Before we traded in our Konigsburg for Kafka and our Dahl for Dostoevsky, the authors of our childhood laced their stories of mystery and imagination with advice on money and finances. Money was something in this stories, but not everything.

From the Mixed Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler
Lesson: Be resourceful and borrow—if you must.

Consider the classic tome from the great and recently deceased E.L. Konigsburg. In it, young Claudia Kincaid is confronted early on with the consequences of being a compulsive over-spender. Almost as soon as she decides to run away to the comforts of the Met, she realizes she can’t. She’s broke. Solution? She does what we all do: makes nice with her little brother Jamie (Dad)—who is responsible and likes to save his money—and convinces him (Dad) to go with her (finance her big, New York City lifestyle). She’s also not above fishing for change in the museum fountain, which is great, for obvious reasons..

Once Jamie agrees to join forces, they run away with his $24.43. (How many of us, upon first read, thought that was a ton of money?) But here’s a dark and ugly truth about Jamie’s fortune. He got it cheating at the card game War on the bus with his friends. Somewhere in there is a lesson about dishonest forms of accumulating wealth. But we like Jamie and assume he won’t grow up to exist on ponzi schemes, insider trading, gambling, or whatever else those fat cats do.

The Secret of the Old Clock
Lesson: Don’t have two wills when one will do.

The entire plot of Carolyn Keene’s The Secret of the Old Clock (THE Nancy Drew book of Nancy Drew books) centers around elderly aunts who were swindled out of their cousin’s will, and thus survive by selling off old jewelry and furniture. Unfortunately, they are also the caretakers of young Judy—a bright girl, who probably won’t be able to attend college because of her aunts’ financial misfortune. Nancy, ever the industrious problem solver, suggests scholarships and financial aid before tracking down the real will. Granted, the whole thing could have been avoided if the old cousin had just been a lot smarter about everything. But at least we have Nancy.

But what do legal wills mean to fifth-grade girls? Close to nothing, except that they need to be in order by the time we die. Thanks, Carolyn Keene.

The Westing Game
Lesson: Lots of money can, on certain occasions, make people do bad things.

Wills and testaments probably continued to hold little meaning until we picked up Ellen Raskin’s 1979 Newberry-winner, The Westing Game. In this one, 16 possible heirs are thrust into a game and given clues to figure out who is the real heir to Sam Westing’s $200 million fortune. But here, in a book almost completely about money, characters are defined by their attitudes toward wealth. Raskin gives her young audience what is likely their first look at how, and to what extent, money changes people. It is perhaps, a bit much to suggest our 11-year-old souls had the depth to read that much into Raskin’s life lessons here—lots of money makes you do things you’ll regret!—but who among us wasn’t fascinated by Turtle Wexler’s love of the stock market? Like Konigsburg’s Jamie, young Turtle Wexler inspired the budding capitalist in all of us (though we may not have known it at the time).

Charlie and the Chocolate Factory
Lesson: Take a chance!

Yes, Roald Dahl’s Charlie and the Chocolate Factory has lessons about money, too. For starters, sometimes a little gambling pays off now and then, right? When Charlie stumbles across a dollar bill lying in the street, his life is changed forever. Why? Because he, in full faith and knowledge of his family’s poverty, took part of it and bought a chocolate bar. He did this, knowing there was about a one-in-a-million chances it would pay off. Spoiler: it did. Call it irresponsible, but that one gamble, er, investment, literally became his ticket to a lifetime of wealth and riches. Well done, Charlie!

The Indian in the Cupboard
Lesson: Some of the best things in life are free

Even the absence of money taught us how to value a good deal. In Lynne Reid Banks’ The Indian In the Cupboard, young Omri is given a used cupboard, found in an alley, in the very first chapter by his older brother. (The brother’s pocket money, we find out, had been stopped due to an “unfortunate accident” involving his father’s bike). But that used cupboard turned out to be THE cupboard, capable of bringing a plastic toy indian to life. Something that cost nothing turned out to be everything.

Ramona Quimby, Age 8
Lesson: There’s more to life than money. Period.

