsill, which was also cluttered with dead flies. I felt a bit like I’d stumbled into Krook’s Rag and Bottle Shop, or a Charlie Kaufman movie.
When Bernie, one of the brothers, came to retrieve me, I saw he’d invested about as much in his personal appearance as he and his siblings had in their environs. Bernie was an overweight, pear-shaped man in the throes of middle age—the dandruff on his shoulders resembled heavy flakes of new snow—who was wearing wrinkled khakis, a washed-out polo shirt and a baseball hat with the call letters for a radio station. In his windowless office—cluttered with unruly stacks of paper and decorated with degrees from universities I’d never heard of—he invited me to sit down in a chair from an old kitchen set before squeezing past me, into his own similar seat. After flipping through my 1040s, he looked up and said, “So, you’re an Aquarian, right?”
I was a bit baffled. “My sign, you mean? I’m a Leo.”
“Impossible!” he bellowed. “I mean, look at you!”
Obediently, I glanced down at myself. I’d just come from pumping iron at the YMCA, and was still in Lycra exercise pants and an old hoodie. I crossed my legs.
“Look at me, what?”
“Never before have I seen a Leo who is so bad at presenting herself in a way that would attract money!” He slapped at my paperwork for emphasis. “And yet you’re a writer, correct? So you can’t be a complete dummy.”
I gave a quick look behind me, hoping someone could confirm that the minor insanity I was being subjected to was only a hallucination.
He pointed at me with a slug-shaped finger. “But something is not quite right. Because you want money. All Leos want it.”
“Nobody becomes a writer for the money,” I said, trying to defend myself. And yet, I did want money, of course. Gobs and gobs of it. Ever since giving up my day job—and a steady income—so I could pursue my dream of writing a novel, I’d been scraping by. And by then, I was dying to live in a neighborhood known for something other than cash-checking spots and liquor stores, for a new winter coat—for decent undies. But what I probably wanted more than anything else was to be comfortable enough so that I could take myself out for a meal occasionally without agonizing over the cost.
“Look,” Bernie said, “I’m no astrologer, or even a psychologist—”
“As long as you are an accountant, that’s fine.”
Bernie smiled and gestured at some paper on the wall that had the initials CPA after his name. “I’m also a student of the human condition. So I know that really, anybody who’s being honest with herself will admit she wants money. And Leos want it especially. And therefore, the only way you’re going to be happy is if you get better at attracting it.”
I laughed. “Who says I’m not happy?”
Bernie gave me a smirk, like trying to fool him was useless. “You must become the change you seek in the world,” he said.
That was a paraphrase of one of Gandhi’s best-known lines, which I recognized not because I’m a scholar of nonviolent protest, British colonialism or even famous bald men, but because a printout of the saying was pinned to the corkboard at the YMCA. I’m fairly certain, however, Gandhi wasn’t alluding to weight loss or financial gain when he said it. And those kinds of bromides, when repurposed by self-help gurus—or astrologers’ manqué—always sound flaky to me. They make me want to mutter, “Should I visualize ‘whirled peas’ while I’m at it?”
At the same time, my fear that other people could see my flaws far more accurately than I did made me a sucker for sidewalk psychics, subway prophets and even a modern-day Tiresias. So, as such, Bernie had me in his strange thrall.
“If you want money, you’ve got to project that it should be given to you,” he continued. “That you’re not cheap.You come at a price.”
I was slightly amused, slightly outraged—and completely compelled to listen. “What exactly do you suggest?” I sputtered.
“Let’s start with...” He looked at my sweaty clothes, seemed to think better of insulting them, then glanced down at the papers in front of him. “Well, with this address.What neighborhood do you live in?”
I told him of my Brooklyn nabe that some would describe as “gentrifying.” Others might say it’s ghetto.
He was outraged. “A small girl like you, there? Someone with such expressive eyes? It’s only a matter of time before ... something terrible happens!” I blinked.
“But I see what you’re doing,” Bernie said, tapped his finger vigorously against his temple. “Living there: That’s a cry for love. Maybe you’re trying to say, ‘Daddy, save me! Get me out of here!’ Or—well—maybe it’s not the father. You have a boyfriend? You want the boyfriend to marry you?” I shook my head, horrified. “No. And even if I did, he couldn’t save me from anything. He’s a young professor. He barely makes more than I do.”
