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 Best Actress Bafta Award and a Best Actress Golden Globe Award in 2011. Her books have been translated into 28 languages. 

Now 66, she 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 frugal. In the latter part of my life, what has been difficult for me is learning to spend money. The problem with the saving mentality is that it is fundamentally based on a misconception of immortality, especially as I don’t have any children and at a certain point, you have to realise that it’s merely a means to an end. When you’re a saver, that’s hard to understand.

Did you think being an author would be well-paid? 

No, I wasn’t that dumb. I went in with my eyes open. I felt very fortunate early in my career, even though I wasn’t getting big advances, to get anything at all. I’m reluctant to wallow in how lucky I am because I think women have a tendency to apologise when they do well with 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 in addition to every other kind of risk.

Have you ever struggled to make ends meet?

I struggled for the first half of my career, certainly. I was doing okay to begin with. But then I lost my US publisher and I went through 12 years in the wilderness, only publishing in the UK, and getting paid very little. All that frugality that my parents taught me came to my rescue in some ways, because I was able to live on little money and still do what I wanted. I ate a lot of carrots and learned to drink Bulgarian wine. Apologies to Bulgarians!

What is the most expensive thing you bought for fun?

I bought a Movado watch for about £500. I fell out with someone who proved to be rather an unpleasant person. And she had given me a Movado watch. I didn’t ask for it but this was the kind of person who gave you presents to make you feel indebted. Once the relationship came to an ugly conclusion, she wanted the watch back. I posted her the watch and then I went right out and I bought myself a nicer Movado watch that was bigger, which meant that it had a watch face that I could read without my glasses on – that’s very important as you get older.

She had intended the withdrawal of this terribly valuable, wonderful thing to sting. Instead I used it as an occasion to upgrade.

What is your biggest money mistake?

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

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

It’s awkward and the mistake is not so much losing the money as the fact it involves a friendship and money – that’s to be avoided if you can, at all costs.

Ideally use a financial adviser, with whom you can have a purely professional relationship.

What is the best money decision you have made?

Ironically, it was to become a writer. It has paid off, literally. Sometimes you take a risk and it works out. But this decision was not without some considerable suffering along the way. The 12 years I mentioned were not happy years – they were full of frustration and disappointment. But it came right in the end. And if I had allowed myself to be discouraged then I would be poorer now.

What would you have done if you hadn’t become a writer?

I might have been drawn to something even more impractical and that’s figure sculpture. Growing up, I was as passionate about art as I was about writing.

Do you save into a pension?

Of course. I don’t trust America’s social security to go the distance. I get a tiny UK pension. It never occurred to me to save for my retirement – until my late 40s, at least. I was living hand to mouth so there was no question of saving for later, it was hard enough to make it through the month. It is one of the things that becoming more affluent made possible.

How many properties do you own?

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

What was the best year of your financial life?

It was 2007, which is not when my book We Need To Talk About Kevin came out, it’s when it came in. It was not to my advantage, actually, as everything that book made, it made in a single year so as a result the real beneficiary was the US government. I lost half of the book proceeds in tax.

Do you donate money to charity?

Not very much, though I did once. I was paid silly money by the BBC in the Covid era, about 2020. They wanted to do an interview for some complicated project. My instincts were absolutely dead on, that the project would never come to fruition so, long story short, I felt a little weird about getting paid £18,000 for four hours.

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

What is your number one financial priority?

Surviving an upcoming fiscal apocalypse. I also think it is going to be impossible to protect yourself against international fiscal collapse. I think we’re all going to be in the same boat.

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