Which brings us to an eraser. A cheap, pink eraser given to one Ramona Quimby, age 8. In the sixth book of the Ramona Quimby series, author Beverly Cleary introduces some tough financial times for the Quimby family that, to our young eyes, probably seemed like no big deal. Looking back though, wow! Ramona’s father decides to go back to college to become an art teacher, and he maintains a part-time job at the supermarket. That’s got to put a financial strain on the family. Yet none of this seems to matter to Ramona. While she is aware of the family’s money problems, it’s hardly the center of her world. Thus bringing us full circle to where we started: money is something, but not everything.

It is comforting, revisiting these pages from our past and remembering a time when we were told—and believed—that good people do well and bad people don’t. There’s a reason Charlie Bucket gets to inherit the factory and Turtle Wexler ultimately solves the mystery. There’s a reason Romana Quimby can declare she is “winning at growing up” (in Ramona Forever). How many of us can say that now? Mrs. Frankweiler gets it. She’s old and has lots of money, but she doesn’t care. She was just searching for some kind happiness. Why else would she change her will at the end? Lucky for Claudia and Jamie they came around at just the right time.

And what about us? All I know is that somewhere between the Cleary and the Chekhov something changed; I’m still trying to figure out what.

A.C. lives in Washington, D.C.

A friend’s dad, retiring soon after a career sitting under fluorescent lights, sent him this excerpt from a book called SHADOW DIVERS with the note: “Slapped me in the face.  Too late for me though.” 

My friend, sitting under his own fluorescents lights, was so moved that he quit his job to become a commercial diver. Okay that didn’t happen. He just forwarded it to me, and then I quit my job to become a commercial diver. Okay that didn’t happen either. I posted it, and you read it, and then you quit your job to become a commercial diver.

Jami Attenberg is a 40-year-old novelist with three books out.  Her essay on The Rumpus about having success but having no money is pretttttyyyyy great. It’s framed around the past half-year, as she’s tried to figure out how to live the life she wants, and also live within her means. “I have slept in 26 locations in the last seven months,” she starts. “This was never my intention, this peripatetic life, but looking back now at the age of 40, I can finally see I have been doing it for decades. I wanted so much more for myself at some point, though I cannot even remember what exactly it was that I wanted anymore. Now it is only just to write.” Read the whole thing, it’s gooooood (even if you’re not a writer, mean it).

If you are looking for a book about Wall Street but aren’t sure just what book about Wall Street your are looking for, Heidi N. Moore has you covered. (I think Ride a Cockhorse by Raymond Kennedy sounds fabulous.)

I try to avoid mindless shopping, but I just can’t resist vintage clothes or cheap books. At least two dozen books are loitering in neat stacks on and around my bookshelf, waiting to be read.

Depending on how quickly you read, books can get you a decent return on your entertainment dollar—way better than going to the movies, and probably more efficient than Netflix. Of course, they won’t if you’re picking up hardcovers every time you stop by Barnes & Noble for a coffee, or a chance to read Marie Claire in relative anonymity. I do feel conflicted, because if you don’t buy books at bookstores, they will disappear, but you can do only so much on a limited budget.

I read 59 books in 2011, mostly on my commute. I didn’t buy any of them at a bookstore. I also didn’t borrow any of them from the local library, which I could have—and probably should have—done in some cases (and is obviously a very smart thing you can do). Below, I list the many ways I acquired new reading material in 2011. 

Borrowed (Four books)
• Under the Dome – Stephen King (new $13.49, used $1.49)
• Oryx & Crake – Margaret Atwood (new $10.20, used $2.93)
• Wolf Hall – Hilary Mantel (new $9.60, used $9.50)
• The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks – Rebecca Skloot (new $9.60, used $5.86)

I saved anywhere between $19.78 and $42.89 by borrowing these books from my parents. I’m lucky that they live nearby, and have similar literary tastes to mine (though I found Wolf Hall impossible to finish). This trick is easy to pull off: Just case the bookshelf every time you’re in someone else’s house. Don’t be shy about asking to borrow something! Your target will certainly be flattered at the implied validation of their taste. Just make sure you return everything eventually (though promptly is better, and in good condition!), to get another loan the next time.

