Na­tal­ie?Brig­gs

In 1926, land on Broad­way and Wall Street in New York City cost US$7 a square inch; the first pub­lic demon­stra­tion of tele­vi­sion toke place in a lab in Lon­don; ANR Robin­son, who would one day be prime min­is­ter and pres­i­dent of this coun­try was born in Cas­tara, To­ba­go and the colony had a two dol­lar bill.

That very year, George S Cla­son pub­lished The Rich­est Man in Baby­lon.

Rich­est Man was orig­i­nal­ly a se­ries of fi­nan­cial para­bles is­sued to banks and in­sur­ance com­pa­nies in the US and pop­u­larised as these com­pa­nies' clients read them and passed them on.

The para­bles are, in fact, still used as a train­ing tool by some in­sur­ance com­pa­nies and fi­nan­cial ad­vis­ers both abroad and lo­cal­ly.

What is in­ter­est­ing about The Rich­est Man in Baby­lon is first­ly its age: al­most 80 years, pre-dat­ing sev­er­al mod­ern per­son­al fi­nance gu­rus' books by decades and its set­ting in the an­cient city of Baby­lon.

Ac­cord­ing to the au­thor, he set his para­bles here as it was one the rich­est cities ever to ex­ist and the rules that made it so were prac­ti­ca­ble and rel­e­vant to those liv­ing cen­turies lat­er.

Its he­roes are Ban­sir, a char­i­ot mak­er, and his best friend Kob­bi, a mu­si­cian. Both be­gin the sto­ry lament­ing their bad fi­nan­cial luck and com­par­ing their lives to an­oth­er friend, Arkad, who start­ed off just as poor as they, but be­came the rich­est man in the king­dom, a man so fab­u­lous­ly wealthy even the King sought him out when­ev­er Baby­lon's trea­suries ran dry.

Hop­ing to change their for­tunes, Ban­sir and Kob­bi go to see Arkad to see if he would teach them the se­crets of amass­ing such a for­tune.

The oth­er para­bles are loose­ly con­nect­ed to the char­ac­ters in­tro­duced in the first, but all gen­er­al­ly run along the same theme: how to in­crease wealth, earn­ings, pro­tect against an un­cer­tain fu­ture, avoid or get out of debt and un­der­stand­ing the psy­chol­o­gy of mon­ey.

What the Rich­est Man told his friends

Arkad, Baby­lon's rich­est man, re­counts to Ban­sir and Kob­bi that he start­ed as a scribe in Baby­lon's hall of records.

Al­gamish, a wealthy vis­i­tor to the hall, presents him with an op­por­tu­ni­ty to earn some ex­tra mon­ey, as well as knowl­edge of how to be­come rich. Arkad, fol­lows the ad­vice, mak­ing some ini­tial gains, but even­tu­al­ly los­es all of this through a bad in­vest­ment. How­ev­er, he per­se­veres and is able to re­coup the loss and builds this in­to the mas­sive wealth for which he be­comes known.

This is how he was able to do it:

�2 Start fat­ten­ing thy purse. A part of all you earn is yours to keep. It should not be less than 10 per cent, no mat­ter how lit­tle you earn.

�2 Learn to live on less than one earns

�2 Gold coins are slaves, to be made to work for you

Use the rental from these gold coins to bring oth­er gold coins.

�2 Do not eat the chil­dren of your sav­ings

�2 In­crease one's abil­i­ty to earn

�2 Ad­vice is one thing giv­en freely, but watch that you take on­ly what is worth. He who takes ad­vice about his sav­ings from one who is ex­pe­ri­enced in such mat­ters, shall pay with his sav­ings.

�2 Be pre­pared to take ad­van­tage of fi­nan­cial op­por­tu­ni­ties that present them­selves

�2 A small, safe re­turn is bet­ter than one fraught with risk.

