As you know, there are two sides to the whole money business: earning and spending. In getting rich slowly, the first trick is to master your spending (and debt, which is a branch of spending). As the weeks go by, we will look at how to earn more, but in the initial stages, I want to make sure that you have done all you can on the spending side. That?s why we?re focusing on the outgo to such an extent at this stage.

Spending falls into two categories: fixed and discretionary. To save us from drowning in the jargon of economics and to keep things in the realm of common sense, I?ll define these categories in a very simple way.

Imagine you have slipped into a coma. (Reading this column can have that effect.) Some of your expenses would still have to be paid. For example: your rent, electricity, telephone line rental, car or mortgage payments, credit card payments and so forth. Your landlord doesn?t care whether you are alert or comatose, and nor does the phone company. They care only that your bills are paid. These costs are your fixed expenses, money you must spend. You can control these items, to a limited extent. You can move to a smaller house, or turn lights off when you leave a room (which you should do anyway, for goodness sake). You can pay off your credit card bills. You can drive a smaller car.

But once you?ve done as many of these things as you feel like doing ? and I?m not suggesting you move house or buy a smaller car than you think you need ? there isn?t much more you can do.

So the rule with your fixed expenses is: review them, see if there is anything you can do to reduce them, and then forget about them, other than in terms of paying them.

But ? while you are lying there in a coma, blissfully unaware of the mayhem you have caused your loved ones, your discretionary expenses, the money you don?t necessarily have to spend but choose to, would fall to zero. More or less. Good examples of discretionary items are books, DVDs and soccer tickets (unless you are a student or a sports reporter). Your life would run just fine if you never saw another film, but you like movies, so you choose to go see one from time to time. The same applies to going to boxing matches, buying new clothes, dining out ?

Here we run into a slight snag. You must eat in order to live. Some food bills, therefore, could be considered a fixed expense. You must wear clothes, by law, more?s the pity, so some clothing expense is fixed. It is easier, however, to regard these costs as discretionary, since you have choices in what kind of food to eat, and what kind of clothes to wear. If you really care about such things, you can regard the basic grocery shopping as fixed, and the caviar bill as discretionary. Not even I go that far, however, probably because I hate caviar. I look at food eaten at home as a fixed cost, and dining out as discretionary. I therefore don?t pay much attention to the grocery bill, but sometimes try to limit the number of meals I eat out.

If you give all this a certain amount of initial thought, you then don?t have to think about it very much, ever again. Cut yourself some slack.

Buy whatever you want in the grocery store, for example, because if you have to worry about the cost of groceries, especially in Bermuda, you?ll go nuts. Pay the bill at the checkout, whatever it might be, and enjoy the fact that you?re making a living and having a good life. (Never doubt that: if you are getting by in Bermuda, you are enjoying a very good life compared to the great majority of people in the world.)

Then, you can think harder when you go shopping for anything else, or (and this is much easier), you can set yourself a simple series of rules for shopping, and quite quickly you?ll find that you are sticking to them, and rarely if ever have to think about that aspect of your money again. That would free you up for considering how to earn more money, which is a much more fruitful, and less depressing, exercise.

I?ve been droning on about this for quite a while. If you haven?t got it by now, you?re probably never going to get it, so I am about to switch to the earnings side of the equation. After we take a look at your spending charts, I will return to expenses from time to time, though, just to reinforce what we?ve already covered.

It?s a curious thing. Your very best economic strategy, if you have good health insurance, would be to slip into a coma for a year or two. Your investments would continue to make money for you, and your expenses would fall dramatically as your life was dismantled. Do not, however, take steps to ensure that you slip into a coma. You have to live, and you also ought to be grateful for, and enjoy, all the good things you have going for you, economically and otherwise.

One of my correspondents wrote to say that none of this advice would be of much use to a farmer in a developing country, whose assets were composed of a plough and half an acre of land. My correspondent was right. This column isn?t aimed at people in the developing world, or indeed much of the developed world, where taxes make wealth accumulation a remote possibility. It?s aimed at Bermuda residents, a tiny and shrinking percentage of the world for whom Bermuda?s enlightened tax policy and sophisticated financial services industry make getting rich slowly a very real possibility.

The only problem is that you have to make an effort. If I?m trying to do anything here, it?s to get you to see that there is hope; there is something you can do; and you owe it to yourself and your children, if you care about such things, to do what it takes to get rich slowly.