Received as gifts (13 books)
• The Tenant of Wildfell Hall – Anne Bronte (new $5.99, used $2.06)
• Super Sad True Love Story – Gary Shteyngart (new $16.90, used $3.73)
• A Visit from the Goon Squad – Jennifer Egan (new $17.51, used $3.74)
• Rebecca – Daphne du Maurier (new $10.19, used $0.01)
• Crossfire – Miyuki Miyabe (new $10.17, used $0.01)
• The Museum of Unconditional Surrender – Dubrava Ugresik (new $14.09, used $5.62)
• Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom – Cory Doctorow (new $11.24, used $0.15)
• Veronika Decides to Die – Paulo Coelho (new $10.19, used $2.25)
• Them – Joyce Carol Oates (new $10.98, used $3.74)
• Freedom – Jonathan Franzen (new $7.69, used $0.01)
• Create Dangerously – Edwidge Danticat (new $19.19, used $7.29)
• Ghostwritten – David Mitchell (new $6.99, used $1.96)
• Water for Elephants – Sara Gruen (new $8.03, used $0.01)

I have lovely in-laws who use my Amazon Wish List for any and all present-giving occasions. Not trying to shill for Amazon here, but this is the best way to get new books (if the newness is important to you) in hardcover (if hardness is important to you) without requiring the buyer to spend a lot. I saved between $21.32 (a low estimate, if you count shipping) and $114.95 (also a low estimate, as I’m using today’s prices and I got some of these books right after their release) by using the Wish List. I’m not counting the last three books in these calculations because those gifts were chosen by the givers, which is also a totally valid way to save money on books, even if, um, you don’t like them as much.

Bought for the price of a song (23 books)
• Wickett’s Remedy – Myla Goldberg (new unavailable, used $2.00)
• The Man in my Basement – Walter Mosley (new $0.83, used $0.01)
• Fingersmith – Sarah Waters (new $10.88, used $0.01)
• American Gods – Neil Gaiman (new $10.87, used $3.94)
• The Historian – Elizabeth Kostova (new $10.87, used $0.09)
• Coraline – Neil Gaiman (new $6.32, used $3.97)
• The Mammoth Cheese – Sheri Holman (new $9.60, used $1.00)
• The Good Soldier – Ford Madox Ford (new $7.95, used $0.24)
• Death in Venice – Thomas Mann (new $7.75, used $1.94)
• Silas Marner – George Eliot (new $2.50, used $0.01)
• Main Street – Sinclair Lewis (new $9.84, used $0.01)
• A Modest Proposal – Jonathan Swift (new $4.99, used $0.21)
• The Ambassadors – Henry James (new $8.98, used $4.98)
• The Razor’s Edge – Somerset Maugham (new $10.20, used $1.56)
• The Magus – John Fowles (new unavailable, used $1.25)
• Brideshead Revisited – Evelyn Waugh (new $6.00, used $2.00)
• The Monk – Matthew Lewis (new $9.95, used $2.59)
• The Color Purple – Alice Walker (new $8.95, used $2.20)
• The Mayor of Casterbridge – Thomas Hardy (new $5.95, used $0.31)
• Humboldt’s Gift – Saul Bellow (new $11.72, used $6.17)
• Sputnik Sweetheart – Haruki Murakami (new $10.17, used $4.06)
• South of the Border, West of the Sun – Haruki Murakami (new $10.17, used $2.12)
• The Odd Women – George Gissing (new $10.21, used $3.35)

I have a church in my neighborhood—one of those hip, with-it churches that celebrates Pride Week and hosts weekly discussions on The Walking Dead from a theological perspective. Grace Church is so low-key about religion that I had to visit its website to find out its denomination, Episcopalian, which is not a huge surprise. Every Sunday, the church hosts a book sale in its basketball court. (Do most churches have basketball courts? I’m a little fuzzy on the finer points of organized religion.)

Paperbacks cost $0.50, and hardcovers cost $1.00. Because Grace Church does so much for the community, I’m happy to spend as much money as possible at the book sale, then donate the books back when I’m done reading them. (I fear that the rise of the Kindle will decimate this kind of informal second-hand market, in addition to its main drawback: making it all but impossible to snoop on fellow commuters’ reading habits.) I spent a total of $13 on these novels. I could have spent anywhere from $44.02 to $174.70. They ranged from amazing (Fingersmith, Main Street) to okay (The Mammoth Cheese).

