[STORY] THE BILLIONAIRE STINGY MAN WHO HATES SPENDING HIS OWN MONEY!

The Billionaire Who Hated Spending His Own Money

Chapter One: The Mansion Nobody Could Live In

“John! Johnny, is this our house?” Simei stood frozen at the gate, both hands pressed to her mouth, staring up at the five-bedroom duplex rising in front of her like a small palace. Fresh paint gleamed in the afternoon sun. Wide glass windows caught the light. A balcony curved along the upper floor like something out of a magazine.

“Daddy, do we finally have our own rooms?” their younger daughter, Ada, squealed, already sprinting toward the front steps. Her older sister, Amaka, was close behind, laughing, spinning in the driveway as though she could hardly believe it was real.

“My husband,” Simei said, turning to John with tears gathering at the corners of her eyes, “you really did well. Look at this place. I can already see myself sitting on that balcony every evening with a cup of tea.”

John stood a little apart from them, hands clasped behind his back, watching his family admire the mansion with an expression that was difficult to read — pride, perhaps, but also something colder underneath it.

“That is not where we are staying,” he said.

The laughter died instantly.

“What do you mean that’s not where we’re staying?” Simei turned to him slowly.

“I mean exactly what I said. We are not living inside the main house.”

“John, this is our house.”

“Yes. It’s my house. Which is why I’ve already rented it out.”

Simei’s mouth fell open. “You rented out the main house? The whole five-bedroom duplex? Including the upstairs?”

“Yes. Already signed. Two million naira a year. Good business.”

“Then where,” Simei asked, her voice rising with each word, “are we supposed to live?”

John gestured, almost casually, toward a squat structure tucked behind the mansion — the boy’s quarters, a servant’s annex meant for house help, not for the family who had built the palace beside it.

“There.”

For a long moment, nobody spoke. Then Simei laughed — not from amusement, but from disbelief so complete it came out sounding like a sob. “John. You built this massive mansion, and you want your wife and your two daughters to squeeze into the boy’s quarters while strangers live in our home?”

“It’s still part of the property,” John said, unbothered. “Two bedrooms. Two toilets. A kitchen. What more do four people need?”

“This is insensitive, John. This is beyond stingy.”

“It’s not stinginess,” John said, already walking toward the smaller building with his suitcase. “It’s management. If we don’t use this money while we’re alive, are we supposed to spend it when we’re dead?”

Simei stood rooted to the spot, staring at the mansion that would never be theirs, listening to her daughters’ laughter fade into confused silence behind her. She did not yet know it, but this was only the beginning.

Chapter Two: Bones, Bitter Leaf, and a War Over Soup

The next test of Simei’s patience came at the market — or rather, from what John brought home instead of the market.

“John,” Simei said slowly, staring at the two enormous cow bones sitting on the kitchen counter, “what are you doing with those? We don’t even own a dog.”

“They’re not for a dog,” John said proudly. “They’re for us. We’ll use them to cook soup.”

“Soup. With bones. Where is the meat I asked you to buy?”

“Have you seen the price of meat lately? I went to the market, saw the price, and turned right back around. These bones were only a thousand naira each. Two thousand total. Very affordable. And bone has calcium, Simei. Calcium is good for the human body.”

“So now you’re a nutritionist,” Simei snapped, pushing the bones away from her. “Take this back to the market and bring the meat I asked for.”

“We are getting older,” John said solemnly, as though delivering wisdom passed down through generations. “Too much red meat isn’t good for us anyway.”

“John, I am not cooking this nonsense.”

“Fine. Cook the soup without it, then. We’ll eat it plain.” He shrugged and walked off, leaving the bones on the counter like a small, absurd monument to his frugality.

It didn’t end there. Days later, John gathered his wife and both daughters into the courtyard before sunrise, none of them holding toothbrushes.

“From today,” he announced, holding up a fistful of thin wooden sticks, “there will be no more toothbrush and toothpaste in this house. We are switching to chewing sticks. Natural. Resourceful. Better for our health.”

“Daddy, I’ve never used one of these in my life,” Ada protested, turning the stick over in her hands like it was an artifact from a museum.

“Why can’t we just use our toothbrushes?” Amaka added.

