This morning I spent an hour or so going over my banking records, which go all the way to 1990, when I moved from Cambridge, Massachusetts, to Reading, Berkshire, together with my yet to be second wife. My No. 1 son was with us at the time, and he stayed with us for half a year. Given my habit of writing everything down, including auxiliary notes about where the money actually went, the records tell a great deal about my life the last quarter of a century. Everything is there in plain numbers. And I still remember my troubles during the Nineties, when I had many financial obligations and few sources of income.

At the time, I was paying through my nose for my No. 1 son’s upkeep. In the bargain, my first wife did reasonably well. While still in the States, I cashed in all of my stocks to pay for my son’s education, but the monthly bills were far from negligible through the mid-Nineties, when he completed his university education. According to my records, I was paying for his life insurance, as well. But it is a joy to see how much time we had spent together over the years. And my banking records do not lie.

My parents moved from Belgrade to Reading in 1993, and I left my Reading home to them. I was married to my second wife by then, and we moved to London together with my No. 2 son, who was born in Reading a year before my parents’ arrival. All of the expenses for the Reading home were on my shoulders, including the mortgage and mortgage insurance, communal taxes, maintenance, sundry bills, and the like. When my parents spent the money they had gotten from the sale of their Belgrade apartment, all of their expenses came my way. By the mid-Nineties, there were times when I had hard time paying for a taxi in London.

In addition, my second wife wanted me to cover a share of her expenses in our London home. Prodded by her family, she did not want a freeloader in her home. At first I was paying a regular weekly amount for food, and then I started paying for the upkeep of my No. 2 son and my daughter, who was born in London in 1995. Soon enough, a standing order appeared on my account. It dwindled over the years only because I was increasingly desperate financially speaking. In the late Nineties, it was two-hundred pounds sterling per child each month for a year; then it dropped to one-hundred and seventy-five pounds per child a month for a year and a half; next it dropped to a hundred pounds per child a month for a year; and finally it settled to twenty-five pounds per child a month ever since 2003, when I saw the children for the last time. All told, I have paid more than twenty-thousand pounds sterling to my No. 2 son and daughter without any interest. With interest, the regular payments over seventeen years would amount to around three times the original amount. And the children come from one of the richest families in the world from their mother’s side!

My banking records also show my many trips abroad. And I was all over the place between 1990 and 2003, when I retired for good. It is almost painful to go through the names of so many cities, countries, and continents. My trips often followed each other by only a few weeks. In spite of my effort to get a clear picture of my life during the last twenty-five years, I found it ever more difficult to follow the records. From time to time, I found them outright revolting. By comparison, my life the last twelve years is simplicity itself. And my financial situation is so much better than during my fourteen years in Britain. My pensions are steady, and my expenses are perfectly predictable from month to month, and from year to year.

Perhaps it will take me years to look into my banking records once again. It is a strange experience, to be sure. Much precision comes from dates and amounts, as well as my auxiliary notes, and it is occasionally difficult to visualize the people involved and the places where the money was spent. But so much detail is right in front of one’s eyes. It is often mesmerizing, too. There are untold names of shops and restaurants, as well as those of family members, friends and acquaintances, and colleagues. In fact, the records could easily be turned into a novel bursting with detail. Even if petty, the detail would bamboozle many a reader. Only the most careful among readers would eventually surmise that the literary effort was based on someone’s banking records. And painfully meticulous ones.