There are little secondhand havens like this all over, and not necessarily in bookstores. Seek them out!

BookMooch (13 books)
• Sexing the Cherry – Jeannette Winterson (new $14.45, used $0.59)
• The Swimming Pool Library – Alan Hollinghurst (new $10.85, used $1.18)
• Santa Evita – Tomás Eloy Martínez (new $10.93, used $0.01)
• The Italian – Anne Radcliffe (new $16.92, used $2.21)
• The Postman Always Rings Twice – James M. Cain (new $10.40, used $0.99)
• The Pigeon – Patrick Süskind (new $4.92, used $1.97)
• The Sound of Waves – Yukio Mishima (new $15.00, used $1.99)
• The Age of Innocence – Edith Wharton (new $3.00, used $0.01)
• Buddha of Suburbia – Hanif Kureishi (new $11.66, used $2.50)
• The Underdogs – Mariano Azuela (new $9.00, used $3.93)
• And Then There Were None – Agatha Christie (new $6.99, used $3.37)
• Gilead – Marilynne Robinson (new $10.99, used $0.01)
• Oroonoko, or the Royal Slave – Aphra Behn (new $6.00, used $0.01)

I was a heavy user of BookMooch.com throughout 2011. The idea is to create a huge online book swap—much like PaperbackSwap, which I find much more difficult to use—earning points for mailing out books that other members request, and spending those points as you go along. When they arrive, the books feel free, and it’s always lovely to get surprises in the mail, right? It actually comes out to about $2.50 per book, because you’ve got to mail them to earn points. Also, the inventory is not great; I have theories about why this is, but this is not the place to air them. With almost 30 points stored up and a wish list of 600 titles that probably won’t become available any time soon, I’ve eased up a lot on my BookMooch usage in the last six months. I spent about $30 to get these books, but would have spent anywhere from $18.77 to $131.11 otherwise. Now that I’ve actually worked out the math, it looks like I spent more money through BookMooch than I might have otherwise—but it’s not like those one-cent wonders get shipped for free either. If you are more into classics, and you really like getting packages (and you don’t mind sending some out occasionally), BookMooch might be an option for you.

Bought from Amazon (5 books)
• Catching Fire – Suzanne Collins ($8.97)
• Mockingjay – Suzanne Collins ($7.98)
• Big Machine – Victor LaValle ($10.95)
• The Year of the Flood – Margaret Atwood ($8.22)
• The Bad Girl – Mario Vargas Llosa ($4.95)

Sometimes you have to buy new books. It’s unavoidable! You might have a book club meeting coming up, and nobody wants to give the right thing away on BookMooch. Sometimes someone loans you The Hunger Games, but doesn’t follow through with the rest of the trilogy, and your mom thinks she has Catching Fire, but maybe she loaned it to someone else, and you are going nuts wondering what happens to Katniss and Peeta and Prim and Gale and Buttercup, and nine bucks is actually a pretty good price for a hardcover. Sometimes you just really want to know what Margaret Atwood has been up to. I regret none of these purchases.

Emailed by my aunt (One book)
• Good Kings, Bad Kings – Susan Nussbaum

When your aunt emails you the novel she’s been working on and asks for your opinion, the potential for catastrophe and Thanksgiving awkwardness is always looming, ominously. Fortunately, my aunt’s book was funny, fantastic and infuriating. I’m not the only one who thinks so—Good Kings, Bad Kings just won the PEN/Bellwether Prize and will be published next spring. Crisis averted. The best way to swing this is to find a friend who is on the brink of writing the next Great American Novel, and say, “I would love to look it over, if you feel comfortable with that.” This is also the most fiscally responsible way to acquire books, because once the book is published, you can ask your friend for a signed copy in exchange for all of your helpful comments. Later on, you can sell your signed copies to finance your retirement.