“Because toothpaste is now two thousand two hundred naira,” John said, as though announcing a national emergency. “I bought this stick for two hundred. Tell me which one makes more sense.”

“John,” Simei said, arms folded, “you own five shops in the main market. Five. Are you telling me two thousand naira in toothpaste is what’s going to finish your money?”

“Do you know how much three people spend on toothpaste every day, every month, every year? That money could pay one of my workers’ salary for an entire month.”

“Your stinginess,” Simei said flatly, “is entering your brain.”

“It’s called management, Simei. Not stinginess.”

She walked away without another word, leaving John to teach their bewildered daughters how to brush their teeth with twigs, singing softly to himself as though he had just won an argument nobody else remembered agreeing to.

Chapter Three: The Secret War Begins

What John did not know — what he could never have imagined, sleeping soundly each night with his careful ledgers and his locked cash box — was that his wife had declared her own quiet war.

It began the evening their neighbors held a birthday party and sent over a generous share of jollof rice, fried chicken, and soft drinks. Simei served it to her daughters at the small kitchen table in the boy’s quarters, watching them eat with open delight.

“Mommy, this chicken is so sweet,” Amaka said, practically glowing. “I don’t want to stop eating.”

“Eat well, but eat fast,” Simei warned, glancing toward the door. “Before your father gets home.”

“Why do we always have to hide food from Daddy?” Ada asked between bites. “Why can’t we just eat like normal people?”

Simei sighed and lowered her voice. “Because your father doesn’t give me enough money to cook properly. If he sees food like this, he’ll ask where I got the money, and I’ll have to lie again — tell him the neighbors gave it to us. He almost caught me the other day.”

“Mommy,” Amaka said, grinning, “you are so smart.”

“Your mother has sensed too much,” Simei said with a proud little laugh. “Your father thinks he’s the one managing this house. Let him keep thinking that. We’ll keep eating well behind his back.”

It turned out Simei’s methods went even further than clever excuses. Late one night, while John slept — utterly convinced his cash box was safe beneath the mattress where he kept careful count of every naira — Simei crept quietly into the room, eased the box open with practiced fingers, and slid out a folded stack of bills.

“Since the bird has learned to fly without perching,” she whispered to herself, smiling in the dark, “the hunter has also learned to shoot without missing. Today, I’ve learned to help myself.”

She replaced everything exactly as it had been, smoothed the sheets, and slipped away before John so much as stirred.

The next morning, she served him a soup so watery it was nearly transparent.

“Simei,” John said, frowning down at his bowl, “is this soup not too watery? It doesn’t even have a single taste.”

“I added plenty of water,” Simei said sweetly, “so it can last three weeks.”

John’s face brightened immediately. “Now that’s the kind of thinking I like. We have to manage.”

“Exactly. That’s why I added all the water.”

“You’re learning,” he said, delighted. “But why aren’t you eating?”

“I’m fasting,” Simei said. “So God will bless our family. And protect you. Keep you strong and healthy, so you can keep working hard for us.”

John eyed her for a moment, suspicious despite himself. “You’ve been acting somehow suspicious lately.”

“Forget it, John,” she said quickly. “Just eat your soup.”

He did — three bowls of it, in fact, praising her all the while for finally understanding the meaning of good management, entirely unaware that the money funding their secret feasts, twice a week, came directly from his own cash box.

Chapter Four: The School Fees Battle

If the bones and the chewing sticks had been mere skirmishes, the war over their daughters’ education was the first real battle.

“Daddy, we need to talk about our school fees,” Amaka said one evening, holding out a printed slip. “It’s fifty-three thousand each this term.”

“Fifty-three thousand?” John’s eyebrows shot up. “It was forty-five thousand last term. How did it suddenly jump seven thousand?”

“They added a fee for inter-house sports and some new activities,” Ada explained.

“Aha,” John said, as though he’d uncovered some grand conspiracy. “That’s exactly my point. Why should I pay extra for inter-house sports? Forty-five thousand was already too much.”

“But Daddy, it’s the school fee. We have to pay it.”

“No,” John said, folding his arms with finality. “I’m not paying fifty-three thousand. I don’t have that kind of money to waste.”

“What do you mean, Daddy?” Amaka’s voice wavered.

“I mean maybe you two should stop going to that school. If the fees have gotten this expensive, you don’t need to continue there.”

