“One ought never to devote more than two-thirds of his income to the ordinary expenses of life, since the extraordinary will be certain to absorb the other third.”–Emerson.

WHEN we live within our means, contract?ing our ordinary expenses within the limits of two-thirds of our income, accord?ing to Emerson’s suggestion, we are then just balancing the scale and spending all we get. Extraordinary and unlooked-for expenses are reasonably sure to “absorb the other third” of our income.

Living within one’s means is commendable, but managing our affairs so that we live on less than we earn and thus have something left at the end of the year is desirable.

Volumes have been written on salesmanship and other volumes on how to earn money, but a library made up of the writings of the ages on how to spend money would be as limited as a pocket dictionary. Spending one’s money in providing for one’s needs and wants seems to be largely a matter of chance. We see something; we want it; we buy it; sometimes it proves to be of some use to us and almost as often it proves to have been a foolish expenditure.

Those people who make a serious business of spending their money and give to the spending of a dollar as much thought and effort and con?sideration as they gave to the earning of that dollar–they are the people who grow rich.

When a dollar is earned the greater part of it must go, perhaps, for the necessities and the reasonable wants. What is left may go for luxuries, may go to satisfy natural desires or may become a part of the accumulation which is to provide comfort and peace and ease and independence at some future time, when the earning power of the individual has shrunk.

A ten-dollar bill in the hands of a person twenty years old is worth thirty dollars or more in the last year of that person’s life, should he live his allotted three score and ten, because that ten dollars, properly invested, will become thirty dol?lars or more and is quite likely to become as much as fifty dollars, which may be more pleasurably expended in later life. The luxury which we buy today must be worth what it costs in money, plus the interest on that money for the remaining portion of our natural span of life; if it is not worth that much, it should not be bought.

An outing or a vacation costing a hundred dol?lars may be worth many hundreds or even thousands to the present and future well-being of the individual. It is right and proper that we should provide ourselves and the members of our families with luxuries today, but only such luxuries as we are in a position to enjoy to the full, and not lux?uries which merely give us an opportunity to make a show and do not add to our happiness or our peace of mind.

The buying of the necessities of life calls for careful thought and sound judgment, but in the choosing of the luxuries of life comes the real test of one’s fitness for the handling of money. Some money is squandered on seeming necessities but a large part of the money which is put into so-called luxuries is wholly wasted and should never have been spent.

A little thought, a little work and a little ordinary common-sense applied to the selection of the things which we buy solely for the pleasure they may give us might stretch even our present incomes to almost unbelievable proportions.

Nearly every person has had a hankering and an insistent desire for some certain thing for so long a time that the desire to possess that thing has become almost an obsession. Before the desire can be gratified the real need or wish for the thing has passed, and when it is finally acquired it provides little or no pleasure and is, quite often, a keen disappointment.

When we have wanted a thing for a long time and we finally reach the point where it is available to us, we should stop and take serious thought as to whether there is now some other thing, the possession of which would give us even greater pleasure.

The persons who earn money have a right to spend it, and to spend it where it will be of the greatest benefit to themselves and to those others who are dear to them, or who are dependent upon them. It is only a matter of simple sense, how?ever, to spend that money wisely and to get everything possible out of it. When we learn to make one dollar do the work of two we are twice as rich and twice as happy as we were before. If we learn to make four dollars do the work of five we have gained that much in wealth and in satisfaction. Every four dollars which we now possess, or which we ever hereafter acquire, can be made to do the work of five, if we will give as serious thought to spending the four dollars as we did to earning it.

“We are sympathetic, and, like children, want everything we see. But it is a large stride to independence,–when a man, in the discovery of his proper talent, has sunk the necessity for false expense.”–Emerson.

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Tags: The Secret of Wealth