One thing I learned from “The Richest Man in Babylon” is to always save a portion of money for myself. This is the first of the lessons left by Arkad, the richest man in the kingdom, saying that it is important for your financial health that you never spend everything you earn. Using the example given in the book, if you have a basket of eggs, put ten eggs in it every day and remove nine eggs at night, in a short time you will have so many eggs in the basket that you will have to buy a new basket. As stated in Proverbs 13:11, money earned through dishonesty will decrease, but whoever gathers it little by little will have more and more.
As Arkad said, you must pay yourself before others. If you earn $1000 dollars in a month, and use all the money to pay bills and buy things, you are not living, you are surviving. If you still use your credit card as if it were an extension of your income, it's gotten worse, you're plunging yourself into debt so that you'll never be able to get back on your feet, and that's extremely dangerous. Therefore, firstly, you must reduce your debts, so that you do not lack money, and, after that, you must start paying yourself before paying others, that is, giving yourself a part of that money, a part that you will not touch now, but rather save and invest, and only after that you must pay to others, and that part that you keep for yourself must never be less than a tenth of your total income.
Arkad further complements the lesson by saying “after I started to take no more than nine coins out of every ten I put in the bag, the coins started to come in greater volume”, and “it must be a law of the gods that money will come to meet me.” from the one who does not spend it all, but will flee from the one who spends it inadvertently”, showing the importance of being prudent with how you spend your money. As it is said in the game “Kingdom: Two Crowns”, the wise king saves resources for difficult times, and does not spend everything at once, while, consequently, the foolish king does not do so, and seeks his own ruin.
And of course it is much more difficult to save money without having any type of planning, so I generally put everything on paper, which is one of the simplest ways to work, because, as said in Luke 14:28, whoever builds a tower without sitting down and calculating the price first to see if you will have enough money to complete it? You start by listing all your fixed expenses (water, electricity, telephone, internet, rent, transport, college, among others), then list all the variable costs (parties, travel, games, books, films, entertainment, etc.) and then start to see what can be reduced. The ideal is to be able to reduce fixed expenses to up to 50% of the total and variable expenses to a maximum of 25%. If you have achieved this, choose a portion of at least 10% of your salary to save for yourself, and the rest you divide into money to invest in yourself, so that you earn more money or reduce your costs (for example, buying a book for learn a new skill, change your bike tire to save money on your ticket, take a course on Udemy, etc) and entertainment (because no one is so strong, and the objective of investing sustainably is precisely to give you more comfort in the long term).
This is not a magic formula, and there are situations where your expenses may be higher or lower than this. For example, although I spend a lot on college, I barely spend anything on other things, so I can save more than 25% of my salary, while a family man with much more income than me can have a lot difficulty in being able to save 10% of your salary, sometimes saving 5%, 3% or even not being able to save anything.
Of course, just as Christ said in the gospels, it is not to keep money in a hole in the ground, but rather to cultivate it so that it grows, in the same way that you do not hide your talents in a hole, but cultivate them so that you grow as an individual. , because, just as you will be charged for not using your talents, your own life will charge you for misused money through your own security and financial freedom. However, investing the accumulated money is a topic for another post.
There's also no point in saving all your money like Scrooge McDuck and wanting to save every penny and stop yourself from living. If you try to do this, you will surrender sooner or later. What matters is having balance.
Finally, we must be calm and patient, as time is what will pave the way to good financial health. Once you learn how to invest and make your money work for you, expect compound interest to work to make you a more prosperous person.
And these are some of the lessons I learned from the first chapters and from Arkad's first lessons on how to take good care of your assets. I hope I can help you to also acquire knowledge and prosperity. See you soon.