Earnest money

“ Gifts of all kinds, expenses of all kinds, outgo of every description, must come from new sources of revenue; my fortune and its income and the surplus over the previous year’s outgo must be treated as a sacred fund of which I was merely the trustee. That rule has put me often in straits, has forced me to many money-making measures [134] that in the narrow view would be called relentless. But to it the world owes my highest achievements, as a financier and industrial leader, and to it I owe the bulk of my fortune.
The brain earns in vain, however hugely, if the hands do not hoard ”

“ Does the value of your savings lie so heavily upon your hands that you want to get rid of it? If so, then, and only then, by all means follow the lead of your greenback and fiat-money apostles, who promise to relieve you of your cares by a kind of money which in fact will relieve you of the value of your saved earnings. But, if you are the sensible men I take you to be, you will not forget that the first rule of wisdom teaches you to make sure of that which you have before grasping at shadows beyond. Do you want your savings to be worth dollar for dollar? ”

“ So with the young man starting in business; let him understand the value of money by earning it. When he does understand its value, then grease the wheels a little in helping him to start business, but remember, men who get money with too great facility cannot usually succeed. You must get the first dollars by hard knocks, and at some sacrifice, in order to appreciate the value of those dollars. ”

“ Lastly, let us look to the general question of the results of the accumulation of wealth in the hands of different classes. Roughly we may divide three classes of money-earners: the lower, who receive weekly pay, and are tempted to spend it all by the certainty of poor relief when needed; the middle, who receive yearly pay, and must save if they are to avoid losing caste in late life; the upper, who make large but uncertain profits by organising work, or by financial manipulation, regular or irregular. ”

“ Earnings and wages are not alone good in themselves, but are an additional gratification, in that they supply a proof that the earner's service is of worth to the world. Some day, when social conditions are so adjusted that economic competition is really free, and wealth cannot be obtained save by service, money will be a proper measure of standing in the community. ”

“ You will see that I have reckoned your wages the same as Pierre’s—thirty dollars a month and ‘found,’ as the farmers say, though it has been much more difficult to find him than you. You have been here nearly three months, and eighty dollars is yours.”
“Eighty dollars! Whew! I mean, impossible. In the first place, I haven’t earned it; in the second, I couldn’t take it from—from you—if I had. How could a man take money from one who had saved his life?” ”

“ A financier's capital circulates inside his pockets, not outside of them except on certain occasions on 'Change. The art of spending money does not go hand-in-hand with the art of making it,--few things in this world delight me more than the spectacle of a millionaire who, having ostentatiously retired from business, contemplates his money-bags in positive despair, not knowing what to do with them and bored to death because the only occupation in which he takes any delight, money-getting, is debarred him by his position. ”

“ This man had never engaged, during his whole life, in any useful branch of business. Money was the god he worshipped, and to gain this, he was ready to make almost any sacrifice. He started in life with five thousand dollars—a legacy from a distant relative. To risk this sum, or any portion of it, in trade, would have been, in his view, the most egregious folly. His first investment was in six per cent. ground-rents, from which he received three hundred dollars per annum. It cost him two hundred to live; he had, therefore, at the end of the year, a surplus of one hundred dollars. ”

“ Form the habit as soon as you become a money earner, or money maker, of saving a part of your salary, or profits. Put away one dollar out of every ten you earn. The time will come in your lives, when, if you have a little money, you can control circumstances; otherwise circumstances will control you. You may often have to practice self-denial to save ten per cent. of your earnings; but compel yourselves 1009to do so and you will never regret it. Most of the leading men in business life to-day started out less well equipped with worldly goods or education than any of you. ”

“ Take, for instance, the common notion so plausible at the first glance, of the encouragement given to industry by lavish expenditure. A, who spends his whole income, and even his capital, in expensive living, is supposed to give great employment to labor. B, who lives on a small portion, and invests the remainder in the funds, is thought to give little or no employment. For every body sees the gains which are made by A's tradesmen, servants, and others, while his money is spending. ”

“ A friend of mine once said to a millionaire, whom he saw forever engaged in making money which he never seemed to have any pleasure in spending, “Pray, Mr ——, will you answer me one question: You are said to have two millions, and you spend L600 a year. In order to rest and enjoy, what will content you?” ”

“ How a Family Saved $100 on a Salary of $700.
Economy is quite as large a factor as industry in the gaining of a fortune. With people living on small incomes, it is often the one element that determines whether they “make both ends meet,” or run in debt and ultimately fail. The following example shows how one family, whose income was only $700 a year, actually saved $100. Mr. ——, of ——, found himself getting behind in money matters, and determined to practice rigid economy. ”

“ And this larger balance would be drawn, upon for the extra expenses, such as entertaining and amusements, charities, and the thousand and one pleasant ways of spending money that are open to the possessor of the larger income, and are rigorously out of the reach of the owner of 500l. ”

“ We should, of course, remember that many occupations which seem at first sight to be concerned simply with money-making have a significance which transcends this. The business of stockbroking, for instance, does not have money-making as its end-all and be-all. ”

“ Does he himself want to work,to do something useful? Far from it. His money works for him, his money generates money, as the saying is, or in plain English: his money is the channel, through which the earnings of other, industrious people, flow into his pockets. ”

“ All because our authors have no idea of the real value of money. Modest sums they scorn. An income short of twenty or thirty thousand is beneath their notice. Who has ever read of a hero who had a salary of forty-five dollars a month, for instance? ”

