Thursday, August 30, 2007

The Seven Cures of a Lean Purse

Money is the medium by which earthly success is measured.

Money makes possible the enjoyment of the best the earth affords.

Money is plentiful for those who understand the simple laws which govern its acquisition.

Our continent's prosperity depends upon the personal financial prosperity of each of us as individuals.

This blog deals with the personal successes of each of us. Success means accomplishments as the result of our own efforts and abilities. Proper preparation is the key to our success. Our acts can be no wiser than our thoughts. Our thinking can be no wiser than our understanding.

The purpose of this blog is to offer those who are ambitious for financial success an insight which will aid them to acquire money, to keep money, and to make their surpluses earn more money.

Ahead of you stretches your future, like a road leading into the distance. Along that road are ambitions you wish to accomplish... desires you wish to gratify. To bring your ambitions and desires to fulfillment, you must be successful with money. Let the financial principles made clear here guide you away from the stringency of a lean purse to that fuller, happier life a full purse makes possible. Like the law of gravity, these laws of money are universal and unchanging. May they prove to be for you, as they have proven to so many others, a sure key to a fat purse, larger bank balances and gratifying financial progress.

For the artists, scientists, thinkers, musicians, sportsmen and working people of Africa:

It costs nothing to ask wise advice from a good friend, and I, Shiko, has always been that. Never mind though your purses be as empty as the falcon's nest of a year ago. Let that not detain you.
You are weary of being without gold in the midst of plenty. You wish to become people of means.

You do realize the reason why you have never found any measure of wealth: you never sought
it.

You have labored patiently to carve the staunchest sculptures in Africa; to sing the sweetest melodies; to paint the most beautiful portraits. To that puepose was devoted your best endeavors. Therefore, at it you did succeed.

In those things toward which you exerted your best endeavors you succeeded. The Gods were content to let you continue thus. Now, at last, you see a light, bright like that from the rising sun. It bids you to learn more that you may prosper more. With a new understanding you shall find honorable ways to accomplish your desires.

Seven Cures of a Lean Purse

The First Cure: Start Your Purse To Fattening

My students, there are many trades and labors at which people may earn cash. Each of the ways of earning is a stream of income from which the worker diverts by her labors a portion to her own purse. Therefore into the purse of each of you flows a stream of cash large or small according to your ability.

If each of you desires to build yourself a fortune, it is wise to start by utilizing that source of wealth which you already have established.

Now I shall tell you the first remedy I learned to cure a lean purse: For every ten coins you place within your purse take out for use but nine. Your purse will start to fatten at once and its increasing weight will feel good in your hand and bring satisfaction to your soul.

Deride not what I say because of its simplicity. Truth is always simple. I told you I would tell how I built my fortune. This was my beginning. I, too, carried a lean purse and cursed it because there aws nothing to satisfy my desires. But when I began to take out from my purse but nine parts of ten I put in, it began to fatten. So will yours.

I will tell you a strange truth, the reason for which I don't know. When I ceased to pay out more than nine-tenths of my earnings, I managed to get along just as well. I was not shorter than before.

Also, before long, did coins come to me more easily than before. Surely it is a law of the Gods that unto her who keeps and spends not a certain part of all her earnings, shall cash come more easily. Likewise, her whose purse is empty does cash avoid.

What do you desire the most? Is it the gratification of your desires of each day, a jewel, a bit of finery, better clothes, more food; things quickly gone and forgotten? Or is it substantial belongings, gold, lands, herds, merchandise, income-bringing investments? The coins you take from your purse bring the first. The coins you live within it will bring the latter.

This, my students, was the first cure I did discover for my lean purse: For each ten coins I put in, to spend but nine.


The Second Cure: Control Your Expenditures

Some of you have asked me this: 'How can one keep one-tenth of all she earns in her purse when all the coins she earns are not enough for her necessary expenses?'

