Wealth Creation
"Learn to live within your income. Some day you may have to
live without it."
Anybody can earn money--the trick today is to save
money.Probably every man and woman in moderate circumstances is
either saving money or has planned to do so before long. It is
quite natural to put off actually beginning saving until
"tomorrow," because today there are so many things one feels it
is necessary to buy or to do. Everybody expects to have a larger
income "after while" and intends to save then, but when the
larger income arrives, the cost of living has increased, and the
pleasures and luxuries to which one has grown accustomed eat up
the increased income.
Many men and women who planned two years ago to begin saving as
soon as they made more money, are today making more money--but
are not saving a cent more than they did two years ago. Many
people who read these lines know that is true from their own
experience, for every one who looks back realizes that it is not
one bit easier to save money today than it would have been when
the income was but a few dollars a week.
A larger income is often a temptation to adopt a more expensive
mode of living. The modest home which seemed cozy and attractive
when the master of the house was earning only a few dollars a
week, is immediately abandoned when his salary doubles. The
instinct of the average man is to want his home, his dress, his
pleasures, his habits--all to make a show far in advance of his
actual earnings.
He impresses his friends and neighbors with the idea that he is
making twice as much money as his pocket-book ever holds--and
then he has to work in a constant fever in order to keep up with
this impression.
Let us live while we live is the slogan of too many men and
women of this generation--and that is exactly the point we are
coming to.
Let us live while we live. The man or woman who does not know
the pleasure of adding week by week to a sum of money earned and
owned, has missed one of the most enjoyable, stimulating, and
ever-present pleasures which can be experienced.
That statement sounds like exaggeration to the man who has never
watched a $10 account in his savings bank book grow week by
week. And he is not to blame for thinking so until he knows
better. There is pleasure in gratifying one's inclination for
spending money, but the man who curbs his inborn inclination to
spend--and saves regularly--finds that he experiences twice the
pleasure in saving that he ever did in spending.
The secret of gaining wealth has been reduced to seven words by
Robert Louis Stevenson:--
"Earn a little, spend a little less."
Simple, isn't it?
Some people fail to accumulate enough money to take care of them
in old age, sickness or misfortune, and it is because they think
that saving is the easiest thing in the world. The fact is that
it requires more sense to save money than to make it.
"Don