The room went dead silent. Ada’s eyes filled instantly with tears. “But Daddy, we need to finish our education. I’m supposed to write my senior exams this year!”

“And I’m entering SS2 next term,” Amaka added desperately. “I don’t want to sit at home while everyone else goes to school.”

“Education, education,” John muttered, waving a hand as though swatting away a fly. “Am I the only one spending money in this house? Enough. I’ve said what I’ve said. There’s no money for school fees.”

The girls ran to their mother in tears that night, and Simei — for the first time since they’d moved into that cramped, borrowed annex behind their own mansion — felt something in her harden into resolve.

“Don’t worry, my daughters,” she told them, wiping their faces. “I will talk to your father. And this time, whether he likes it or not, he will pay those fees.”

The next morning, she confronted him directly. “John, why won’t you pay the children’s school fees?”

“If there’s no money, what do you want me to do? Their fees are too expensive for what they’re getting.”

“Is their education supposed to be free, John? How much are you even supposed to pay?”

“They can go to government school,” he said simply. “It’s practically free. Government teachers are more qualified anyway — properly trained, some with master’s degrees, even PhDs. Private schools just hire whoever’s looking for work.”

“My children are not going to government school.”

“Fine,” John said, shrugging. “Then they can come work in my shop. Become sales girls. What’s wrong with that? I started working when I was twelve. Look at me now — I own five shops.”

“They are young ladies, John, not market apprentices. They need an education so they can build a future.”

“So working in my shop means someone is useless? Is that what you’re saying? Am I useless?”

Simei stared at him, something in her finally snapping. “You know what, John? I’m tired. I’m seriously tired of you.”

She didn’t argue further. Instead, she disappeared into their bedroom and returned holding both of his slippers — the same worn, five-year-old pair he refused to replace.

“Where are my slippers?”

“I hid them,” she said calmly. “You’ll get them back after you pay the school fees.”

Chapter Five: Barefoot and Unbothered

John walked to work that morning without shoes, entirely unbothered, explaining to a bewildered friend that “in the olden days, people walked barefoot everywhere. Nothing happened to them.”

“John, at least buy a five-thousand-naira pair to protect your feet,” his friend urged.

“Waste money on slippers when I already own a pair at home? No. My wife will give them back eventually.”

His friend shook his head slowly. “John, you are something else.”

That same week, when the prepaid electricity meter ran out and the house went dark, John’s solution was, predictably, not to buy more units but to lecture his family on “management” — turning off fans, avoiding the refrigerator, warming food daily “the way our forefathers did.” When Simei finally lost her temper entirely, she did something neither John nor his daughters expected.

She called a pastor.

“Simei, who are these people in my house?” John demanded, staring at the small group of church elders filing into the parlor.

“I’ve checked your situation, John,” the pastor said gravely. “This is not ordinary stinginess anymore. This requires serious prayer.”

What followed was a full deliverance session — hands laid on John’s shoulders, voices rising in prayer against “the spirit of excessive stinginess,” against “the spirit that makes him buy bones instead of meat,” against “the spirit that tells him government school is better than private school.” John protested through the entire ordeal, insisting he wasn’t sick, that he simply didn’t want to waste money — but the prayers continued regardless, loud and unrelenting, until the whole household had shouted “Amen” at least a dozen times.

It didn’t work. Or at least, it didn’t work the way anyone hoped. By the very next week, John was once again refusing to release proper money for food, insisting his family “manage” with plain white rice.

Chapter Six: The Market Lesson

Fed up, Simei finally shoved twenty thousand naira into John’s hands. “Since you think I don’t know how to manage money, go to the market yourself.”

John went — reluctantly, convinced he would return having proven a point about wasteful spending. Instead, the market humbled him entirely. Fish that used to cost a thousand naira was now five thousand. A single tuber of yam, which he remembered as practically free, was priced at four thousand five hundred. Tomatoes, peppers, everything had climbed to prices that left him standing dumbfounded in the middle of the market, haggling uselessly with traders who simply told him to leave if he wasn’t buying.

He returned home that evening with an empty bag and a newly sobered expression, though he would never openly admit defeat. “I didn’t go again,” he mumbled when Simei asked. “I was too busy.”

