Newspapers that point the finger at bad guys should also point the finger at their own, if they transgress. I was convicted in Magistrates' Court this week of driving at 68 kph, and was fined $300 or 30 days. My dentist also fined me $120 for missing an appointment at the same time as I was in Court, and, of course, I lost a day's pay. So I'll be getting rich a little more slowly this year than I had planned.

One thought struck me: The alternative, for those who cannot or will not pay the fine, is imprisonment, at the rate of one day in the Big House per $10 of the fine. Yet incarceration costs the community about $170 per day, per prisoner. I was therefore offered this alternative in real terms: pay a $300 fine, or spend 30 days at the Westgate Hotel, and have the community pay $5,100 for the privilege.

I would have been financially better off, initially, to do the time. I'd have saved the $300, plus the electricity and food I would have consumed, and the phone calls I would have made during that time. I would, presumably, have had a full-tilt Christmas dinner, and a meaningful human experience. I certainly would have made new friends.

On the other hand, I would have lost my professional qualifications and probably my job, so it would have been a short-term gain for longer-term pain.

I paid the fine.

It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas. In Bermuda, that is reflected more in the shop windows than it is in snowfall. I suppose I should beat on you mercilessly about not spending money, but I don't have the heart. You wouldn't listen, anyway. So, instead, I thought I might address a less-considered part of the money equation: the non-financial.

We live in an oddly ugly time, from a financial perspective. Everything has become commoditised. By that I mean that the financial value of an item has become its only value. A house is not a home; it's an investment. Speak to any homeowner, and the chances are that they will tell you how little their home cost, relative to its present value, or how worried they are that soon it will be worthless. That is true in Bermuda, where house prices have always been inflated, thanks to a limited landmass and constant demand. It is now true in most of the economies in which we do business, to the east and the west, where circumstances are different.

People don't ask: "Who are you?" They ask: "What do you do?" Behind the question is the one that we are conditioned not to ask, which is: "How much do you earn?" People have become commodities too, valued only for their financial holdings, not for their intrinsic worth.

This was driven home to me when I opted to take some years to learn the writing trade. A friend asked how my parents felt about me wasting the investment they had made in my education. I had never thought about it that way before, so I asked my parents. Neither of them had thought about it that way, either.

It probably cost my folks today's equivalent of $100,000 or more to educate me, back in the day. At that time, however, no one thought of education as a financial investment. They didn't buy me an education because they thought they would make a profit. They gave me the gift of education because no gift has greater value, even if many things cost more. The purpose of educating me had to do with equipping me to be a good person who could function in society with a degree of ease. It cost money, buckets and buckets, but money was not the sole focus of life in those far-off days.

I doubt that attitude has changed very much, deep down, with most of today's parents. I thought that my friend's question was crass, to be honest, until she revealed that she and her husband, a school friend of mine, thought exactly that way about the money they were spending educating their two children. I feel sorry for my friends. You don't put money into your kids simply in the hope of recouping a profit, at least not in the developed countries. There was a time when children could be looked upon as such an investment, but those days are longer gone than the days of my education.

Another relevant story about children. Some Canadian friends had a son whom I took shopping one Christmas. I told he could have anything in the toy store that cost less than, I forget, say $40. This was the time of Pokemon cards. After spinning like a top for a while, unable to select anything, the boy chose a set of Pokemon cards, and I spent the $39.95. (Kids develop a sense of financial values very quickly in a society that has only such values.)

On the way home, in the car, the lad raved on and on about his gift. He then revealed his true motivation. He hoped that one particular card was in the packet, because: "It's worth a million dollars".

I asked how disappointed he would be if the card were not in the pack. "Oh, it'll be OK," he said, "but think if it is in there. I'll be rich!" He was seven years old.

I wasn't there when he opened his Christmas present, but I was informed in a thank-you card that the packet didn't contain the million-dollar winner. I was actually relieved.

These stories are meant to illustrate a Christmas-style point. Things have values other than the financial. Your house, if you have one, is your home. It might be a good investment, but first and foremost, it is the stage on which you and your loved ones live your lives. Enjoy it as such, and focus only secondarily on the obscene gains you stand to make by owning it.

Your children are human beings, not stocks and shares. For goodness' sake, divorce these two concepts and love your children for their emotional and spiritual value. Don't ever think of them as investments. (You can occasionally think of them as malicious little pests.)

The whole purpose of financial management is to allow you to enjoy your home, your children, and your life, not just to make money. Open your Christmas presents considering the value of friendship and love that they express, not their financial value.

Oh. It has been pointed out that this is no longer Christmas. It is the holiday season. Fine by me. I don't celebrate at this time of year. Whatever it's called, this is a time of goodwill to all men and women. That includes you.

I draw your attention to the columns of Martha Myron, which regularly appear on this page. Perhaps all you need to know, from this perspective, is that she is my financial advisor.

And, finally this. The most-searched word on Merriam-Webster's website this year was "integrity". The most-searched term on the whole of the Internet was "Paris Hilton". Win some. Lose some.