Radio & Podcasts
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Misers, Bling and the Money Thing
BBC Radio 4
November 2014
You have money to spend and you're going to spend it - or are you? Alvin Hall presents two programmes exploring the motivation behind people's actions with money.
In the first of two programmes focusing on attitudes to spending and saving, Alvin discusses why some people who have plenty of cash choose to sit on a secret nest egg, rather than spend and make their life better. The presenter, who has spent decades exploring people's attitudes towards money, asks a range of people why they have made the spending decisions they have.
Alvin speaks to Barney Curley, a hugely successful Irish gambler, who has discovered that as he gets older winning a fortune does not give him the thrill it once did. The presenter also hears Edna Hale’s story and learns how her friends were astonished to find she had left £150,000 to charity after her death – money that Edna could have used to improve her life.
Comedian Dan Nainan attributes his obsession to economy to his Japanese and Indian parents, and will only read books he can reserve for free from the library, despite hitting seven digits on his bank account.
Finally, Ben Hatch's innovative attempts to save money have seen him buy his wife's 40th birthday present from a charity shop – and forgetting to take the label off.