Ben Franklin's Guide to Wealth

Being a 21st Century Treatise on What It Takes to Live a Rich Life

Erin Barrett, Jack Mingo

• Publisher: Conari Press
• Year: 2004
• ISBN:
  9781609250317
• Topic: Personal Development
• Subtopic: Personal Finance

It isn't all about the Benjamins! A revolutionary way of looking at money and value, based on the writings of the Founding Father. Ben Franklin's Guide to Wealth is the modern version of the treatise The Way of Wealth by Richard Saunders—one of Ben Franklin's many pseudonyms. Franklin practiced what he preached in the treatise, and it made him rich enough to have a full life, travel extensively, and follow his intellectual musings, which in turn led him to become an accomplished scientist, inventor, political activist, diplomat, and writer. Franklin wasn't born rich. He built his legacy using his intelligence, curiosity, natural good sense, and proclivity for thrift and hard work. When he died, he left a fortune. Now the authors bring practicing what Franklin preached up to date for today's busy lifestyles, with sage advice on a range of financial basics including debt, thrift, the value of work and business, developing financial responsibility, money and time, and preparing for the future. It's time to think about what "rich" really means. It's time to get back to financial basics. It's time to look for guidance from America's original financial guru—Ben Franklin.

SECTION 1

TIME IS MONEY

Doest thou love life? Then do not squander

time, for that is the stuff life is made of.

How do you spend your time? Despite the cliché, time is not really money. However, in some ways it helps to think of it as being very much like money:You can spend it wisely or foolishly. You have a finite amount of it. And it's likely to slip away unnoticed if you're not careful.

Are you getting the best value from your time? Just as many goods are not worth the money spent on them, many daily activities are not worth the time spent on them. While some may decide that a single-minded pursuit of money is the best use of their time, others will want to invest their time in other ways that they find valuable. To become aware of how you invest your time (or simply let it slip away), experiment with keeping a time and activity log.

Try this exercise: Keep a log in quarter-hour increments to see what you spend your time on during a typical week. At the end of the week, categorize your time spent and add up the total amount of time for each category. How much time do you spend commuting, attending meetings, or doing errands? How much time do you spend watching television, talking on the phone, or surfing the Internet? How much time do you spend feeding your mind, sleeping, developing your talents, organizing, cleaning, preparing meals, or engaged in worthwhile activities with loved ones?

Most people are shocked and chagrined to see many hours they spend on certain unproductive activities, and how little they spend on ones that improve themselves, their financial lives, and their connections with the people they love. Using a time log may help you see how certain times of the day are consistently productive while others are times when you are most likely to get distracted and be unproductive.

Once you've got a clear list of your week's activities, take a good look at your log. Draw three columns next to your entries. In the first column, number the activity from 1 to 10 to reflect how much or little that activity adds to meeting your financial goals. In the second column, put a number that reflects how much or little pleasure that activity adds to your life. Then compare the two columns. In an ideal life, the activities that support your financial goals would also be ones that give you pleasure. At the very least, your time expenditure should have some kind of balance between things you love and things you do to increase your financial freedom.

Finally, in your third column, keeping in mind what you've put in the first two columns, put a plus sign next to things you'd like to invest more time on, and a minus sign next to the things you'd like to spend less time on.

Have you inventoried a week's activities in your time log and found that little looks like something you want to put time into? Are you feeling “lazy” and incapable of spending your time usefully? Have you found that you don't “love life”? If so, then it's time for some self-reflection.

Are you burned out by your job? Finding your hobbies and home responsibilities less than satisfying? Feeling far removed from your dreams? Experiencing alienation in your relationships with people? If so, consider getting checked out by a doctor, physically and psychologically. Common physical conditions (for example, depression or hypothyroidism) can drag you down and make you feel tired and despondent. Drug or alcohol abuse can manifest itself in a variety of sneakily debilitating ways. Perhaps you need to talk with a counselor about some longstanding issues with your work, relationships, sense of helplessness, and so on.

