Can I Read 'Happy Money: The Japanese Art Of Making Peace With Your Money' Online For Free?

After I resign from a private company and move to work at an overseas company, my salary has increased by leaps and bounds. My wife, Vivian Spencer, who's always been smart about money, suggests that I turn in all of my salary. At the same time, she will decrease my allowance. Her reasoning is that she needs to use my salary on our family's daily expenses, so she can't spare me a single cent. As I watch Vivian record all the expenses dutifully, I can't resist asking, "What about your salary, then?" Vivian replies in a matter-of-fact tone, "I'm saving it up for our retirement pension." I don't bother responding afterward. Since then, I start spending every single cent of my salary, as per Vivian's suggestion. When Vivian notices the stream of packages being delivered to our home, she finally can't take it anymore. Upon hearing her question, I tell her happily, "You were the one who said that my salary is meant for our family's expenses!" Vivian exclaims in shock, "What sort of family do you think we are? As if we can afford to spend this much money every month!" What a joke. It turns out that Vivian knows that a regular family's expenses can't possibly drain every single cent of my salary in one go.

On the third day after our divorce was finalized, my ex-wife, Georgie Anderson, sent me a text message. [Why haven’t you transferred your salary from this month to me?] I thought she was joking. [We’re already divorced.] [So? What does it matter if we’re divorced? You should transfer nineteen thousand dollars from your twenty-thousand-dollar income, just like you did before. The remaining one thousand dollars will be your pocket money. When you were unemployed, I was the one who took care of you. Now that we’re divorced, you’re turning your back on me?] I stared at her text messages and fell silent for a really long time. Throughout our three-year marriage, I gave her nineteen thousand dollars out of my twenty-thousand-dollar salary. She was responsible for "budgeting" our household expenses. However, she spent my money on her civil service exam, afternoon teas with her besties, and even on her study partner, whom I’d never met. As for me, I handled all the house chores—cooking dinner, mopping the floors and doing the laundry. But when I took a little time after work to game, she would yell at me for being lazy. She was demanding money from me even after we were divorced. Her reason was that I might spend the money without thinking. I blocked her number. Three seconds later, she sent me a text message from another phone number. [You’ll regret this. I’m trying to help you one last time.] I laughed. ‘Helping me?’ I thought. Nobody had ever helped me in the past three years.

A burglar breaks into our home, taking my mother-in-law and me captive. He stabs my mother-in-law's eyes, blinding her. Then, he slices her tongue and strips her, even putting on a live stream to air the whole thing. He claims that he'll auction my mother-in-law's organs if we can't pay the ransom of ten million dollars. The live stream infuriates the Internet, and everyone starts searching for my husband, the city's wealthiest man. No one knows he's on a luxury cruise ship, holding an engagement ceremony with his childhood friend. He snarls, "What a dumb excuse to trick me out of my money! I'll burn the money for them when they're dead!"

I married someone two years ago. From then on, I lived a happy life. Thankfully, I did not have to deal with a mother-in-law and did not have to work. I even got two hundred thousand dollars from my husband every month as pocket money. Even my best friends lived the high life because of me. But today, right after I got my allowance, I got a call from the police station. They told me to pick my husband up from there.

I was the stingiest rich wife in the city’s high society. I did not spend money on beauty treatments or travel. In fact, I did not even own a single decent outfit or a handbag. Everyone laughed at me. They said I had the fortune of a wealthy family but not the luck to enjoy it. However, what they did not know was that behind closed doors, Arvid Hans, who was famous for his lavish spending, was a hundred times stingier than I was. He piled on gold and jewels to keep up appearances in public. However, with me, he was a miser, refusing to spend a single extra penny. We split every expense down to the last penny. Every meal and every prescription required a receipt and an entry in the ledger. He said this was to help me develop a business mindset. He said that fairness and caution were the keys to a lasting relationship. While other wives were decked out in expensive jewelry, I was dressed simply. He said I was naturally beautiful and did not need such trinkets to enhance my looks. Even our housekeeper was hoarding gold for investment. Yet he kept me from touching a single penny, citing the Hans family’s tradition of being frugal. For three years of marriage, I lived like a devout nun, strictly adhering to the “rules of frugality” he had tailored for me. It was not until Christmas Eve, when I returned a day early from visiting my parents, that I discovered someone else had been living the life of luxury meant for me.

My mother-in-law, Emerald Jones, had always loved to exaggerate. My wife’s wedding gift for me was worth 8,800 dollars, but my mother-in-law told everyone it was worth 880,000 dollars. We only looked at cars at a luxurious car dealership. But she went around saying she spent over 200,000 dollars to buy me one. I figured that I was going to spend my life with my wife, Emilia, so I put up with her. On the eve of our wedding, I had a small argument with my wife. She blurted out, “My family has to pay over a million dollars for me to marry you. What more do you want? “My wedding gift alone is 880,000 dollars. Anyone who doesn’t know better will think you’re living off a woman!” I was utterly disappointed. She was not directly involved in the discussion on the wedding gift. However, it was something both families had agreed on together. My wife actually believed her mother’s ridiculous remarks and assumed I had received an outrageously expensive wedding gift. After my mother-in-law transferred 1,000 dollars to me for the wedding banquet, she told everyone she had given me 100,000 dollars instead. So, I swapped the luxury wedding feast for instant noodles on the day of the banquet. In addition, I showed a looped display of her stingy transfer of money to my bank account for everyone to see.