I've been taxing my brain on ways to save money. I thought I'd better tax my brain before the Government did. They tax everything else.

In one of these really useful personal finance columns recently, I read that to make sure they get a decent pension, young people ought to start saving for their retirement while repaying their student loans.

Sounds easy enough. Cut meals down to one spaghetti bolognese a week; inhale but don't swallow in the student bar; and sit on the city streets with a blanket and a penny whistle between lectures.

Better still, bright babies ought to opt for cash instead of presents at the christening and sling it all straight into their pensions.

Later, at around eight years of age, they can cut out sweets and bang most of their pocket money into the retirement fund.

For your wedding, ask for pensioner bonds instead of a coffee maker, microwave or crockery. Who needs 'em when in 40 years you could be facing penury.

Follow this dedicated code and you could be the richest retiree on the Riviera. At 50 you can look back on your life as one long (very long), sorry Saga.

Seriously, we all waste money. How often do you scrape up the excess HP sauce and spoon it back into the bottle after a meal? Do you save the laces when you throw out a pair of old shoes?

When you think about it, there are millions of ways to save cash. The whole family can share the bathwater, starting with dirty dad, mum and then the brood, but when the tepid stuff is black and covered in scum, take care not to throw the baby out with it.

But this is just chicken-feed. We need to find something to make a real killing, playing the stock market, perhaps?

You see, some people have it - the ability or luck to make money. They only have to walk down the street and passers-by will open their wallets and throw cash at them.

Me, I have the Sadim touch. It's the Midas touch in reverse. If a fool and his money are soon parted, I must be an absolute lunatic. Everything I buy with a one-year guarantee self-destructs after 13 months. Honestly.

I do the Lottery every week and haven't had even a £10 win for more than three years; my Premium Bonds have not come close in more than 30 years.

My one dabble into investment was with a PEP, a personal equity plan, based on a portfolio of different shares.

I took it out just as the stock market went into a free-fall decline from 39,000 feet and I watched my investment flutter worthlessly down to earth. My fund manager must be giggling with glee as he recklessly chooses which shares I should have and then throws my hard-earned money in the incinerator.

I've even tried being one of these so-called credit-card tarts, who regularly move their outstanding balance from card to card every time someone offers nought per cent interest. Trouble is when I applied for the new card and asked to transfer my balances, I filled in the form incorrectly and they queried the procedure. I couldn't be bothered with it all, so I simply ended up with yet another credit card and my balance still burning away on 14.9 per cent.

It's like deciding who to get your gas and electricity from. It may seem odd to buy your gas from the electric company and your power from the gas company. A bit like buying eggs from the chemist and going to the dentist for a haircut. But apparently it can save money.

Trouble is, every one of the doorstep salesmen who comes offering riches is a slick, sweet-talking guy and that puts me right off. Sit down with the paperwork and you need a degree in physics and a mind like Einstein to work it all out. Either that or it devours so much time you lose a week's pay.

Oh, I can't be bothered.

And therein lies the answer. Some people turn the making of money into a hobby. They are totally dedicated to it. Passionate. They train their acumen like athletes honing their bodies. They live, eat and sleep pounds, shillings and pence.

They collect bank notes like others collect stamps, they know where there's ten pence off a tin of beans and where they can get their holiday Euros commission-free.

They buy next year's Christmas presents in this year's January sales and take a calculator to the ice-cream van.

I'm just a financial couch potato. Don't bother me, just give me the papers and I'll sign. Anything for a bit of peace.

Updated: 08:43 Tuesday, March 25, 2003