Strategies for financial security are no new concepts.
P.T. Barnum wrote a manifesto on the topic a while back... 136 years ago. While the penned date may seem archaic, the advice remains relevant.
In his introduction, Barnum explained, "In the United States, where we have more land than people, it is not at all difficult for persons in good health to make money." Okay, so maybe a few things have changed.
"In this comparatively new field there are so many avenues of success open, so many vocations which are not crowded, that any person of either sex who is willing, at least for the time being, to engage in any respectable occupation that offers, may find lucrative employment," Barnum elaborated. In this instance, his advice remains timeless. There are still plenty of opportunities in today's America for any one, of either sex, to make money as long as they have the determination and a few basic tools in their financial toolbox.
Below are Barnum's 20 golden rules. Take heed and listen to the illustrious lover of hoaxes, founder of Barnum & Bailey Circus and wildly successful philanthropist.
1. Don't Mistake Your Vocation
"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."
2. Select The Right Location
"After securing the right vocation, you must be careful to select the proper location."
"You may have been cut out for a hotel keeper, and they say it requires a genius to ‘know how to keep a hotel.' You might conduct a hotel like clock-work, and provide satisfactorily for five hundred guests every day; yet, if you should locate your house in a small village where there is no railroad communication or public travel, the location would be your ruin."
"It is equally important that you do note commence business where there are already enough to meet all demands in the same occupation."
3. Avoid Debt
"Money is in some respects like fire; it is a very excellent servant but a terrible master. When you have it mastering you; when interest is constantly piling up against you, it will keep you down in the worst kind of slavery. But let money work for you, and you will have the most devoted servant in the world."
4. Persevere
"When a man is in the right path, he must persevere. I speak of this because there are some persons who are ‘born tired;' naturally lazy and possessing no self-reliance and no perseverance."
5. Whatever You Do, Do It With All Your Might
"Work at it, if necessary, early and late, in season and out of season, not leaving a stone unturned, and never deferring for a single hour that which can be done just as well now."
6. Depend Upon Your Own Personal Exertions
"There is no such thing in the world as luck. There never was a man who could go out in the morning and find a purse full of gold in the street to-day, and another to-morrow, and so on, day after day. He may do so once in his life; but so far as mere luck is concerned, he is as liable to lose it as to find it."
7. Use The Best Tools
"Men in engaging employees should be careful to get the best. Understand, you cannot have too good tools to work with, and there is no tool you should be so particular about as living tools. If you get a good one, it is better to keep him, than keep changing."
"Those men who have brains and experience are therefore the most valuable and not to be readily parted with; it is better for them, as well as yourself, to keep them, at reasonable advances in their salaries from time to time."
8. Don't Get Above Your Business
"Young men after they get through their business training, or apprenticeship, instead of pursuing their avocation and rising their business, will often lie about doing nothing."
"No profession, trade, or calling, is overcrowded in the upper story."
9. Learn Something Useful
"Every man should make his son or daughter learn some trade or profession, so that in these days of changing fortunes – of being rich to-day and poor to-morrow – they may have something tangible to fall back on."
10. Let Hope Predominate But Be Not Too Visionary
"Many persons are always kept poor, because they are too visionary. Every project looks to them like certain success, and therefore they keep changing from one business to another, always in hot water, always ‘under the harrow.' The plan of ‘counting the chickens before they are hatched' is an error of ancient date, but it does not seem to improve by age."
11. Do Not Scatter Your Powers
"There is good sense in the old caution against having too many irons in the fire at once."
12. Be Systematic
"A person who does business by rule, having a time and place for everything, doing his work properly, will accomplish twice as much and with half the trouble of him who does it carelessly and slipshod."
13. Read The Newspapers
"Always take a trustworthy newspaper, and thus keep thoroughly posted in regard to the transactions of the world."
14. Beware Of ‘Outside Operations'
"We sometimes see men who have obtained fortunes, suddenly become poor. In many cases, this arises from intemperance, and often from gaming, and other bad habits. Frequently it occurs because a man has been engaged in ‘outside operations,' of some sort. When he gets rich in his legitimate business, he is told of a grand speculation where he can make a score of thousands. He is constantly flattered by his friends, who tell him that he is born lucky, that everything he touches turns into gold. Now if he forgets that his economical habits, his rectitude of conduct and a personal attention to a business which he understands, caused his success in life, he will listen to the siren voice."
15. Don't Indorse Without Security
"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 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."
16. Advertise Your Business
"We all depend, more or less, upon the public for our support."
"But I say if a man has got goods for sale, and he don't advertise them in some way, the chances are that some day the sheriff will do it for him. Nor do I say that everybody must advertise in a newspaper, or indeed use ‘printers' ink' at all. On the contrary, although that article is indispensable in the majority of cases, yet doctors and clergymen, and sometimes lawyers and some others, can more effectually reach the public in some other manner."
17. Be Polite And Kind To Your Customers
"Politeness and civility are the best capital ever invested in business."
18. Be Charitable
"The best kind of charity is to help those who are willing to help themselves. Promiscuous almsgiving, without inquiring into the worthiness of the applicant, is bad in every sense. But to search out and quietly assist those who are struggling for themselves, is the kind that ‘scattereth and yet increaseth.' But don't fall into the idea that some persons practice, of giving a prayer instead of a potato, and a benediction instead of bread, to the hungry. It is easier to make Christians with full stomachs than empty."
19. Don't Blab
"Some men have a foolish habit of telling their business secrets […] Nothing is gained by this, and oftentimes much is lost."
20. Preserve Your Integrity
"To get rich, is not always the equivalent to being successful."
"The history of money-getting, which is commerce, is a history of civilization, and wherever trade has flourished most, there, too, have art and science produced the noblest fruits. In fact, as a general thing, money-getters are the benefactors of our race. To them, in a great measure, are we indebted for our institutions of learning and of art, our academies, colleges and churches […] But when, in this country, we find such a nuisance and stumbling block as a miser, we remember with gratitude that in America we have no laws of primogeniture, and that in the due course of nature the time will come when the hoarded dust will be scattered for the benefit of mankind."
Image Credit:By P. T. Barnum & Co. [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons
© 2024 Benzinga.com. Benzinga does not provide investment advice. All rights reserved.
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