"Learn to live within your income. Some day you may have to live without it."Anybody can earn money--the trick today is to save money.Probably every man and woman in moderate circumstances is either saving money or has planned to do so before long. It is quite natural to put off actually beginning saving until "tomorrow," because today there are so many things one feels it is necessary to buy or to do. Everybody expects to have a larger income "after while" and intends to save then, but when
larger income arrives, cost of living has increased, and pleasures and luxuries to which one has grown accustomed eat up increased income.
Many men and women who planned two years ago to begin saving as soon as they made more money, are today making more money--but are not saving a cent more than they did two years ago. Many people who read these lines know that is true from their own experience, for every one who looks back realizes that it is not one bit easier to save money today than it would have been when income was but a few dollars a week.
A larger income is often a temptation to adopt a more expensive mode of living. The modest home which seemed cozy and attractive when master of house was earning only a few dollars a week, is immediately abandoned when his salary doubles. The instinct of average man is to want his home, his dress, his pleasures, his habits--all to make a show far in advance of his actual earnings.
He impresses his friends and neighbors with idea that he is making twice as much money as his pocket-book ever holds--and then he has to work in a constant fever in order to keep up with this impression.
Let us live while we live is slogan of too many men and women of this generation--and that is exactly point we are coming to.
Let us live while we live. The man or woman who does not know pleasure of adding week by week to a sum of money earned and owned, has missed one of most enjoyable, stimulating, and ever-present pleasures which can be experienced.
