(242) Money is a good servant but bad master

One mother in Silver City bought a four bedroom house before she passed on. Her three unmarried daughters stayed in it. A few years back one married daughter came back from Belgium and occupied the fourth bedroom.

The eldest of these sisters is eighty years old while the youngest is already seventy. Interestingly the one which came back from abroad has three million dollars in the bank but continues to share the house with her not so wealthy sisters. It is amazing that with such liquid wealth in the bank, she would count her dollars and her pennies. These four women would argue and quarrel about amounts as small as a few dollars in house hold expenses.

Meanwhile, the married sister's husband made sure he came at least once a year and be with his wife so that she could not divorce him. He is waiting for her to be senile so that he could declare her incompetent and grab her wealth to return to Belgium. There is inherently nothing wrong with being wealthy. But in this case the wealth is not doing much good for the owner, her husband and her sisters now. No one trusts another. Each one check and recheck bills to make sure the others are not making them pay a penny more. While the money accrues interest in the bank, five people are watching each other but no one is touching even the interest as our careful married woman survives on a small part of her monthly pension.

A few years back two dead bodies were found in a Silver City house. The daughter who was in her fifties died suddenly in front of the TV. Her mother, who was bed bound, starved to death. The house land line telephone was just a matter of ten feet away from her hospital bed in the sitting room. Later relatives found two million dollars in fixed deposit in a local bank. Those two women lived very simply, without a car and with no household helper. Looking at the house and the furnishing, one would think they were destitute.

Money in the hands of wise owners can do much good, miserly people who are slaves to money would live like paupers until the day they die.