Bernie did not approve. “You’ve got to get away from that. Find yourself a nice...a Capricorn. Someone who will lavish money on you.”
“Easier said than done.”
“For you, maybe…because you project the wrong image,” he said and sighed. “Of course you don’t have a nice boyfriend.What man in his right mind would visit you in that neighborhood?”
Bernie’s pro bono philippic had started to wear on me.
“No guy has ever complained about my locale,” I said.
“That’s because decent men hear where you live and write you off immediately. They think, ‘This girl doesn’t treat herself right! Why should I?’”
I stood up, excused myself, thanked him and high-tailed it out of there.
On the subway ride home, I decided that even though Bernie was a crackpot, he might have a point. Maybe it was time for me to break up with the skinflint. After all, the professor’s lack of generosity wasn’t limited to money matters; he was also stingy with his time and emotional attention. But his miserliness was expressed most clearly for me by the fact that we’d been dating exclusively for almost four months, and he had yet to treat me to a single meal. If we went out to the movies or a bar, we always went Dutch—and we’d never gone to a single restaurant together. When we ate, we always cooked at home for one another. At first, I was fine with it. I assumed he was only making just enough to get by and that he thought restaurants were a waste of money.
About three months in—after he mentioned that he was considering buying his apartment once his building converted to condos—I realized he was in better financial shape than I’d assumed, and I increasingly began to resent his cheapness. His reluctance to buy me dinner seemed to reflect a reluctance to treat me well in general. Granted, I hadn’t taken him out, either, but I wasn’t about to offer—not when he had tenure and was probably making about 25-50 percent more than I was. Plus, I suppose I’m a little sexist, but the fact that he’d never taken me out (not once!) offended me. My shrink, who knew about my growing dissatisfaction with the professor, wondered why I couldn’t simply ask him to bring me to my favorite brasserie. That sounded reasonable enough, yet it also seemed a little like saying: “Hey, why not just ask ol’ Kim Jong Il to open up North Korea’s borders.” Because, see, the professor had drawn a line in the sand early on: when he told me he’d broken up with his last girlfriend because she was so demanding—both emotionally and financially. And I wasn’t ready to rock the boat by requesting too much. I’ve never been very good at asking for what I want.
A few days after my encounter with Bernie, the professor made a point of mentioning that he’d like to hang out on Valentine’s Day. “Finally!” I thought. “He’s going to take me out!” But February 14 was a huge disappointment.That morning, the prof called to ask if we could hang out at my place, since his roommate’s long-distance girlfriend was going to be in town. Clearly, the prof hadn’t made any special plans. I muttered that I didn’t have much in my fridge and didn’t feel like shopping. He told me he’d take care of “everything.”
When he arrived—without a bottle of wine or dessert—he handed me a couple of clementines.“Instead of roses,” he explained.
“My mom’s a florist, so I don’t do flowers.” I felt like saying: And Louis Armstrong’s momma was a prostitute, so I don’t do it for free! I was frustrated. I wanted a generous partner who was willing to signal his affection, at least occasionally, by taking me out for dinner. I didn’t want a sugar daddy, but maybe a grilled-tuna-with-garlic-mashedpotatoes daddy.
So I broke up with the professor. I was talking to my shrink afterwards, when it occurred to me that though I’d been in relationships with a number of guys who’d taken me out to dinner regularly, I never felt quite at ease with those arrangements. Because even when I get the things I want without having to ask for them, particularly things that can be purchased with greenbacks, I never feel deserving of them. And the more I’m given, the more anxious I get. The relationship becomes tense. It’s like this psychological study I read about once: people who have a poor opinion of themselves tend to partner up with people who see them as nega tively as they seem themselves; they feel most comfortable that way. My shrink hinted that I had a tendency to subtly communicate to men that I didn’t think I was “worth” very much. “You sound like my accountant,” I said. “But would you care to let me in on how I can subtly communicate that I think I am worth something?” She gave me one of her typically tautological answers: “By feeling like you are.” How the hell was I supposed to do that? It wasn’t until earlier this month—a year after my first encounter with Bernie— that I began to calculate my yearly expenses in anticipation of another trip to see my soothsaying accountant that I began to understand the true message behind his madness. Becoming the change I was seeking in the world didn’t mean swearing off cheap bastards like the professor.
