All the money in the world – film review, but not only

There is no uniform definition of being rich. Two-third of Poles, earning less than national average salary of somewhat more than four thousand zloty before tax, can consider me rich. While ordinary people bridle at politicians’ five-digit bonuses, for me such handshake, leaving out my dislike for PiS, is imaginable and justified for officials who take on substantial responsibility for the state. KPMG report on luxury goods in Poland defines as “rich” a person who earns PLN 20,000 before-tax monthly. For most people unthinkably much, yet after-tax and after getting into the second tax bracket this converts into PLN 11,000 and if such “rich man” is the only breadwinner of a family with two children, their salary is high enough for comfortable life, but not to accumulate substantial savings.

People come into wealth in several ways. Some inherit it, some set up businesses and work tirelessly to grow it, some quickly climb corporate ladders and after several promotions their base salary grows to several times national average and they become eligible for generous bonuses and other perquisites. The pace of growing rich depends not only on the income, but on your… spending habits and if we talk about wealthy, yet not rich people, spending habits matter the most. Thrifty people whose lifestyle is far from luxurious are, needless to say, more likely to accumulate wealth. But while being prudent with money is considered a merit, it is easy to overstep a boundary beyond which one becomes a skinflint.

All the money in the world, nominated to several awards, including, sadly, only one Oscar nomination, tells the true story of once the richest man in the world, who also was the biggest skinflint in the world (how parsimonious a human being can be, if, being the richest person in the world, he skimps money on hospital treatment of his terminally ill son?). I will write little about the plot and simply recommend you go to a cinema before it disappears from the silver screen (unless it already has disappeared, since it premiered in late January and I watched it in mid-February). I will only share my general thought that the picture is well-shot and advise you look up in a search engine shots with Kevin Spacey whose character, after the outbreak of sexual harassment scandal, was replaced by Christopher Plummer.

The film has made me ponder even more upon the role of money in interhuman relationships. On Friday in the office I had to listen to a conversation about advantages of pre-nuptial agreement and heard several pieces of advice how to move into separate property regime after you forgot to sign the pre-nuptial agreement in the right moment.

But each day brings talks about money:

- A guy who organises a wedding gave his girlfriend a ring some time ago given to his previous girlfriend (why pay twice, everybody knows how resourceful he is, except for his girlfriend) and then worked out how much money they should collect in envelopes so that the wedding reception pays for itself.

- Another guy has told a story of his girlfriend giving him money (he had an employee account with higher interest) which he invested on the stock market (but returned to her with 3% interest, the rest kept for himself.

- Yet another guy has an arrangement with FX dealer who exchanges him currencies at most favourable rates, this guy offers exchange service to other people. The effect is that they split the difference between the favourable exchange office rate and the rate from the dealer and split the profit between the two. The funny thing is that the profit to be split is some PLN 0.30 per EUR 100.

- Talks about tax refunds, discount offers, how to save money in honest or dishonest way, etc are the order of the day in the office.

I am also thrifty and watch every zloty before I spend it, I admit, but life is not a profit and loss account; money, though at times I believe the world revolves around it, is not major (albeit essential) part of life. But the saying “gentlemen do not talk about the money” is something more people could put into practice. Actually I am not in favour of avoiding money as a subject of conversations at any price, yet I am calling for more reasonable proportions.