How few our real wants, and how vast our imaginary ones!

Actual needs are a short list: food, shelter, warmth, work, a few people who know you. Everything past that is something you have been taught to want, and the teaching is constant and very well funded. The gap between the two lists is where most anxiety about money lives, and it grows on its own if nobody stops it.

Write the short list out, honestly, and then look at what you spent last month against it. Cancel one thing that appears nowhere on the list, and notice whether you miss it in a fortnight.