A story this week that?s mostly personal, but which illustrates some larger truths about getting rich slowly.

It starts many years ago, at a time when computers were just beginning to invade our consciousness. Younger readers will be unable to visualise such a world, so they should imagine that we all lived in caves and men clubbed women on the head whenever they felt like a spot of company.

I was in the market for my first personal computer, a laptop. I had a book to write and needed a machine on which to write it. The burning question, the only thing I could think about for days and weeks on end, was whether to buy one with back-lighting or not.

Again, for younger readers, there was a time, thousands of years ago, when laptops were new, and their screen displays could be illuminated, or not, depending on how much money you had to spend. The unilluminated LCD screen could only be seen head on, with a light source such as the sun or a desk lamp nearby. The screen was invisible in the dark, a bit like the first digital watches ? oh, never mind.

Anyway. For a man in my position (unemployed at the time), the cost of the laptop was an outrage, and the additional cost of illumination made laptop ownership even more preposterous. Computers, it was thought at the time, were for business and government people, who only spend other people?s money, so it never really matters to them how much a thing costs.

I had a friend ? still do ? who has lived his life very differently from the way I have lived mine. He had an eternal bank overdraft and didn?t care two hoots what anything cost. His carefully-considered view of life was that thinking about money was undignified, and that my constant internal assessment of my financial condition was a waste of a human life. I?m exaggerating, but not by much.

Here?s what happened. We both bought laptops at about the same time, me because I needed one, and he because he wanted one. OK, I could have used a pencil and paper, but I planned to sell my book and become a great writer, and nobody famous in the world of letters got that way by using a pencil and paper, did they? Other than everybody before about 1920, that is.

My friend bought ? or I should say my friend?s bank bought ? a computer with back-lighting, and I bought one without. This will make you smile: my laptop?s hard drive was 200 megabytes. Today, single files can be much larger. But I digress.

My friend gave me grief over my penny-pinching ways, and for years I agonised over whether I was nothing but a tightwad. My friend had a sexy laptop, whereas mine was, well, lame. It did the job OK. I was able to write the book and get it out to publishers in such good shape that they could read it, turn it down and have it back to me in less than a week. But as happy as I was to be in the publishing game, I still felt remorse at not buying the more expensive laptop.

Of course, the machine became outdated in a few years, and I had to buy another. I?m typing this on my sixth one in 15 years, but the feeling of being a cheapskate did not leave until one day when my friend told me, with huge resignation, that his financial lassitude had come home to roost, and he had been forced to (gasp) get a job.

I have great sympathy for those in life who can sail through it without money and without work. I know a number of people like this and count them among my closest friends. What free spirits they must be. I have worked for most of my life, and never worked harder than when I was officially out of work. And I?m not even a Protestant.

I was deeply unhappy for my friend, but over the moon for myself. Not because I enjoyed his misery, but because it quickly became clear that my whole philosophy of not buying stuff just because you feel like it, of watching the pennies and letting the pounds take care of themselves, in other words of getting rich slowly, was not some loser?s proposition, but an entirely justified approach to life that actually worked.

You have to be true to what you believe, and my friend was, and is. His philosophy, which I suspect many embrace, is a hedonistic approach that says, sort of: ?Whatever I want, and damn the consequences.? Call it the Woody Allen school. I was not certain for years that my long-term approach to life was the right one until (a) my friend?s experience suggested it and (b) I lived into the long term. I ain?t exactly rich, but I seem to have a handle on money (famous last words).

What I learned is that money, over a lifetime, requires a certain amount of attention. You can pay (note that word) the attention in dribs and drabs all your life, or you can pay none at all for a long time and then have to pay so much that it takes control of your life?s trajectory.

I believe that you should adopt whichever of these approaches suits you best. I don?t think that my friend could have understood my advice until financial catastrophe ? the bank calling the loan ? made him pay attention, to the exclusion of almost everything else. I did try to explain things to him down the years, but he never seemed capable of understanding even the simplest financial notions. Not wired for it, I suppose, just as I can?t fix a motorbike.

That might make me believe that only two kinds of readers are following along here: those who already care, and those who won?t care until the bank of life calls their loan. But a great raft of e-mails from readers has led me to think that maybe I can help change the way some people think.

The really bad news for my friend is that once he has paid the loan off, he will not be able to return to his profligate ways. It?s like dieters who lose a bunch of weight, and then want to eat chocolate 24/7 and stay thin; it can?t be done. Replacing bad financial habits with more sensible behaviour is a lifetime commitment, but it brings a lifetime?s rewards.

And now, having thoroughly sickened myself with my common sense and restrained approach to everything, I?m off to eat the largest, most expensive piece of chocolate cake I can find. Oh no, wait ? I hate chocolate cake. Ah well. Another six bucks saved. Not all bad, then.

See ya.