It meant becoming less of a cheap bastard myself. I’ve pinched my pennies so tightly that even as a freelancer I’ve managed to stash away about half of what a down payment on a decent apartment would run me. And I know everybody is singing the praises of those who save money these days, but I tell you, it’s a lifestyle that has come at a personal cost. I always feel deprived. And regardless of how much I’ve piled up, my annual salary is still so dodgy that nobody is going to give me a mortgage anytime soon. So surely, I can afford to spend $40 on a nice meal every now and then. Isn’t it a small price to pay if it will help me finally believe I’m worth at least that much? It’s not that I think going out for grilled tuna every few weeks will miraculously result in my finding the perfect life companion. I doubt he’ll sit down next to me, by chance, at some copper-topped bar. But I do think getting into the habit could teach me to have higher standards for myself. And even if I never find a dude who will treat me the way I want to be treated, I’m sure I’ll enjoy life a little more if I can treat myself that way. Regardless of what happens, though, I refuse to visualize world peace—or whirled peas. But garlic mashed potatoes? Well, those are another matter.
MAURA KELLY recently finished her first novel and is looking for a publisher. Her personal essays have appeared in the New York Times, the New York Observer, the Washington Post and other publications.She writes a dating blog under a pseudonym.
While dating her cheapskate boyfriend, MAURA KELLY received the best relationship advice from the man she hired to do her taxes
The New York Press
April 8, 2009
As someone who's been making a living as a freelance writer for four years, I started fretting about money long before the recession. There are certain months—sometimes two or even three in a row—when I don’t receive a single paycheck. I’m always trying to stretch a dollar. I buy my groceries at Trader Joe’s; I get my underwear at the 99-cent store; I almost never go out to dinner. And last year, when tax time came, what I wanted to save on was an accountant who would help me itemize all the right deductions.
My tightwad boyfriend, a college professor, recommended A & A Brothers’ Legal and Accounting Firm and when I stopped by to drop off the necessary paperwork, I realized that one way A&A kept costs down was by saving on decor.Their office, on the Lower East Side, did not exactly reek of prestige and power. Instead, it just... reeked. Like the house of a very old person. There was no furniture made of polished mahogany, no chairs upholstered with green leather, no wainscoting. Instead, the waiting room was distinguished by a landslide of tattered magazines obscuring a coffee table and a forest of half-dead rubber trees wilting on one long windowsill, which was also cluttered with dead flies. I felt a bit like I’d stumbled into Krook’s Rag and Bottle Shop, or a Charlie Kaufman movie.
When Bernie, one of the brothers, came to retrieve me, I saw he’d invested about as much in his personal appearance as he and his siblings had in their environs. Bernie was an overweight, pear-shaped man in the throes of middle age—the dandruff on his shoulders resembled heavy flakes of new snow—who was wearing wrinkled khakis, a washed-out polo shirt and a baseball hat with the call letters for a radio station. In his windowless office—cluttered with unruly stacks of paper and decorated with degrees from universities I’d never heard of—he invited me to sit down in a chair from an old kitchen set before squeezing past me, into his own similar seat. After flipping through my 1040s, he looked up and said, “So, you’re an Aquarian, right?”
I was a bit baffled. “My sign, you mean? I’m a Leo.”
“Impossible!” he bellowed. “I mean, look at you!”
Obediently, I glanced down at myself. I’d just come from pumping iron at the YMCA, and was still in Lycra exercise pants and an old hoodie. I crossed my legs.
“Look at me, what?”
“Never before have I seen a Leo who is so bad at presenting herself in a way that would attract money!” He slapped at my paperwork for emphasis. “And yet you’re a writer, correct? So you can’t be a complete dummy.”
I gave a quick look behind me, hoping someone could confirm that the minor insanity I was being subjected to was only a hallucination.
He pointed at me with a slug-shaped finger. “But something is not quite right. Because you want money. All Leos want it.”