“ Those classes which work the hardest might naturally be expected to value the most the money which they earn. Yet the readiness with which so many are accustomed to eat up and drink up their earnings as they go, renders them, to a great extent, dependent upon the frugal. ”

“ If men anticipate that the value of the income, which is a fixed sum of dollars, is to grow less in the future, then the present worth of the bearer of that income will shrink to an extent greater than the "pure rate" of interest would call for. ”

“ You know that money gotten that way is tainted money, more or less. To earn what you have and have a little is better and safer than to have much and get it in such a way. But it's too late to preach about that now—I guess I didn't tell you that often enough and hard enough before this, or else you wouldn't have wanted to buy the stock. It is partly my fault, for I thought some time ago you talked as though you were getting the money craze, but I thought it would soon wear off. ”

“ No sensible man in America objects to the wealth acquired by righteous means. But human ingenuity can scarcely devise a contrivance which gives such enormous advantages, not to the honest business man, but to the unscrupulous speculator and gambler in the accumulation of wealth at the expense of legitimate business and labor, as a paper money with its fluctuations of value. ”

“ It is so called when it is used to gather and appropriate the earnings of others, but wealth in none of its forms has the quality or power of producing.
Money, the most familiar form, is barren. A bag of dollars stored for ages will not have increased a single coin. No one holds or handles money on the assumption that it will increase in his hands. Money is a care, and the broker who holds or handles it relies for his compensation, not on the increase of the dollars in his hands, but on the increase from some producer to whom he lends it. ”

“ Of what use is money here except in one form and another to give it away? No man can expend on his own legitimate and proper comforts and pleasures the interest on $1,000,000 at five per cent per annum. ”

“ When we think that the education of his large family, the hospitality to strangers, the journeys to try organs in various places, were all accomplished on an income of not much over £100 a year, we must admire the business-like capacity of the man, even though all due allowance is made for the difference in the purchasing power of money in those days. ”

“ The only element of truth in the economic theory that these men are actuated by desire for money is this: owing to the fact that money is what is believed to be desirable, the making of money is recognized as the test of success. ”

“ All I asked was a chance to employ a little of the money that I saw about me—not to take it, but to employ it for a little while, a few days, perhaps only a few hours. Money breeds money. Why should I not use some of this idle money to pay me what I ought to have? ”

“ Then again there is an immense amount of capital lying idle and seeking investment, and the man who has just enough money at three per cent. to live upon very closely, is always anxious to increase his income by making it six. ”

“ There's money to be made often enough by a wise fellow if only he has a little capital. With the sixty pounds you brought along, and the hundred and fifty you've been given, you've a tidy nest egg. Now you bank most of it, keeping twenty pounds for emergencies. ”

“ The family man in a large city who meets these several demands to his entire satisfaction will have little of ten thousand dollars left for the purchase of a trotter, a fur overcoat, and a diamond pin.
The growing consciousness of the value of these complex demands of our modern civilization, when intelligently gratified, acts at the present day as a cogent incentive to make money, not for the mere sake of accumulation, but to spend. Gross accumulation with scant expenditure has always been sanctioned here ”

“ The money-makers are the real kings of modern life, because vulgarly we measure all things, including human worth, by dollars.
If you make ten thousand dollars a year at your job it is only because your employer is making more than that amount out of your services. He is the player; you are the chessman. ”

“ I have no intention of going through life on my wife’s pocketbook.”
“Good. Now the decks are cleared. As I thought. You’ve been frank. So’ll I. Take up this question of money. What is money? Opportunity. If men like yourself, who have ideas, energy, and ambition, refuse to take the opportunity money offers you,—who profits? ”

“ Money, which not seldom obtrudes itself with a disagreeable urgency. We cast our eye over that little parchment-bound volume which only "Fortune's favoured sons, not we" can regard with any complacency; and we observe, not for the first time, that we have been spending a good deal more than we ought to spend, and are not far from the perilous edge of an overdrawn account. ”

“ The volume of such spiritual goods Mammon can lure into the market measures the power of money.... When gold cannot shake the nobleman's pride of caste, the statesman's patriotism, the soldier's honor, the wife's fidelity, the official's sense of duty, or the artist's devotion to his ideal, wealth is cheap. But when maidens yield themselves to senile moneybags, youths swarm about the unattractive heiress, judges take bribes, experts sell their opinions to the highest bidder, and genius champions the cause it does not believe in, wealth is rated high. ”

“ Show your heels to the tempting demagogue, and put your trust only in that dollar which, being a dollar once, is sure to be a dollar all the time. Give up the cause of that dollar to-day, and you do not know what your savings will be worth to-morrow. Do you want to maintain your reputation as intelligent men? ”

“ And such is the case with merchants, who understand circulating money, and can calculate on the return it makes for five times; such as the profits of money laid out, and how much that will amount to which has been laid out, and how much the loss on that money will be, and how much the profit thereon, so that, by that means, they may be satisfied during life. Concerning those men who seek wealth: before they commence gaining all persons laugh at them; but when they profit, those who before laughed approach and ask their favour. ”

“ The man who is working himself out of debt puts in better effort and longer hours into his business than the man who does not owe a cent. Go in debt reasonably and carefully, and you can make money with other people's money.
Money has a fixed value in itself in the matter of earning capacity. This fixed value is 5% or 6% or 7% as the case may be. One who puts his money in securities gets his money which the cash earns without effort on his part. ”