Experiences are savings which a miser puts aside. Wisdom is an inheritance which a wastrel cannot exhaust.

Kraus contrasts two ways of relating to life’s lessons. “Experiences” are likened to money hoarded by a miser: they can be accumulated, guarded, and even fetishized as personal capital—yet remain inert if merely stored. “Wisdom,” by contrast, is figured as an inheritance that even a spendthrift (“wastrel”) cannot run through: once genuinely internalized, it is not diminished by use but proven and renewed in application. The aphorism critiques possessive, self-satisfied “experience” and elevates a deeper, transmissible understanding that outlasts individual appetites and errors. It also hints at Kraus’s moral satire: true wisdom resists both vanity and dissipation.