I’m a man who uses a tea bag twice, and tells himself that the tea often tastes better on the second use of the bag. I go out of my way to buy gas for my car at a station where it is usually 20 to 35 cents a gallon less than at a much closer station. When I discover red grapes or tangerines at a dollar cheaper per pound than the usual price at my nearby supermarket, I refrain from doing my touchdown dance, but I do find myself quietly pleased. If the weather is temperate enough for a few days in July or August for me not to have to turn on the air conditioning in our apartment, well, you won’t be surprised to learn, I’m cool with that.

Robert Hutchins, the president of the University of Chicago, said that if you have to watch the meter, you shouldn’t take cabs. I watch the meter and while doing so recall that Hutchins, a man with a handsome expense account all his adult days, probably never paid for a cab in his life. A few years ago I was taken by a wealthy couple to Daniel, the then-hot French restaurant in New York. “Didn’t I read somewhere that you were opposed to expensive wines?” my host, pouring a glass of wine for me, remarked. “Not at all,” I corrected him. “I’m only opposed to paying for expensive wines.” The notion of buying a $200 bottle of wine is upsetting to me, but then so, too, would be that of picking up a dinner check for $680 for four people, or spending $500 to take three kids to a baseball game, or spending the same sum for dinner and a night at the opera for two. Wrong, all of it, it all feels wrong.