Sensible with money, or actively preferring an extremely frugal life? I'd rather buy the thing I actually want than feel obliged to choose the budget version.

We're the same on this, and I'll prove it with the least dignified example I own.

You mentioned conditioner. I have a fanatical devotion to L'Oréal shower gel — the bright orange one — along with the matching face cream and deodorant. Am I aware that chemically there is almost nothing between it and the Migros budget version? Entirely. Do I care? Not even slightly. It smells good, it makes the start of the day better, and I think that is a completely valid reason to spend money. Same story with Apple, an embarrassing quantity of audio equipment, Levi's, New Balance, Onitsuka Tiger, a Mammut jacket.

The thread running through all of it is that I buy those things because I like them, not because of what they announce. Where I do turn snob is the opposite direction — people who wear brands in order to be seen wearing brands I find crass and faintly sad. I scratched the printed logo off the Mammut jacket. The only opinions I care about belong to people I respect, and not one of them has ever assessed me by which designer I wore to my brother's wedding.

Now the unflattering half, because you should have that too. I've been living a bachelor's life for a while and it shows. I put money into startups at a range of returns, most of them miserable. I burned through a great deal of savings during the invalidity application — you have to, that's how it works — and I wasn't earning through the bad epilepsy years. What I did do consistently, when the salaries were high, was give away a serious percentage of them anonymously, to education and development projects. These days it's less money and more time. With a family of my own in view, that changes, and it starts now.

Then the floor under all of it, which I'm going to state without the apology I normally attach to it. The benefit adjusts with dependants. It guarantees a comfortable, unremarkable, Swiss middle-of-the-road life — for my wife and me for the whole of our natural lives, and for the children until they're grown. It isn't a fortune. It's a floor that illness or a bad year cannot remove.

And one thing you should know rather than discover later: my parents are comfortable, which is an understatement. Houses, a portfolio, savings. We've never discussed it directly because we'd all find that vulgar. I'd inherit somewhere in the region of one and a half million dollars. I'm telling you because you ought to know it, not because it's an argument.

On how it gets run: in a marriage with children, assets are joint, and that's the end of the discussion. The big decisions are made by two people. The month-to-month budgeting, however, is something I have never shown the faintest talent for, nor honestly the ability to stick to — and it does occur to me that a woman who spent a decade watching securities for a living might be fractionally better equipped for it than an impulsive optimist with questionable filing habits. Or we hire an accountant. Just not me.