ME & MY MONEY: We Need To Talk About Kevin author Lionel Shriver on how she taught herself to be frugal

Lionel Shriver is the author of 16 novels, including the international bestseller We Need To Talk About Kevin (2003), writes Alex Peake-Tomkinson.

It was made into a film of the same name, for which Tilda Swinton was nominated for a Bafta Award for Best Actress and a Golden Globe Award for Best Actress in 2011. Her books have been translated into 28 languages.

She is now 66 and lives outside Lisbon with her husband, jazz musician Jeff Williams.

What did your parents teach you about money?

Not to spend it! They were very economical. What I found difficult in the latter part of my life was learning how to spend money. The problem with the savings mentality is that it is fundamentally based on a misconception about immortality, especially since I don’t have children and at some point you have to realize that it is just a means to an end. If you’re a saver, that’s hard to understand.

Did you think being an author would be well paid?

No, I wasn’t that stupid. I went in with my eyes open. I felt very fortunate early in my career, even though I wasn’t making great progress, that I was getting anything at all. I’m afraid to admit how lucky I am because I think women tend to apologize when they’re good at something: “Oh, I’m just lucky.” And male authors never say that, so it’s not just that I’m lucky. But it was a big risk. It was a financial risk on top of all the other risks.

Have you ever struggled to make ends meet?

Certainly, I struggled the first half of my career. Things went well for me in the beginning. But then I lost my American publisher and had to spend twelve years in the wilderness, publishing only in Britain and getting paid very little. All that frugality my parents taught me helped me in a way, because I could live on little money and still do what I wanted. I ate a lot of carrots and learned to drink Bulgarian wine. Apologies to the Bulgarians!

What’s the most expensive thing you bought for fun?

I bought a Movado watch for about £500. I got into an argument with someone who turned out to be quite an unpleasant person. And she gave me a Movado watch. I didn’t ask for it, but this was the kind of person who gave you gifts to make you feel owed. Once the relationship came to an ugly end, she wanted the watch back. I posted her the watch and immediately went out and bought myself a nicer Movado watch that was bigger, which meant it had a face that I could read without glasses – that’s really important as you get older.

Her intention had been to pull this terribly valuable, beautiful thing back to stab. Instead, I used it as an opportunity to upgrade.

What is your biggest money mistake?

It was to take a piece of money and give it to a good friend of mine to invest. He had beaten the market at the time. He writes financial documents professionally, so it wasn’t entirely crazy to have him invest this money. Well, it’s been a catastrophe.

I have less of that money now. Enough time has passed that, if I had just put it in an index fund, it would have doubled in value.

It’s awkward and the mistake isn’t so much the loss of the money as the fact that it involves a friendship and money – that’s something you should avoid at all costs if you can.

Preferably use a financial advisor with whom you can maintain a purely professional relationship.

What’s the best money decision you’ve made?

Ironically, he was meant to be a writer. It literally paid off. Sometimes you take a risk and it works out. But this decision did not come without significant suffering. The twelve years I mentioned were not happy years – they were full of frustration and disappointment. But in the end it turned out fine. And if I had allowed myself to be discouraged, I would be poorer now.

What would you have done if you had not become a writer?

Perhaps I was drawn to something even more impractical, figure sculpture. Growing up, I was as passionate about art as I was about writing.

Are you saving for a pension?

Naturally. I don’t trust America’s Social Security system to go above and beyond. I get a small British pension. It never occurred to me to save for retirement, at least until I was 40. I was living hand to mouth so there was no question of saving for later, it was hard enough just getting through the month. It is one of the things that is made more prosperous possible.

How many properties do you own?

My husband and I have a shoddy little house in Brooklyn that we’ve had for 20 years, and we also own this house in Portugal, just outside Lisbon, that overlooks the sea—it’s not suffering. We bought it at the end of 2022. It’s a ridiculously large house with five bedrooms.

What was the best year of your financial life?

It was 2007, and that’s not when my book We Need To Talk About Kevin came out, but when it arrived. It wasn’t actually in my favor because everything that book made was made in one year, so as a result the real beneficiary was the US government. I lost half the book proceeds in taxes.

Do you give money to charity?

Not very much, although I have done that once. I got ridiculous money from the BBC in the Covid era, around 2020. They wanted to do an interview for a complicated project. My instincts were definitely that the project would never come to fruition, so long story short, I felt a bit weird when I got paid £18,000 for four hours.

And I gave £12,000 of it to a food bank and when you deduct the extra taxes I had to pay on that charity donation, I lost 20 per cent of £12,000: two and a half grand in fact. But that still left a generous reward for an afternoon of my time.

What is your number one financial priority?

Surviving an impending budget apocalypse. I also think it will be impossible to protect yourself from an international budget collapse. I think we’ll all be in the same boat.

• Mania is published by The Borough Press on April 11, RRP £22