There are lots of ambitious people with mistaken ideas of economy who rarely ever get the kind and quality of food which is capable of making the best blood and the best brain. Who that is anxious to make the most of his life can afford to stint and starve upon foods that are incapable of making him do the best thing possible to him?
The ambitious farmer selects the finest ears of corn and the finest grain, fruits, and vegetables for seed. He can not afford to cumber his precious soil with bad seed. Can the man who is ambitious to make the most of himself afford to eat cheap, stale foods, which have lost their great energizing principle?
Everywhere we see business men patronizing cheap restaurants, eating indigestible food, drinking cheap, diluted or “doctored” milk, saving a little money, but taking a great deal out of themselves.
The most precious investment a man can make is to be just as good to himself as he possibly can, and never, under any circumstances, pinch or economize in things which can help him to do the greatest thing possible to him. There is no doubt that the efficiency of numerous people is kept down many per cent, by improper diet, inferior foods. Many a man who thinks he is economizing because he spends only fifteen or twenty cents for his lunch may lose dollars in possible efficiency because of this short-sighted economy.
You should take as little as possible out of yourself during your work or recreation. This does not mean that you should not enter whole-heartedly, fling yourself with great zest into your work and play, but that you should not needlessly waste your vitality. When you are traveling long distances and can possibly afford it, take a chair car, a sleeper, and take your meals regularly, and thus save time and energy, and conserve your health.
Look at the people of means who are too stingy to take a chair or berth in a Pullman car, or to eat their meals in a dining car when they travel. They take many times more out of themselves by their cheap economy than the little money they save is worth. Their ideas are mean and stingy, their efforts lifeless and lacking in enthusiasm, buoyancy, because they have sacrificed their physical selves, have not taken food that can produce ideas, brain force.
Being good to themselves would have made all the difference between discomfort and irregularity and comfort and well-being, and the money spent would have brought them double returns, for when they got to their destination, instead of being jaded, depleted of their vitality, they would have been fresh, vigorous, and in condition to do effective work, or to enjoy themselves.
I used to travel with a business man who was much better off financially than I was, yet he would never take a sleeper at night, nor go into a dining car for his meals; but he would take his luncheon with him, or live on sandwiches or what he could pick up at lunch counters on the route. The result was that, when he arrived in far Western cities, he would be so used up and tired, and his stomach so out of order from irregular eating, that it would take him several days to get straightened out, and he lost a great deal of valuable time.
No man can afford to transact important business when he is not in prime condition, and it pays one in health and in comfort, as well as financially, to be very good to oneself, especially when health and a clear brain are our best capital.
Power is "the goal of the highest ambition. Anything which will add to one’s personal force, which will increase his vigor, brain power, is worth its price, no matter how much it costs.
Spend generously for anything which will raise your achievement power, which will make you a broader, abler man or woman.
Multitudes of people are handicapped for years because of constant nervous headaches, which are simply due to eye-strain. They oftentimes have some slight defect in the lens of the eye which causes a great deal of suffering, and which can be corrected and entirely removed by glasses, but because of mistaken ideas of economy they delay getting them.
I know a business man who lost a considerable amount of time periodically through neglect of his feet. Every step he took pained him, yet he could not bear the idea of paying money to a chiropodist and submitting to a simple operation, which finally, after years of suffering, was performed and gave him immediate relief.
Many people delay some needed trivial surgical or dental operation for months or even years, simply because they dread the expense, thus not only suffering a great deal of unnecessary pain all this time, but also incapacitating themselves from giving the best thing in them to their vocations.
The great thing is to make it a life principle never to delay the remedy of anything which is retarding our progress, keeping us down. We little realize what a fearful amount of energy and precious vitality is wasted in most lives through false ideas of economy.
Some people will waste a dollar’s worth of valuable time, and suffer much discomfort, in visiting numerous stores looking for bargains and trying to save a few cents on some, small purchase they wish to make. They will buy wearing apparel of inferior material because the price is low, although they know the articles will not wear well.
Bargain hunters are often victims of false economy. They buy, because they are cheap, a great many things they do not actually need. Then they will tell you how much they have saved. If they would reckon up what they have expended in a year, they would generally find that they have spent more than if they had only bought what they actually wanted, when they needed it, and had paid the regular price for it.
Many people have a mania for attending auctions and buying all sorts of truck which does not match anything else they have. The result is that their homes are veritable nightmares as to taste and fitness of things. Then, they never get the first, best wear of anything. These second-hand things are often just on the point of giving out, and constantly need repairing. Beds break down, legs come off bureaus, castors are always coming out, and something is going to pieces all the time. This foolish buying is the worst kind of extravagance. Quality, durability should be the first considerations in buying anything for constant use. Yet many people keep themselves poor by buying cheap articles which do not last.
“Thair iz sertin kinds of ekonomy that don’t pa,” says Josh Billings, “and one of them iz that thair iz a grate menny pepul in the world who try to ekonomize by stratenin’ pins.”
I have seen a lady spoil a pair of fine gloves trying to rescue a nickel which had fallen into the mud.
There are plenty of women who would not think of throwing away a nickel but who would not hesitate to throw fifty cents’ worth of good food into the garbage pail. It is a strange fact that people who are close and stingy with their money are often extremely liberal with what the money will buy, especially when put into foodstuffs. In their estimation, most of the value seems to evaporate in the cooking.
One should live between extravagance and meanness. Don’t save money by starving your mind. It is false economy never to take a holiday, or never to spend money for an evening’s amusement oil for a useful book.
P. T. Barnum once said: “Economy is not meanness. True economy consists in always making the income exceed the outgo.”
Most people fail to do their greatest work because they do not put the emphasis on the right thing. They do not always keep the goal, their larger possibility in view. They handicap their prospects and kill their greater opportunities by keeping their eyes fixed on petty economies.
Many men become slaves to the habit of economizing, and, without realizing it, constantly strangle their business.
There is no greater delusion than that cheapness is economy. I have watched for some time a New York skyscraper erected years ago under contract. The owners dickered with a great many builders, finally letting the contract to the one who bid the lowest. The original estimate, made by a reliable builder, for a thoroughly substantial, first-class building, was cut down over a hundred thousand dollars by this cheap concern. The result is that, in their grasping greed to save, the owners overreached themselves, and