I am an excellent money manager.

The hardest money management happens at the bottom, not the top.

Making a hundred pounds stretch to Friday takes a running calculation held in the head all week — which bill can wait, what the freezer still holds, bus or walk, whether the shoes can last another month.

Nobody files that under financial skill. It gets called getting by.

It is the same faculty people are congratulated for at larger numbers, run in worse conditions with no room for a mistake. Anyone who has done it already knows how to manage money. The version with a surplus is the easy one.