SEPTEMBER 24, 2023 – (Cont.) I don’t think Mother was always so cheap. Maybe it was Dad’s influence: as he used to joke, “We Småläningar[1]are so frugal we dilute our water.” But if he led a life-long campaign against waste of any kind, he wasn’t cheap; he wasn’t one to buy sub-standard products. “You get what you pay for,” was his mantra when weighing cost against quality—at least in cases where it mattered, as when buying paintbrushes, masonry trowels, or wood-working tools.
And Dad would never have invited me to lunch (as Mother did once when she was in downtown Minneapolis at noon, waiting for a 1:00 bus to her docent class at the art institute) at a discount cafeteria where there’d be no tipping, then insist on splitting the bill down to the penny, tax included, according to what each of us had ordered. No, Dad would take me to the Oak Grill Room at Dayton’s and quietly handle the tab to which he’d add an appropriate tip.
More likely, Mother subconsciously—or genetically?—emulated UB who grew increasingly cheap as he got older, which was painfully ironic, given how much money he shelled out every week to Alex. I never understood the “cheap” streak. Neither the Holmans nor the Nilssons had suffered privation during the Great Depression, and in fact, the Holman side had even prospered because of it, given the uptick in demand for moving and storage services as people less fortunate were forced to downsize and store their possessions[2]. And in the good ol’ days, UB had been an especially generous S.C. on his annual trips to Minnesota.
I wasn’t sure what had prompted Mother’s question, “Do I have enough money?” Not surprisingly, given Dad’s frugality and methodical approach to everything else, he’d planned well for retirement and for Mother’s financial well-being should he pre-decease her. He’d kept me generally apprised, though he’d neglected to tell me about the $7,500 in 20s hidden behind a shelf in the upstairs laundry chute and the plastic cigar box filled with silver dimes perched on a small board he’d tacked between the joists of the basement ceiling[3]. Pure luck would uncover those forgotten stashes of “petty cash.” The cash and silver were doubtless part of his contingency planning in the event “the world went to hell in a hand basket,” as he feared would occur if Democrats and RINOs allowed Russia, China, and Islamic extremists to take over—which was a growing probability according to the fear-mongering rightwing newsletters he consumed.
At the time we signed Mother up for assisted living, thanks to Dad’s orderliness I was able to get a quick handle on her income and assets. As long as her tendency to give big bucks to the church could be monitored and if necessary curtailed, she’d be fine at a generous run rate of living expenses. And that would be the case even under a worst-case scenario regarding her New Jersey inheritance; even if UB should fritter it all away to . . . a Serbian drug addict living in London. I didn’t consider the possibility of “the world going to hell in a hand-basket.” Under such circumstances, all financial bets and prognostications would be off.
But the question, “Do I have enough?” prompted me to go beyond simple three-, five- and ten-year cash flow pro formae. I asked myself, How much money is enough?
The elusiveness of the answer is the curse of humanity. Money is not only the medium of exchange for what everyone needs to survive but for what everyone wants in order to thrive, and therein lies the problem: the definition of “thrive.”
I’d long observed that for no one is “enough money enough.” If the abysmally poor are afflicted by the absence of money, the super rich are impoverished by over-consumption. The vast numbers who are between rich and poor are locked in a perpetual struggle between wants and needs, aggravated by the inexorably circular sequence of modern capitalism: happiness requires material prosperity, which requires growth, which requires sales, which requires marketing, the whole point of which is to make us think that happiness requires ever-expanding . . . material prosperity.
Money also reflects our values and interests; our priorities and our relationships with one another and with the world. It can allow us to achieve much that is good and much that isn’t.
By way of these philosophical meanderings about money, I hatched the idea of presenting Mother with an opportunity; the chance to make a statement to the family, particularly to her grandchildren; a way to condense and transmit to them a legacy of lasting value, one that was at once practical and philosophical; a message about money—and indeed, about inheritance—that none of my ancestors had thought to articulate.
Over a couple of weeks I worked on a financial “white paper” for Mother’s review and consideration. It was written in conversational English, light on financial and investment arcana but containing sufficient detail to support my assessment of her financial condition, current and future, assuming needs and net returns within a reasonably band of possibilities.
