R E C E N T L Y Our watches, our selves By Robert Bryce As the economy keeps on ticking, the watch industry sells the daze of our lives (07/10/98) Pot of gold or P.C. money pit? By Heather Chaplin Are socially responsibility mutual funds good karma or bad business? (07/03/98) Swamped By Todd Pitock If everyone is working so hard, why are they always at lunch? (06/26/98) Rich pickings, sour grapes By Linda Tischler A mother envies her daughter's lucrative entrance into the world of work (06/19/98) Get them while they're young By Kevin Kelleher Money managers are targeting children as the next growth market (06/12/98) - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Browse the Money archives		BY HEATHER CHAPLIN | Two weeks ago, I was in Las Vegas playing blackjack, drinking watered-down cocktails and wishing I still smoked. My boyfriend and I sat at that table until 4 a.m., outlasting a Filipino cover band as they made their way from Patsy Cline to Loverboy in three sets. By the time the band packed up, we had won $200 -- which we converted into $1 and $5 tokens and blew on slot machines, feeling like high rollers. The next morning, our winnings safely in the bottom of the Flamingo Hilton's slots, I started thinking about my grandmother. She'd only gambled once in her life, on a senior citizen bus trip to Atlantic City with her friend Betty. It was a package deal and along with a pass for a free buffet, they'd each been given $10 in quarters to play at the Taj Mahal. Both lost the first coin they played, and after a brief consultation, they'd dropped the quarter rolls back into their purses and went in search of free cocktails, $9.75 richer. While I wouldn't say my grandmother was cheap, she was careful with her money in a way I have yet to see in even the most thrifty members of my own generation. Until the day she died, she watched her money like it was tomorrow's dinner trying to escape the butcher block. She never did a wash without a full load, never indulged in long-distance phone calls unless absolutely necessary, never turned on the lights until it was dark outside. Even in her last years, when she had saved enough from a lifetime of frugal living to do what she pleased, she continued to wear discount tennis shoes, drink cheap scotch and return gifts she thought unnecessary. My grandmother's thrift was not born out of miserliness. She had watched her family's fortune be snatched by the Nazis, supported herself as a teenage refugee and raised two kids as a divorced woman in the 1950s. And as with other members of her generation who had lived through the horror of the Great Depression or the rationing of World War II, money was not something my grandmother took for granted. To my grandmother, my spending habits are those of a high society dame who never learned the cost of a loaf of bread. Frankly, it would never occur to me worry if a load of laundry was full or to consider the costs of turning on a light. And while I know I should make my long-distance calls on Sundays when the rates go down, I don't, and I don't know anyone else my age who does. What my grandmother would have considered outrageous extravagances are to me facts of life: high-quality coffee beans, call waiting, recreational shopping, the occasional load of fluff 'n' fold laundry, sushi. I was born at the right time in the right place. I enjoy not only the advantages our society heaps on the middle class and well-educated but also the particular advantages of coming of age during an economic boom and low unemployment. Although I've heard enough family stories of the Holocaust and pogroms to keep an eye open for Cossacks and men in shiny boots, on a gut level I cannot quite believe that history will actually go sour on me. Though it's hubris, on some level I consider myself irrevocably prosperous. When I'm broke and debating whether to use Visa for dinner and a movie with friends, I try to think about coal miners in the 1940s, or Dust Bowl families in the 1930s. These people certainly didn't assume good food, booze and entertainment were part of the deal. But it doesn't work. Looking at an empty bank account statement, I remind myself I'll probably live if I don't go out this weekend, but then I remember that my bank account, of course, will bloom again next month. On some level, despite history and despite the copious evidence of poverty in America, I cannot really imagine a time when I won't be able to earn a living. N E X T+P A G E | Saving couldn't stave off disaster