�2 En­joy life while you are here. Do not over­strain or try to save too much

�2 Make of thy dwelling a prof­itable in­vest­ment

�2 In­sure an in­come for your fu­ture. In­vest thy trea­sure with the great­est cau­tion that it not be lost

�2 Pro­vide for thy fam­i­ly should the gods call you to their realms

Just as rel­e­vant to­day

Ar­cha­ic lan­guage aside, the fic­tion­al Baby­lon­ian, Arkad–through his en­gag­ing tale–hits on many fi­nan­cial tenets the Sun­day BG has ex­plored with its read­ers through its pages over the past year:

�2 Bud­get­ing and sav­ing (Learn to live on less and fat­ten­ing they purse): The abil­i­ty to in­crease wealth is se­vere­ly crip­pled with­out a plan to ac­cu­mu­late the funds nec­es­sary to in­vest.

�2 In­vest­ment (Gold coins are slaves): This ac­cu­mu­lat­ed cap­i­tal can now be placed in in­vest­ment in­stru­ments suit­ed to par­tic­u­lar fi­nan­cial goals, whether this is pur­chas­ing a home, car or sav­ing for re­tire­ment.

�2 Com­pound­ing (Do not "eat" the chil­dren of your sav­ings): Any earn­ings from in­vest­ment should not im­me­di­ate­ly be spent on con­sum­ables, but re-in­vest­ed in­to oth­er ven­tures that pro­vide their own re­turns.

�2 In­creas­ing one's abil­i­ty to earn: This is usu­al­ly done by ac­quir­ing a new skill through ed­u­ca­tion, which in turn in­creas­es the chance of get­ting high­er in­come.

�2 Tak­ing fi­nan­cial ad­vice from those qual­i­fied to give it: This one is self ex­plana­to­ry and the Sun­day BG has al­ways ad­vo­cat­ed in our ar­ti­cles to seek fur­ther pro­fes­sion­al ad­vice on any of the is­sues we've cov­ered, whether it be pen­sions, in­sur­ance, ob­tain­ing mort­gages, or mak­ing any oth­er long-term fi­nan­cial com­mit­ment.

�2 Be­ing pre­pared to take ad­van­tage of fi­nan­cial op­por­tu­ni­ties that present them­selves: Arkad, the char­ac­ter in The Rich­est Man in Baby­lon, was able to in­crease his wealth be­cause he had ac­cu­mu­lat­ed cap­i­tal to take ad­van­tage of in­vest­ment op­por­tu­ni­ties that came up along the way.

In the para­ble, Arkad was able to pur­chase a suc­cess­ful es­tate from Al­gamish, whose own chil­dren were not in­ter­est­ed in run­ning it.

�2 Small, safer re­turns bet­ter than large risk: Of course, as sev­er­al of the fi­nan­cial pro­fes­sion­als we have spo­ken to in the past year have in­di­cat­ed, this all de­pends on your risk tol­er­ance, but as a gen­er­al rule of thumb, the greater the po­ten­tial re­wards of any in­vest­ment, the greater the po­ten­tial to lose as well.

�2 Own your own home (Make of thy dwelling a prof­itable place ): Though this ad­vice is some­times dis­put­ed, for the most part, fi­nan­cial ad­vis­ers still con­sid­er own­ing a home to be an as­set.

�2 Pro­tect your in­vest­ments and in­sure an in­come in lat­er years: Whether this is done through in­sur­ance and pen­sion plans, some pro­vi­sion should be made for re­duc­ing the ef­fects of mis­for­tune and ad­vanc­ing age on one's fi­nances.

�2 Pre­pare a will (pro­vide for thy fam­i­ly should the gods call you to their realms): Last­ly, work­ing hard through­out life to pro­vide a lega­cy will come to naught if no thought is giv­en to what will hap­pen to all one's hard earned as­sets af­ter death while alive.

A free, down­load­able copy of The Rich­est Man in Baby­lon is avail­able at http://www.cc­sales.com/the_rich­est_man_in_baby­lon.pdf.