If it were not for debt most banks would go out of business, for banks
live because debt is a recognized factor in business.
The plan of getting rich through saving is a very difficult and
practically impossible road to wealth.
The man who is working himself out of debt puts in better effort and
longer hours into his business than the man who does not owe a cent. Go
in debt reasonably and carefully, and you can make money with other
people's money.
Money has a fixed value in itself in the matter of earning capacity.
This fixed value is 5% or 6% or 7% as the case may be. One who puts his
money in securities gets his money which the cash earns without effort
on his part. The hustler, however, can make 10%, 15% or 20% on the
money, plus his hard work. Therefore there is an opportunity for a
hustler to borrow money at 5% or 6%, and with that money and his energy
earn 10% or 15%.
The active man can therefore pay 6% per annum for money, and use that
money to discount monthly bills at from 2% to 5%.
The building and loan association, the installment firms and monthly
payment real estate concerns show what people can accomplish who go
into debt. Thousands of families now live in their own homes because
they went into debt. Few of these families would have homes if they
started in on the saving-the-money-first plan and bought for cash.
Don't go in too deeply. Calculate your earnings in business. Allow a
wide margin for discount on your figures. Hard times and unlocked for
reverses come, therefore you should play safe. Go into debt on a 25% or
50% basis of what you are reasonably sure you can pay.
Up to forty years of age a man is sowing and tilling, and after forty
he reaps. The farmer goes into debt during the spring and summer, and
reaps in the fall.
Very few of our great men had much money before they were forty years
old. Up to forty is the debt period. Up to forty a man pays interest;
after forty he collects interest.
Business calls for the hardest kind of work up to forty or fifty. After
that time the man makes up in judgment and experience what he lacks in
physical activity.
Work hard until you are forty. Go into debt and make the money you have
borrowed earn money. After forty make money by investing your funds in
sound securities, so you will run no risk of losing what you have
worked so hard for during your younger days.
The average banker is over forty. The hustling business man who borrows
is usually under forty. Nature gives the young man ambition, ability
and willingness. Nature gives the middle aged man judgment, experience
and conservatism.
Forty years will determine what is in a man. If he has the stuff in him
to earn a competence at forty, he has usually acquired the judgment and
experience to keep it after he is forty.
The man born with a golden spoon never knows what hard work is. He does
not go into debt because he has plenty of money for his requirements.
At forty he has not the experience of his brother who was born in an
environment of hard work and little money. The law of compensation thus
bestows a subsidy on the poor boy and a handicap on the rich one to
even things up. The poor boy goes into debt and works hard; the rich
one lets the money do the work for him.
There is no joy or happiness in the possession of things we have not
worked for, so while we envy the rich who have never worked we should
take satisfaction in the law of compensation which gives us a subsidy
in the way of ability to work hard and earn money, so that later on we
may enjoy the money better than our rich friend who has never worked
for his money.
Don't go into debt on the wholesale plan, hoping to make a big coup.
Don't try to be a millionaire. Don't set too big a mark. Have your
ideal advancement, no matter how little that advancement is. If you go
forward each week or each year you will find at forty or fifty that
your substance piles up much faster than you imagine. From forty to
fifty years of age most fortunes are made. From twenty to forty your
efforts have been foundation work, and the foundation does not show up
much above the ground. From forty to fifty you are building the
superstructure, and when you commence building that your progress seems
more rapid.
Healthy indebtedness is a great incentive to hard work and a material
benefit in building character and gaming experience that in later years
will be of untold value to you.