I then focused on the most critical part of the project: transmission of values to her half dozen grandchildren.
The paper led with a practical concern for foundational (education; home) and retirement savings. I mapped out a system whereby she would gift each grandchild a minimum sum each year for an IRA contribution plus an additional amount matching whatever more each grandchild elected to contribute to his or her IRAs.
The most critical part, however, addressed charitable giving. For years Mother and Dad had contributed generously to their church and crumbs in response to what seemed like every solicitation that came in the mail—$10 here, $25 there, and surprise, surprise, $100 to the lucky non-profit of the month. Over the years, the number of donations multiplied (and the individual amounts dwindled) with the cross-sales of donor mailing lists.
Instead of this haphazard approach to giving, I recommended starting with a gross sum for all charitable giving, then a breakdown into four categories—actually five, since I couldn’t avoid the church and retain any hope for Mother’s subscription to the rest of my idea: 1. Artistic (visual art and the performing arts); 2. Educational; 3. Conservation/environmental; and 4. Charitable (local, national, global). In addition to thoughtful and meaningful donations (i.e. a handful of more sizable gifts as opposed to a nickel and dime approach), however, Mother would send an annual letter to the grandchildren describing intentions, specific recipients, and contribution amounts so as to impress upon her heirs what concerns and values she harbored and the care with which each donee was selected. By purposeful example Mother could actively inspire her grandchildren to follow suit.
Moreover, I recommended an incentivized gifting plan similar to the savings idea. I envisioned that the letter describing Mother’s own contributions would explicitly urge her grandchildren to adopt the practice of intentional charitable giving, irrespective of their individual financial circumstances, since “enough money is never enough.” The concept was that in the spirit of Advent in anticipation of Christmas, Mother would solicit from each grandchild, a letter—not a text, not an email—but a handwritten note (though I suggested she enclose a card inside a pre-addressed stamped envelope to facilitate responses) describing what contribution(s) they wished to make—to what organization(s) and why and in what amount(s). Upon receipt of each response, she’d match-fund the contribution(s).
By this device—incentivizing contributions to savings and giving—and just as critically, by letters of encouragement accompanying the money, Mother could have a lasting impact on her grandchildren. The multiplier effect of this ante-mortem distribution of a portion of their “inheritance” could make for a better world.
I also touched on family legacy properties; their intrinsic value to all of us and the importance of preserving them as figurative gardens of the family’s collective heart and soul. I knew Björnholm would be a prickly subject[4], but for all the grandchildren it was the place of fond memories centered around their Nilsson grandparents in better times. Hamburg, was more likely to resonate with Mother, given her own childhood memories of the place, but its future was more precarious, since Mother had acceded to Gaga’s idea of giving it all to UB, and what he might do with it was quite possibly a function of his infatuation with the Serbian gold-bricker.
But Mother wasn’t interested in legacy or the transmission of values. She lost focus early in the course of my presentation of the “white paper.” By its conclusion her only question was whether I wanted to stay for dinner down in the dining hall. If I did she was sure “they’d allow me” . . . as long as I paid for it.
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© 2023 by Eric Nilsson
[1] People from Småland, the province in southern Sweden where Dad’s people had their roots. Marked by lakes, conifer forests, and bucolic scenes bounded by stone fences, the land yielded crops grudgingly to farmer folk stubborn enough to live there. A large percentage of Swedish emigrants to the U.S. came from this region and headed for the good earth of the Upper Midwest.
[2] By law and contract, unpaid storage fees would eventually transform into a warehouse lien, liquidated by a public sale of the stored possessions.
[3] In typical Dad fashion, he’d counted them out and stuffed them into $5-face-value paper rolls. When I noticed the box, I stood on my toes and gently tapped it—but not gently enough. It crashed to the cement floor, busting wide open, and blowing open nearly all the rolls. I watched in awe as the coins rolled helter-skelter. They reminded me of a frenzied herd of grade-schoolers playing pom-pom pull-away across an open-ended playground.
[4] Out of the blue a couple of years later, Mother asked when we were going to sell Björnholm. It was as if a lightning bolt had struck on a cloudless day. I was too shocked to acknowledge her question.
