I've hitherto always believed myself to be a big spender, always contrived that when Peggy Lee sang 'Hey Big Spender!' way back in '66 she must have kept me in mind, not until I got married.

The minute you walked in the joint
I could see you were a man of distinction
A real big spender Good looking, so refined
Say wouldn't you like to know what's going on in my mind?

Even in those days of yore when two multiplex movies a month were enough to blow my whole month pocket to smithereens, I bargained, begged, borrowed, virtually did everything short of stealing from my dad to maintain my life style.
If we were out in a group, especially in womanly company, ever the chivalrous, Priyank Gupta would be the first one to pull out the greenbacks. Though a tad miser with gifts, I never bothered before spending out of my means, (there was always a generous mom to cover my backside!). The time I had girlfriends as well as those times when not, while other friends prudently missed called, I effortlessly blew a chunk of my allowances on phone calls. The not so occasioned booze parties and the more frequent Marlboros piled up heavy outstandings on several occasions. And the innumerable bribes paid to disco bouncers for permission to allow stags invariably fell on my pockets, not because no one else volunteered, but because yours truly had the uncanny knack of being the first one to enumerate. Nevertheless my wastrel proclivity ensured that I was the best dressed and most refined of all guys around and perpetually in the midst of girls to the envy of most guys..
Those were the days I called myself Peggy Lee's Big Spender. It was high time that reality struck and responsibility made a call on me. And so in the opportune circumstances of me being tied into holy matrimony, it dawned upon me, what in teenage was risqué behaviour had discreetly metamorphosed into an obsessive disorder. I began to understand that my disposition of spending beyond means would only make financial management tougher what with having to support an equally spendthrift wife and maintaining the lavish lifestyle. It is now I comprehend the pearls of wisdom Papa used to shower upon me, on how difficult it is to earn and save and how easy to spend. What in those days were gibberish sermons to me had within a month transmogrified into rudimentary principles of parsimony.
The first thing Papa ever told me was to think and visualise what I'm buying, how badly I need it, what I'm paying for it and then apply the fundamental principle of micro-economics that is the law of marginal utility (the gun and butter theory!). With my teenage arrogance I always ignored this principle and ended up buying heaps of expensive stuff which in the end more often than not were passed on without being used. I cannot even count the watches,music players, game discs and what not I had possessed blinding my eyes to this principle.
The second was to never be a miser but watch where you spend. That was the primary reason Papa never left me loose on my finances. Most things I used to spend were entertainment, food and drinks, not necessarily in that order. Food was mostly junk and drinks mostly alcoholic and both crunched my finances and expanded my waistline. Entertainment was fine until I began to watch several movies twice, thrice or even more.
And last but not the least to plan for the future, to save for heydays. And this was by far the most ignored advice of my dad and I, invariably ended with negative savings despite being a student of economics.
Things did change a bit when I started earning but only in the respect that I had more at my disposal to spend and continued to save in the negative. However, it is only now that I realise the importance of keeping tabs on spending. Now that I know that I need to save, that I have a family of my own, that I have responsibilities, now that I already have innumerable expenses of not only myself but the wife as well and which in the near future shall only stride in an incremental direction, have I awakened to these wisdom words. The wife thinks I'm a scrooge but understands in her heart of hearts. And it's only good she understands.