From my great-grandfather
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Παρὰ τοῦ προπάππου τὸ μὴ εἰς δημοσίας διατριβὰς φοιτῆσαι καὶ τὸ ἀγαθοῖς διδασκάλοις κατ’ οἶκον χρήσασθαι καὶ τὸ γνῶναι ὅτι εἰς τὰ τοιαῦτα δεῖ ἐκτενῶς ἀναλίσκειν.
From my great-grandfather: not to have attended the public schools, but to have had good teachers at home; and to understand that on things like these one should spend without stinting.
From his great-grandfather, the lesson is about education: taught at home by good teachers rather than sent to the public schools, and that such things are worth spending on freely.
The debts move outward from character to upbringing. The great-grandfather's gift is a decision about education: not the δημόσιαι διατριβαί, the public lecture-halls where a boy would be one of many, but ἀγαθοὶ διδάσκαλοι κατ' οἶκον — good teachers brought into the house. It is a patrician's advantage frankly named, and Marcus does not pretend otherwise.
What he draws from it is a principle rather than a privilege: that on the right things one should spend ἐκτενῶς, without stinting. The Stoic who will spend the rest of the book teaching himself to want little is careful to mark the one expense he thinks always justified — the shaping of a mind. Frugality is not stinginess; it is knowing exactly what is worth paying for.
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