All of you carry lean purses, yet you do not all earn the same. Some earn much more than others. Some have much larger families to support. Yet all purses are equally lean. Now, I will tell you an unusual truth about all people. It is this: That what each of us calls our 'necessary expenses' will always grow to equal our incomes unless we protest to the contrary.

Confuse not the necessary expenses with your desires. Each of you, together with your good families, have more desires than your earnings can gratify. Therfore are your earnings spent to gratify these desires insofar as they will go. Still you retain many ungratified desires.

All people are burdened with more desires than they can possibly gratify. Because of my wealth do you think I may gratify every desire? It is a false idea. There are limits to my time. There are limits to my strength. There are limits to the distance I may travel. There are limits to what I may eat. There are limits to the zest with which I may enjoy.

I say to you that just as weeds grow in a field wherever the farmer leaves space for their roots, even so freely do desires grow in people wherever there is a possibility of their being gratified. Your desires are a multitude and those that you may gratify are but a few.

Study thoughtfully your accustomed habits of living. Herein may be most often found certain accepfed expenses that may wisely be reduced or eliminated. Let your motto be one hundred percent of appreciated value demanded for each coin spent.

Therefore, write down each thing for which you desire to spend. Select those that are necessary and others that are possible through the expenditure of nine-tenths of your income. Cross out the rest and consider them but a part of that great multitude of desires that must go unsatisfied and regret them not.

Budget then your necessary expenses. Touch not the one-tenth that is fattening your purse. Let this be your great desire that is being accomplished. Keep working with your budget, keep adjusting it to help you. Make it your first assistant in defending your fattening purse.

The purpose of a budget is to help your purse to fatten. It is to assist you to have your necessities, and as far as attainable, your other desires. It is to enable you to realize your most cherished desires by defending them from your casual wishes. Like a bright light in a dark cave, your budget shows up the leaks from your purse an enables you to stop them and control your expenditures for definite and gratifying purposes.

This, then, is the second cure for a lean purse: Budget your expenses that you may have coins to pay for your necessities, to pay for your enjoyments and to gratify your wothwhile desires without spending more than nine-tenths of your earnings.




The Third Cure: Make Your Cash Multiply


Behold your lean purse is fattening. You have disciplined yourself to live therein one-tenth of all you earn. You have controlled your expenditures to protect your growing treasure.


Next, we will consider means to put your treasure to labor and to increase. Cash in a purse is gratifying to own and satisfies a miserly soul but earns nothing. The cash we may retain from our earnings is but the start. The earnings it will make shall build our fortunes.


How, therefore, may we put our cash to work? My first investment was unfortunate, for I lost all. Its tale I will relate later. My first profitable investment was a loan I made to a lady named Njoki, a second-hand clothes dealer. Thrice each year did she buy large shipments of clothes and shoes brought from across the border to sell in her store. Lacking sufficient capital to pay the merchants, she would borrow from those who had extra cash. She was an honorable lady. Her borrowing she would repay, together with a liberal rental, as she sold her goods.


Each time I loaned to her I loaned back also the rental she had paid to me. Therefore not only did my capital increase, but its earnings likewise increased. Most gratifying was it to have these sums return to my purse.


I tell you, my friends, a person's wealth is not in the cash she carries in her purse; it is the income she builds, the golden stream that continually flows into her purse and keeps it always bulging. That is what you, each one of you desires; an income that continues to come whether you work or travel.

Great income I have acquired. So great that I'm called a very rich woman. My loans to Njoki were my first training in profitable investment. Gaining wisdom from this experience, I extended my loans and investments as my capital increased.

From a few sources at first, from many sources later, flowed into my purse a golden stream of wealth available for such wise uses as I should decide.

Behold, from my humble earnings I had begotten a hoard of golden slaves, each laboring and earning more gold. As they labored for me, so their children also labored and their children's children until great was the income from their combined efforts.

Money increases rapidly, when making reasonable earnings. This, then, is the third cure of a lean purse: to put each coin to laboring that it may reproduce its kind even as the flocks of the field and help bring to you income, a stream of wealth that shall flow constantly into your purse.


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