I don’t know if you’re as puzzled as I am, but when I see advertisements for banks, I can’t help but wonder who they’re aimed at?

I know it all looks and sounds very beautiful, with Lloyds pledging to be with us ‘for the journey’ and Santander changing lives with Lego bricks, but really, who has money left over at the end of any month to do anything remotely astute, save for buying a Lottery ticket (or Euro Lottery ticket if it’s been a particularly good month).

When they talk about ISAs and special saver returns, it goes over my head. For me, it’s a triumph of body and soul if I can just last until pay day without incurring fees for exceeding my overdraft.

Of course, there are those who are good with money. Not that they seem any different physically, mentally or emotionally.

In fact, one of the things that makes them so annoying is their uncanny ability to take exactly the same amount of money as I have every month, and without sacrificing a single pastime, vice or pursuit, buy a house with a quarter-mile driveway, send their kids to private school, and enjoy private tennis lessons every Friday.

Just why Oxford University can’t brain scan these individuals to better understand whatever evolutionary mutation has enabled them to save is beyond me.

After all, think what a difference it could make to everyone’s happiness if a ‘prudent’ gene were to be discovered – it’d be like Viagra (but with the benefit of a high interest account and no shame either).

Thankfully, the financial life of a journalist is tempered by the fact that every day is a Virgin Atlantic first class flight aboard a ‘gravy train’ of celebrity parties, exclusive freebies, and non-stop physical gratification devoid of any emotional commitment.

This alone allows me to continue fostering friendships with people who are, oh-so-casually, able to discuss ‘investments’ over breakfast, such as doctors, dentists and pharmaceutical sales people (understandably, I draw the line at accountants).

Now, while it’s true that at home (an item you may remember I don’t possess at the moment) I make do with baked beans and Tesco pate, at work it’s one non-stop orgy of red carpet receptions, preferential interest rates, free rail travel between Oxford and Tackley, and no-questions-asked prosthetic enhancements.

Yet despite all these contractual and union-controlled company benefits, I’ve recently started buying Lottery tickets every Wednesday, Friday and Saturday, and even begun wondering whether the most straightforward route to achieving financial nirvana might be just to marry well. And if I could just bring myself to say ‘No, I love your parents’, I would.

Which means, for the moment at least, that I’ll have to learn to live with the idea that planning for the future is something I only do when deciding whether to watch Ant and Dec or Casualty on a Saturday.