The Night the Card Was Declined

The card was declined at 11.47 on a Friday night, in front of everyone.

Danny Price had been holding his phone over the reader at the Fox and Feather in Headingley for what felt like a full minute, smiling the easy smile he used when he was pretending something wasn't happening. Behind him, his mates were mid-argument about whether Leeds would go up this season. Behind the bar, the girl with the nose ring and the tired eyes was waiting.

Declined.

"Try it again," Danny said. "Signal's rubbish in here."

She tried it again. The little screen thought about it, and then it said Declined again, a bit more firmly, the way a teacher says your name the second time.

"I'll get it," said Marcus, leaning over him with his own card. "You can get me back."

"Cheers, mate. Bank's being weird."

The bank was not being weird. Danny knew exactly what the bank was being. The bank was being accurate. He was £340 overdrawn on an overdraft limit of £350, the credit card had been sitting at £8,960 of its £9,000 limit since August, and his rent of £695 was due on Monday. He earned £27,500 a year as a shift supervisor at a distribution warehouse in Morley, which everyone told him was decent money, and somehow, every single month, it ran out about nine days before the end.

He was twenty-seven years old. He had a nice coat, a phone that cost more than his first car, a gym membership he used twice a month, and no idea where any of his money went.

He got the bus home because he couldn't afford a taxi.

The number 56 was nearly empty. Danny sat at the back and scrolled. On his phone, a man in a white T-shirt standing next to a rented Lamborghini was telling him that if you're not a millionaire by thirty, you're doing it wrong. Another man, in a different white T-shirt, was explaining that the banks didn't want you to know about a coin called something that sounded like a cough sweet. A woman his age was showing him round her new flat in Manchester, bought at 26, all on my own, with a kitchen island the size of his bedroom.

He put the phone face down on his knee and looked out of the window.

At Kirkstall the bus filled up with lads from a stag do and a woman with a sleeping child, and an old man got on and sat down in the seat across the aisle. He was perhaps seventy-five, Black, very neat, with a grey flat cap and a proper overcoat, and he carried a carrier bag from the big Morrisons with a loaf of bread sticking out. He nodded to the driver as he got on, the way you'd nod to a colleague.

At the next stop, a lad from the stag do dropped a can, and beer went everywhere, all over the floor and the old man's polished shoes. The lad's mates howled. The lad said sorry in the way people say sorry when they think it's funny.

The old man looked at his shoes. Then he looked at the lad. Then, without any fuss, he took a folded handkerchief out of his coat pocket, bent down and wiped them.

"No harm done, son," he said. "Mind how you go."

There was something about the way he said it, so calm and so completely unbothered, that made Danny stare. He realised the old man had noticed him staring, and that the old man was smiling slightly.

"You look," the old man said, "like a man whose card has just been declined."

Danny laughed before he could stop himself. "That obvious?"

"I drove this route for thirty-one years," said the old man. "I've seen every face there is at midnight on a Friday. That one's the most common." He held out his hand across the aisle. "Joseph Mensah. Most people call me Joe."

"Danny."

"Well, Danny." Joe settled his bag on his knee. "If you want to know how to fix that face, I'm in the café at the bus depot in Kirkstall every Saturday at ten. Tea's terrible. Advice is free."

"No offence," said Danny, "but what does a bus driver know about money?"

Joe smiled properly then, a slow, delighted smile, as if Danny had said exactly what he'd hoped he'd say.

"Not much," he said. "Only enough to retire at fifty-eight with a paid-off house, a pension, and a little over a million pounds."

The bus stopped. Joe stood up, tipped his cap, and got off into the dark.

Lesson One: Know Your Number

Danny went. He told himself he was only going because he had nothing better to do on a Saturday morning, which was true, and because he wanted to find out if the old man was lying, which was also true.

The depot café was a low brick building next to the bus garage, with steamed-up windows and a laminated menu that hadn't changed since about 1997. Joe was at a corner table with a pot of tea, two cups, a notepad and a pencil. He'd poured Danny's tea before he arrived.

"You came," Joe said.

"You said you were a millionaire."

"I said a little over a million. I don't like to exaggerate." Joe pushed the notepad and pencil across the table. "Before I tell you anything, I need you to do one thing. Write down everything you own. And everything you owe."

"Why?"

"Because you can't get anywhere if you don't know where you're starting from. A bus driver doesn't start a route without knowing which stop he's at."

So Danny wrote. It took a long time, because he had to check his banking app for half of it, and some of it he'd genuinely forgotten.

Own: £60 in his current account (well, minus £340). A watch, maybe £200 if he sold it. A workplace pension his job had put him in, which he'd never once looked at. He logged into the pension website for the first time in four years, and was shocked to find it had £6,100 in it.

Owe: Credit card £8,960. Overdraft £340. Buy-now-pay-later on the coat, the trainers and the TV: £1,140. Money he owed his sister Amy from the summer: £400.

Joe took the pad and did the sum in pencil, in neat old-fashioned handwriting.

"Everything you own," he said, "minus everything you owe. That's your net worth. Yours is minus four thousand, five hundred and forty pounds."

Danny felt his face go hot. "Brilliant. So I'm worth less than nothing."

"No," said Joe sharply. "You are worth a great deal. Your money is worth minus four and a half thousand. Never mix those two things up, Danny. Plenty of people do, and it eats them alive." He tapped the number. "And this isn't bad news. This is the best news you've had in years."

"How is that good news?"

"Because now you know. Most people never know. They live their whole lives with a vague, sick feeling and a declined card and no number. You can't fix a vague feeling. You can fix minus four thousand, five hundred and forty pounds."

Then Joe turned the page and drew three columns. Essentials. Lifestyle. Future you.

"Next week," he said, "bring me three months of bank statements. Every payment goes in one of these three columns. Rent, council tax, bills, food, travel to work: essentials. Takeaways, nights out, subscriptions, clothes: lifestyle. Savings, pension, paying off debt: future you."

"And then?"

"And then you'll see where your money goes. And I promise you, it'll surprise you."