The Richest Man in Babylon: Pay Yourself First

In 1926 an American map publisher named George S. Clason gathered his short money pamphlets into a book called The Richest Man in Babylon.He told his lessons as stories set in ancient Babylon, the richest city of the old world.In this story, some old friends visit Arkad, the richest man in Babylon, and ask him a hard question.

“Once we were equal,” they said. “We studied under the same teacher and played the same games. Why should fate make you rich and leave us poor?”Arkad answered that luck had nothing to do with it: if they were still poor, they had never learned the laws of wealth, or had not obeyed them.Then he told them how he had started.

As a young man, Arkad was a poor scribe who carved records on clay tablets, and every coin he earned was soon spent.One day a rich money lender named Algamish needed a long law copied, and Arkad offered to work all night if Algamish would tell him how to become rich.At sunrise the tablets were finished, and the old man said: “I found the road to wealth when I decided that a part of all I earned was mine to keep.”“But isn’t all I earn mine to keep?” asked Arkad.“Far from it,” said Algamish. “You pay the clothes-maker, the sandal-maker and the baker. You pay everyone but yourself.”

“Keep for yourself at least one tenth of everything you earn, however little it is. Pay yourself first.Every gold coin you save is a worker that labours for you, and every copper it earns is its child that can also earn for you.Wealth, like a tree, grows from a tiny seed, and the first coin you save is that seed.”Arkad tried it, and to his surprise he did not feel any poorer without that tenth.