Handling it privately so it does not become everybody's

The rule you grew up under was never stated and completely understood, that it is handled, that handling it is a private activity, and that saying it out loud would make it everybody's, and you have been running it yourself at eleven at night with a laptop.

It shows up as an hour alone with the numbers and no mention of it before or after. Your mother did it at the kitchen table in January with a bank book, a calculator and a pencil, and the rule was that you did not interrupt it and you did not ask. You did the same thing in September with a laptop instead of a bank book, told nobody, and felt competent. For about thirty years you thought that was what competence looked like.