When I was eleven, my mother gave me an empty box and told me to put one coin in it every Friday. She did not tell me what it was for. (11) By the end of that year the box was heavy, and I had stopped thinking about it. Then my bicycle wheel broke. My mother was gentle but did not give me the money, (12) she pointed at the shelf. I paid for the repair myself, and I remember the weight of the box in my hands. (13) I understood the lesson she had not put into words. Money that arrives slowly feels different in the hand, (14) nobody can teach that with a speech.
A person who would never pay two thousand dollars for a jacket may pay sixty dollars for a drink every working day. (15) Sixty times two hundred and fifty days is fifteen thousand, more than seven jackets. We judge a price against the thing beside it, not against a year. Banks know this, (16) a small monthly fee is simpler to sell than a large one paid once. Some people now write down every cost for one month, not to feel bad, but to see the shape of it. (17), they often find that the big choices were never the problem. The money did not go in one loud moment, (18) in five hundred quiet ones.