What we want to tell you is that it isn't hopeless. It is possible to change your life, do much of what you want to do, and stop doing much of what you don't want to do. Yes, you may have to take some risks, take a leap, be willing to balance the security of inertia against the risks of making changes. But it's worth thinking about, clarifying, planning, preparing, and recruiting your friends, allies, and loved ones to offer support.

Leisure is time for doing something useful; this

leisure the diligent man will obtain, but the

lazy man never; so that a life of leisure and a

life of laziness are two things.

Dare we say it? Doing work for yourself is not only good for your pocketbook, but it's good for your soul as well. True, you can pay somebody to prepare your food (either directly or indirectly by using convenience foods).You can pay somebody to do your yard chores, your cleaning, your car maintenance, and so on. You can pay somebody to prepare your taxes, carry your bags, paint and decorate your home, and do the work at your place of business. You can even pay somebody to raise your children, educate them, and teach them how to play sports.

You can do that, and sometimes it makes sense to do so, but let us suggest that, whenever you can, it's best to do it yourself.

You might add up the money you make per hour and compare it with the money you'd spend per hour on an outside worker and decide that since you make more money per hour than a yard worker, you'd be better off working the extra hours at your own job, hiring a lower-paid worker, and pocketing the difference.

This might be a completely rational decision. However, it also may be a false economy. For example, if your work is one where you sit all day, working outside in the yard pushing a mower (preferably manual, not a gas guzzler) will be great for your health and may save you the cost of a health club membership (or a triple bypass). If your job is complicated and filled with stress, you may find meditative solace in painting, digging, sewing patches on jeans, washing dishes, organizing drawers, or building shelves. And kids? No matter what other jobs you have, you may find that genuinely connecting with kids can be the most rewarding of all.

Frankly, most people have to have down time from their normal labors. What you do with that downtime—use it or waste it—is the difference between leisure and laziness.

Plough deep, while sluggards sleep, and

you shall have corn to sell and to keep.

How much of your budget do you spend on food? For most Americans food is the third biggest item, taking up about 14 percent of their total income.

Consider becoming a “weekend farmer”—a vegetable gardener. During World War II, Victory Gardens were all the rage. To support the war effort, the government sent out booklets with instructions on how every family could start their own vegetable and herb garden. The campaign took off, and families everywhere were putting their own homegrown vegetables on their dinner tables. It may seem like a lot of work if you've never tried, but it can save you money at the market. How much money? With two-fifths of an acre, a family of four can grow 75 percent of their food, saving $3,000 a year.

But maybe you don't have that much land available. Or worse, you live in an apartment, and have only a patio or balcony. While it's true that you won't be able to produce as much as someone who has a huge backyard, you can still plant your potatoes, squash, tomatoes, peas, beans, peppers, and herbs in pots and bins, on your patio or in a sunny window.

Regardless of the size of their “back forty”—whether forty acres, forty feet square, or forty plants in pots—most people get a great deal of pleasure out of growing at least some of their own food. You may find that you do too.

Employ thy time well,

if thou meanest to gain leisure.

It's one thing to want to work hard for something. However, if you're always busy, if you're always working long hours and feeling dragged down by it, it may be time to reassess some things.

Songwriter Ray Davies once asked that if life is for living, what is living for? One thing we know is that all work and no play is not the goal of living. So what's the problem?

• Perhaps you're not organized enough in your work. If you could procrastinate less and could do more work in less time, you'd have more time left over in the day.
• Perhaps you could use time that normally is dead time. Are you using your commute time wisely? Get out of your car if you can and bicycle for the exercise, for example. Or use carpooling and public transportation so you can use the time for something more productive than driving through rush hour. What about lunch time? Don't just sit at a table in a lunchroom or a restaurant—take a walk and clear your head, take a short nap or meditation break, ...

Table of contents

• Cover Image
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• Introduction
• Section 1: Time Is Money
• Section 2: Slothfulness
• Section 3: Minding Your Business
• Section 4: Attention To Detail
• Section 5: Not Trusting Too Much
• Section 6: Thrift Through Right Effort
• Section 7: Thrift Through Smart Savings
• Section 8: Living Simply
• Section 9: Break The Chains Of Debt
• Section 10: The Future
• Section 11: One Last Thought
• Appendix
• To Our Readers