Interesting snippet of wisdom from the article:<p>> The real comforts of life cost but a small portion of what most of us can earn. Dr. Franklin says “it is the eyes of others and not our own eyes which ruin us. If all the world were blind except myself I should not care for fine clothes or furniture.”<p>In reading a few of the chapters, it was really interesting to see the dollar amounts written. They seemed rather high for 1880.<p>> She has a nice one thousand dollar camel's hair shawl, and she will make Smith get her an imitation one, and she will sit in a pew right next to her neighbor in church, in order to prove that she is her equal.<p>Inflation calculators put that camel shawl at nearly $25,000 (2019 dollars).
Our Fake History podcast has an excellent series on PT Barnum. He was something of a genius promoter (and self-promoter). Today he's best remember for his circus act, but that was just one of a long line of productions he put on.<p>In Barnum's parlance, a "humbug" was a practical joke played on his audience. A less charitable interpretation is that of some of Barnum's humbugs are downright fraudulent. It's a fun story.<p>Episode 1 of 3 is here: <a href="https://ourfakehistory.com/index.php/season-2/episode-32-who-was-the-prince-of-humbugs-part-i/" rel="nofollow">https://ourfakehistory.com/index.php/season-2/episode-32-who...</a>
Shameless plug, free nicely formatted epub of The Art of Money Getting for your ereader of choice at Standard Ebooks: <a href="https://standardebooks.org/ebooks/p-t-barnum/the-art-of-money-getting" rel="nofollow">https://standardebooks.org/ebooks/p-t-barnum/the-art-of-mone...</a>
All praise be unto this fourmilab.ch website. This is the old internet. The internet that I first fell in love with. Its purely about the information, just an honest straight provider of information. Its a truly loyal ode to the term "information highway". These types of websites are so rare now.
> Young men starting in life should avoid running into debt. There is scarcely anything that drags a person down like debt. It is a slavish position to get in...<p>Well, that put student debt in perspective no ?
One modern trick to earn a tiny bit of extra money: Use credit cards for buying/paying anything at all, never use debit cards or cash: Credit cards usually pay a small reward point for spends which can often be redeemed as a cash discount later, and also since the expenses go to the credit card, the cash in the savings account stay untouched till the day you make the credit card bill payment, which will keep earning interest for the additional days it remains in your account(Which may be a significant amount over long term, in a high interest rate country).<p>In some countries you can route large payments like insurance premium payments through the credit card. Sometimes insurance companies even have investment products which they claim are "insurance policies", that can be bought with credit cards too.
Funny how some of it seems like good common sense and then you get<p>> Some men have a foolish habit of telling their business secrets. If they make money they like to tell their neighbors how it was done. Nothing is gained by this, and ofttimes much is lost. Say nothing about your profits, your hopes, your expectations, your intentions. And this should apply to letters as well as to conversation. Goethe makes Mephistophiles say: “Never write a letter nor destroy one.” Business men must write letters, but they should be careful what they put in them. If you are losing money, be specially cautious and not tell of it, or you will lose your reputation.<p>In 2019, it seems openness and transparency (eg Buffer) can form the foundations of a profitable strategy
I am yet to hear one concrete piece of useful advice on "how to make money."<p>The ONLY things I can say with certainty in life, as far as productive activities go is something like "workout, eat right, sleep enough, drink enough water." That's literally it.
Don't Blab >>> This chapter/paragraph goes against everything I believe in, the entire opensource community is based on sharing. I am an aspiring farmer with a tech addiction and if it wasn't for people sharing their successes through YouTube and a lesser extent farmers that write books, this "City Boy" wouldn't have survived my first year on the farm. I also agree Internet sucks in the country, but it's still better than encyclopedias!!
Thanks for the link, it's a nice discovery. fourmilab.ch is a real website for hackers, lots of interesting things. Also, I didn't know its author, John Walker, creator of AutoDesk AutoCAD was living in Switzerland and still so interested in topics such as astronomy, C64, science fiction, Kerbal Space Program and more nerdy things.
Just a small observation but I feel important: This article has two titles, "Golden Rules for Making Money" and "Art Of Money Getting".
You can "Get Money" without being productive, to "Make Money" is inherently productive.
"Once you have their money, never give it back."<p><a href="https://memory-beta.fandom.com/wiki/Ferengi_Rules_of_Acquisition" rel="nofollow">https://memory-beta.fandom.com/wiki/Ferengi_Rules_of_Acquisi...</a>
> We are all, no doubt, born for a wise purpose.<p>I've heard and seen this time and time again and yet there's no advice on how to find that purpose. It's always easy to say, "do what you love" but how do you find what you love?
The first few paragraphs remind me of a book called "Your Money or Your Life", which provides a simple way of expense tracking that can help build up savings. I recommend it for anybody who likes money.
<i>"Unless a man enters upon the vocation intended for him by nature, and best suited to his peculiar genius, he cannot succeed. I am glad to believe that the majority of persons do find their right vocation. Yet we see many who have mistaken their calling, from the blacksmith up (or down) to the clergyman. You will see, for instance, that extraordinary linguist the “learned blacksmith,” who ought to have been a teacher of languages; and you may have seen lawyers, doctors and clergymen who were better fitted by nature for the anvil or the lapstone."</i><p>#learntocode
Life tells you what you should do in two ways: what you like to do and what you are good at. Of course liking something and being good at it often go hand in hand.<p>When you are good at something, it’s fun to keep doing it so you feel better than other people. When you like to do something, you often get good at it.