“Nobody becomes a writer for the money,” I said, trying to defend myself. And yet, I did want money, of course. Gobs and gobs of it. Ever since giving up my day job—and a steady income—so I could pursue my dream of writing a novel, I’d been scraping by. And by then, I was dying to live in a neighborhood known for something other than cash-checking spots and liquor stores, for a new winter coat—for decent undies. But what I probably wanted more than anything else was to be comfortable enough so that I could take myself out for a meal occasionally without agonizing over the cost.
“Look,” Bernie said, “I’m no astrologer, or even a psychologist—”
“As long as you are an accountant, that’s fine.”
Bernie smiled and gestured at some paper on the wall that had the initials CPA after his name. “I’m also a student of the human condition. So I know that really, anybody who’s being honest with herself will admit she wants money. And Leos want it especially. And therefore, the only way you’re going to be happy is if you get better at attracting it.”
I laughed. “Who says I’m not happy?”
Bernie gave me a smirk, like trying to fool him was useless. “You must become the change you seek in the world,” he said.
That was a paraphrase of one of Gandhi’s best-known lines, which I recognized not because I’m a scholar of nonviolent protest, British colonialism or even famous bald men, but because a printout of the saying was pinned to the corkboard at the YMCA. I’m fairly certain, however, Gandhi wasn’t alluding to weight loss or financial gain when he said it. And those kinds of bromides, when repurposed by self-help gurus—or astrologers’ manqué—always sound flaky to me. They make me want to mutter, “Should I visualize ‘whirled peas’ while I’m at it?”
At the same time, my fear that other people could see my flaws far more accurately than I did made me a sucker for sidewalk psychics, subway prophets and even a modern-day Tiresias. So, as such, Bernie had me in his strange thrall.
“If you want money, you’ve got to project that it should be given to you,” he continued. “That you’re not cheap.You come at a price.”
I was slightly amused, slightly outraged—and completely compelled to listen. “What exactly do you suggest?” I sputtered.
“Let’s start with...” He looked at my sweaty clothes, seemed to think better of insulting them, then glanced down at the papers in front of him. “Well, with this address.What neighborhood do you live in?”
I told him of my Brooklyn nabe that some would describe as “gentrifying.” Others might say it’s ghetto.
He was outraged. “A small girl like you, there? Someone with such expressive eyes? It’s only a matter of time before ... something terrible happens!” I blinked.
“But I see what you’re doing,” Bernie said, tapped his finger vigorously against his temple. “Living there: That’s a cry for love. Maybe you’re trying to say, ‘Daddy, save me! Get me out of here!’ Or—well—maybe it’s not the father. You have a boyfriend? You want the boyfriend to marry you?” I shook my head, horrified. “No. And even if I did, he couldn’t save me from anything. He’s a young professor. He barely makes more than I do.”
Bernie did not approve. “You’ve got to get away from that. Find yourself a nice...a Capricorn. Someone who will lavish money on you.”
“Easier said than done.”
“For you, maybe…because you project the wrong image,” he said and sighed. “Of course you don’t have a nice boyfriend.What man in his right mind would visit you in that neighborhood?”
Bernie’s pro bono philippic had started to wear on me.
“No guy has ever complained about my locale,” I said.
“That’s because decent men hear where you live and write you off immediately. They think, ‘This girl doesn’t treat herself right! Why should I?’”
I stood up, excused myself, thanked him and high-tailed it out of there.
On the subway ride home, I decided that even though Bernie was a crackpot, he might have a point. Maybe it was time for me to break up with the skinflint. After all, the professor’s lack of generosity wasn’t limited to money matters; he was also stingy with his time and emotional attention. But his miserliness was expressed most clearly for me by the fact that we’d been dating exclusively for almost four months, and he had yet to treat me to a single meal. If we went out to the movies or a bar, we always went Dutch—and we’d never gone to a single restaurant together. When we ate, we always cooked at home for one another. At first, I was fine with it. I assumed he was only making just enough to get by and that he thought restaurants were a waste of money.