“I know you,” she said, laughing despite herself. “You went, saw the prices, and came home with nothing.”

For the first time in weeks, John said nothing in his own defense.

Chapter Seven: The Collapse

The illness had been building for days — headaches, exhaustion, a weakness John refused to acknowledge, let alone treat properly.

“Have you gone to the hospital?” Simei asked, watching him slump against the wall one evening.

“Hospital? With which money? They’ll give me drugs I don’t need and take money I don’t want to spend. I’ll just take paracetamol.”

When paracetamol wasn’t enough, John turned to a local herbal concoction instead, insisting it could “handle anything,” dismissing Simei’s warnings that treating an unknown illness with unknown herbs, without any diagnosis, could be dangerous.

For a day or two, he seemed almost fine — bragging to his daughters about how strong he felt, waving off his wife’s concerns as she begged him to rest properly and eat well.

Then, one morning, halfway through insisting for the hundredth time that there was “nothing wrong” with him, John collapsed in the doorway.

“John! John, wake up!” Simei’s scream tore through the compound as she dropped to her knees beside him, shaking his shoulders while their daughters shrieked behind her.

Chapter Eight: The Hospital Bill

At the hospital, the doctor’s diagnosis was sobering: malaria and typhoid, complicated by stress, poor nutrition, and days of self-medication with unregulated herbs instead of proper treatment.

“He needs rest, real food, and no more self-medication,” the doctor told Simei firmly. “Saving money is good. But you cannot save money at the expense of your life. Please tell your husband that for me.”

When John finally woke, groggy and disoriented, tubes taped to his arm, his first words were not gratitude, but panic. “Where is this place? What is all this on my hand? Simei, are you trying to finish my money?”

“John, please calm down—”

“How much have you paid already?” he demanded, struggling to sit up.

“Only a deposit. I had to collect it from your shop boys while you were unconscious.”

“You went into MY shop and took MY money?” His voice cracked with outrage even as he lay weak and trembling in a hospital bed.

“John, you had collapsed. What was I supposed to do?”

When the estimated total came to roughly three hundred and fifty thousand naira, John nearly fainted a second time — this time from shock rather than illness.

“Take me home,” he said, yanking weakly at the tubes. “If I’m going to die, let me die in my own house, not owing a hospital bill.”

“John!” Simei grabbed his arm, horrified. “People are trying to save your life, and all you can think about is money. What exactly are you saving all of it for?”

He didn’t answer. He simply stared at her — really looked at her — for the first time in longer than either of them could remember.

Chapter Nine: What the Money Was For

He stayed. Not because he had suddenly changed his mind about money, but because, lying in that hospital bed with his wife’s hand gripping his and his daughters crying quietly in the corner, something in John finally cracked open.

He thought of the mansion sitting empty of his own family, rented out to strangers while his wife and daughters squeezed into two rooms behind it. He thought of the bones, the chewing sticks, the school fees he’d nearly let ruin his daughters’ futures over seven thousand naira. He thought of walking barefoot to prove a point nobody but himself was keeping score of.

And he thought of Simei — how she had fasted for him, hidden food to feed their children, secretly taken money from his own box not for herself, but simply to keep their family fed and whole, all while he lay awake at night convinced he was the only one protecting their future.

When he was finally discharged, thinner and quieter than before, John did not announce any grand transformation. He simply came home one evening, called his daughters into the sitting room of the boy’s quarters, and told them, in a voice that cracked slightly, that they were moving into the main house — all of them, together, upstairs, downstairs, every room.

“What about the tenants?” Simei asked cautiously.

“I gave them notice,” John said. “We’ll find the rent elsewhere. Some things matter more than two million naira.”

He paid the school fees the following morning, in full, without complaint. He bought real meat. He let the refrigerator run. And though he never fully abandoned his instinct to check a price twice before paying it, he no longer let that instinct come before his family.

“Daddy,” Ada said one evening, watching him laugh freely at their new dinner table, laden with a proper pot of soup, “are you sure you’re not sick again?”

John smiled, and for the first time in a long while, it reached his eyes. “I was always sick, my daughter. Just not in the way anybody thought.”

Simei, watching him from across the table, said nothing — only smiled quietly to herself, thinking of the cash box under the mattress, and decided, for now, that some secrets were better left exactly where they were.

The End.