Elise Nussbaum lives in Jersey City with a husband and a cat. She is currently blogging her closet at dressopotamia.blogspot.com. Photo: Shutterhacks/Flickr

In the book, Fulton shares his diet tricks, which he has used in his work as a celebrity trainer. His ideas are somewhat controversial. For example, he suggests skipping breakfast and not eating broccoli

—Venice A. Fulton is a British person who has some ideas about how to lose weight. He wrote a book about his ideas and just sold that book for seven figures, which means, at the very least, ONE MILLION DOLLARS. The book is called SIX WEEKS TO OMG: GET SKINNER THAN ALL YOUR FRIENDS. There must be another trick hidden in there somewhere, because I don’t eat breakfast and it’s been ages since I last had broccoli (vegetables cost more than carbs, truth talk), and … I am not skinnier than all my friends. WTF VENICE A. FULTON.

We all swoon over bookshelf porn and lust after Greenwich Village lofts with built-in libraries, but actually figuring out how to store a large collection of books in a budget-friendly but still moderately attractive way is hard. Especially when you have an outrageous number of books. Especially in a small apartment. Especially when you have furniture commitment issues. 

Maybe you should get a Kindle/Nook, you say? To which I respond first a hasty and instinctive HELL NO, then a thoughtful, “But I could never afford to buy digital replacements for all the books I already own at ~$9.99 each, and many of my treasured volumes aren’t available in eBook form anyway, but also, just: hell no.” (*Personal preference, only. Any reading on any electronic device or cereal box or sign post or ass tattoo is for the better. Namaste.)

Maybe you should stop hoarding books, choose your favorites and donate the rest to the The People’s Library or some other cause, you say? To which I would respond: You’re probably right but I’m allergic to cats so they’re not in danger of being crushed and I already do that sometimes and still have a lot, and as long I can still walk through my room and consistently spend less on alcohol than books, I feel like I’m at a healthy balance which is in no way logical, but lay off. I like books. And I read them all. Usually more than once.

The real problem, for me, in addition to excuse-making, is legitimate book storage. Ikea is one thing, but most of the shelves that would fully contain all my tomes and talismans are much too big for my space (lookin’ at you, EXPEDIT). Real grown-up-non-particle-board bookshelves are a reasonably big financial commitment. First, there’s the actual cost and then the opportunity cost. Imagine how many used books you could buy for $250! [Answer: 50] Imagine how many readings you could go to where you bought the book, then went out for drinks with your friends to discuss the book’s waxing or waning influence on contemporary literary culture! [Answer: 7] Imagine how many first editions of Mrs. Dalloway you could buy! [Answer: 7/20ths of 1]

As someone who just moved between states, thinking about having a piece of furniture–bookshelf or otherwise–to which I am financially or emotionally committed and having to move said furniture every time I change apartments or decide to take a low-paying internship in Saskatchewan or just want to try living in the desert for a spell, is a true nightmare. The cheapest way to move a large amount of furniture is to rent a car or van and drive it yourself, and even that ends up costing hundreds in gas in a significant geographic move. And read the Yelp! Reviews before you move anything valuable in those storage pods, which start at around a thousand bucks for a multi-state trek. The books, on the other hand, can be shipped to your new address via USPS media mail for mere pence.

Maybe it’s partially because I am a Gemini and get emotionally claustrophobic when I have to commit to a username and password, but buying real furniture is something I am not mentally or financially ready to do. Until then, I will continue scouring craigslist for bedbug-free wood, stacking books on the floor and hoping nothing Jengas.

Jessi Probus is a writer and reader living in Bushwick, BK.

$100! It is a lot of money, and yet, it is also not a lot of money at all. In this series,  we will explore the journey of our last hundred bucks. Take it away, Nozlee.

$18 at happy hour at Beco in Williamsburg with my former coworker: a Bloody Maria, a beer, and a chorizo sandwich

$28.07 at Foodtown for supplies for a big Iranian-themed Sunday brunch the next day

$10.23 at the Sunac by my apartment for the stuff I forgot at Foodtown

$7 on a split taxi ride home with my boyfriend (I had this idea that we’d work stupidly late hours from his job’s office in Soho instead of trying to work at home and falling asleep)

$14 on two beers at Puffy’s in Tribeca with the staff of The Morning News

$11.99 on Lightning Rods from Emily Books (read it on my phone last week — it was meh!)

$16.33 on House of Holes from McNally Jackson with my book club (read it in a day after finishing Lightning Rods — so great!)

Nozlee Samadzadeh works at Food52 and The Morning News. She lives and cooks in Brooklyn. Photo Credit: Flickr/ifindkarma