Misers aren’t fun to live with, but they make wonderful ancestors.

Misers aren’t fun to live with, but they make wonderful ancestors is a wry, stand-up–style aphorism associated with comedian David Brenner’s observational humor about money, family life, and human foibles. It circulates widely in quotation collections and is typically presented as a one-liner from his comedic repertoire rather than as a line from a single, fixed literary text. While Brenner was a frequent presence on television talk shows and comedy specials where such quips were delivered, I cannot confidently identify the specific performance, broadcast, or publication in which he first used this exact wording.

The joke hinges on a shift in perspective. In daily life, a miser’s stinginess makes them difficult company—tightfistedness strains relationships and diminishes shared pleasures. But once time passes and the miser becomes an “ancestor,” that same habit can be reinterpreted as prudence: saving and hoarding translate into an estate, security, or inherited wealth for descendants. Brenner’s line satirizes how moral judgments often depend on who benefits and when, and it pokes at the human tendency to forgive (or even celebrate) traits that pay off materially after the fact.