My Financial Career by Stephen Leacock: A Summary

My Financial Career: A Summary

Stephen Leacock's ‘My Financial Career’ is a funny and humorous account of a man's hilarious attempt to open an account for the first time in his life. It depicts narrator’s nervousness and fear in a bank. Everything related to bank makes him vexed.

Once the narrator gets his salary increased to fifty dollars. He thinks to deposit that amount in a bank. He thinks that only a bank is a safe place to put his savings. Having fear, he enters the bank and commits the first mistake. He approaches the wrong counter. He asks the accountant about the manager and expresses his desire to meet the manager alone. The bank staffs are under the impression that he may be a detective or an important client.

The accountant takes him to the manager. He requests the manager that he wants to talk to him in solitude. The manager gets anxious and takes him into a separate room. He thinks that he might belong to some detective agency but the narrator informs him that he wants to open an account. Now the manager thinks that he may be a big businessman who wants to deposit a big amount. But he gets disappointed on hearing that the narrator wants to deposit fifty six dollars only in the bank. The manager calls the accountant in a loud voice and instructes him to open an account for the narrator. The accountant opens an account and deposits fifty six dollars in narrator’s account.

Suddenly the narrator thinks that he needs six dollars for his daily use. To debit the required amount he signs a withdrawal slip. But in nervousness he writes fifty six dollars instead of six. The accountant enquires him if he wants to withdraw the whole deposited amount. In nervousness he answers in affirmative and the accountant returns him fifty six dollars. The process of depositing the money turns into a comical incident as he mistakenly enters the wrong amount on the withdrawal slip. The narrator comes out of the bank and hears a burst of laughter behind him. The story ends on this note.