The Art of Money Getting: The Right Work, and No Debt

After his rules on spending, Barnum turns to the young person just starting out in life: what work to choose, how to handle debt, and how to keep going.

“The safest plan for a young person is to choose the work that best suits his own tastes and talents. Yet too often a father simply decides: Billy will be a minister, John a lawyer, Tom a doctor, and Sammy, well, watchmaking looks like a nice business, so Sammy will make watches.But there is as much difference in our brains as in our faces. Some boys are born mechanics who love to take things apart. I was not one of them; I could never even carve a wooden tap that did not leak.Put such a boy to watchmaking, and after seven years he may learn the trade, but all his life he will be working uphill and looking for any excuse to stop.

Avoid debt; hardly anything drags a person down like it. A young man meets a friend and says proudly, ‘Look, I got this new suit on credit,’ as if the suit were a gift.When the bill comes, he must work to pay for something he has already worn out, and that is rightly called ‘working for a dead horse.’ I do not mean merchants who buy on credit to sell at a profit; I mean debt for what you eat, drink and wear.No people in the world have such good memories as creditors. Your creditor goes to bed at night and wakes up richer, because the interest has grown while he slept; but you grow poorer while you sleep.

Money is like fire: a very good servant but a terrible master. Let it work for you, and there is no more faithful servant in the world; it works night and day, in wet weather and dry.The strict old Puritans of Connecticut, where I was born, would spend all Sunday in church and wake on Monday morning richer than on Saturday night, because their money had been earning interest all through Sunday.

Finally, when you are on the right path, keep going. As Davy Crockett said, ‘Be sure you are right, then go ahead.’Many people have almost reached their goal, then lost faith in themselves, and the prize was gone forever. If you hesitate, some bolder hand will reach out before you and take it.”