About three months in—after he mentioned that he was considering buying his apartment once his building converted to condos—I realized he was in better financial shape than I’d assumed, and I increasingly began to resent his cheapness. His reluctance to buy me dinner seemed to reflect a reluctance to treat me well in general. Granted, I hadn’t taken him out, either, but I wasn’t about to offer—not when he had tenure and was probably making about 25-50 percent more than I was. Plus, I suppose I’m a little sexist, but the fact that he’d never taken me out (not once!) offended me. My shrink, who knew about my growing dissatisfaction with the professor, wondered why I couldn’t simply ask him to bring me to my favorite brasserie. That sounded reasonable enough, yet it also seemed a little like saying: “Hey, why not just ask ol’ Kim Jong Il to open up North Korea’s borders.” Because, see, the professor had drawn a line in the sand early on: when he told me he’d broken up with his last girlfriend because she was so demanding—both emotionally and financially. And I wasn’t ready to rock the boat by requesting too much. I’ve never been very good at asking for what I want.
A few days after my encounter with Bernie, the professor made a point of mentioning that he’d like to hang out on Valentine’s Day. “Finally!” I thought. “He’s going to take me out!” But February 14 was a huge disappointment.That morning, the prof called to ask if we could hang out at my place, since his roommate’s long-distance girlfriend was going to be in town. Clearly, the prof hadn’t made any special plans. I muttered that I didn’t have much in my fridge and didn’t feel like shopping. He told me he’d take care of “everything.”
When he arrived—without a bottle of wine or dessert—he handed me a couple of clementines.“Instead of roses,” he explained.
“My mom’s a florist, so I don’t do flowers.” I felt like saying: And Louis Armstrong’s momma was a prostitute, so I don’t do it for free! I was frustrated. I wanted a generous partner who was willing to signal his affection, at least occasionally, by taking me out for dinner. I didn’t want a sugar daddy, but maybe a grilled-tuna-with-garlic-mashedpotatoes daddy.
So I broke up with the professor. I was talking to my shrink afterwards, when it occurred to me that though I’d been in relationships with a number of guys who’d taken me out to dinner regularly, I never felt quite at ease with those arrangements. Because even when I get the things I want without having to ask for them, particularly things that can be purchased with greenbacks, I never feel deserving of them. And the more I’m given, the more anxious I get. The relationship becomes tense. It’s like this psychological study I read about once: people who have a poor opinion of themselves tend to partner up with people who see them as nega tively as they seem themselves; they feel most comfortable that way. My shrink hinted that I had a tendency to subtly communicate to men that I didn’t think I was “worth” very much. “You sound like my accountant,” I said. “But would you care to let me in on how I can subtly communicate that I think I am worth something?” She gave me one of her typically tautological answers: “By feeling like you are.” How the hell was I supposed to do that? It wasn’t until earlier this month—a year after my first encounter with Bernie— that I began to calculate my yearly expenses in anticipation of another trip to see my soothsaying accountant that I began to understand the true message behind his madness. Becoming the change I was seeking in the world didn’t mean swearing off cheap bastards like the professor.
It meant becoming less of a cheap bastard myself. I’ve pinched my pennies so tightly that even as a freelancer I’ve managed to stash away about half of what a down payment on a decent apartment would run me. And I know everybody is singing the praises of those who save money these days, but I tell you, it’s a lifestyle that has come at a personal cost. I always feel deprived. And regardless of how much I’ve piled up, my annual salary is still so dodgy that nobody is going to give me a mortgage anytime soon. So surely, I can afford to spend $40 on a nice meal every now and then. Isn’t it a small price to pay if it will help me finally believe I’m worth at least that much? It’s not that I think going out for grilled tuna every few weeks will miraculously result in my finding the perfect life companion. I doubt he’ll sit down next to me, by chance, at some copper-topped bar. But I do think getting into the habit could teach me to have higher standards for myself. And even if I never find a dude who will treat me the way I want to be treated, I’m sure I’ll enjoy life a little more if I can treat myself that way. Regardless of what happens, though, I refuse to visualize world peace—or whirled peas. But garlic mashed potatoes? Well, those are another matter.
MAURA KELLY recently finished her first novel and is looking for a publisher. Her personal essays have appeared in the New York Times, the New York Observer, the Washington Post and other publications.She writes a dating blog under a pseudonym.
posted by maureen.glendon@gmail.com at 9:04 AM
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