The Art of Money Getting by P. T. Barnum

Summary

P.T. Barnum’s golden rules for financial success and, to a lesser extent, a fulfilling life. A short read that has aged well and serves as a great reminder of the things we know we should be doing, but aren’t.

Key Takeaways

• You will not get ahead in the world, if your vanity and envy thus take the lead.
• The safest plan, and the one most sure of success for the young man starting in life, is to select the vocation which is most congenial to his tastes.
• It is equally important that you do not commence business where there are already enough to meet all demands in the same occupation.
• Until you can get so that you can rely upon yourself, you need not expect to succeed.
• “Whatever is worth doing at all, is worth doing well.”
• Fortune always favors the brave, and never helps a man who does not help himself.
• Idleness breeds bad habits, and clothes a man in rags.
• A man buys his experience, and it is the best kind if not purchased at too dear a rate.
• “Be cautions and bold.”
• “Never have anything to do with an unlucky man or place.”
  • If a man adopts the proper methods to be successful, “luck” will not prevent him. If he does not succeed, there are reasons for it, although, perhaps, he may not be able to see them.
• Money is good for nothing unless you know the value of it by experience.
• Nothing is worth anything, unless it costs effort.
• The great ambition should be to excel all others engaged in the same occupation.
  • No profession, trade, or calling, is overcrowded in the upper story.
• Many persons are always kept poor, because they are too visionary.
• Engage in one kind of business only, and stick to it faithfully until you succeed, or until your experience shows that you should abandon it.
• Never let a man foolishly jeopardize a fortune that he has earned in a legitimate way, by investing it in things in which he has had no experience.
• Those who deal with the public must be careful that their goods are valuable; that they are genuine, and will give satisfaction. 
• The whole philosophy of life is, first “sow,” then “reap.”
• The only true charity is that which is from the heart.
• The best kind of charity is to help those who are willing to help themselves.

What I got out of it

This book reminds me of Napoleon Hill’s Think and Grow Rich and George S. Clason’s The Richest Man in Babylon. The former focuses on “success” in life, the latter on saving and investing, and offers a simple, practical system to do so. 

P.T. Barnum’s The Art of Money Getting is a mixture of the two: it covers personal finance, business and financial success. Less practical than Clason’s book, less philosophical than Hill’s. 

These Golden Rules are, at the end of the day, common sense. But while they are common sense, we often end up doing the opposite. In that sense, this book serves as a good reminder and it’s interesting to see how well it has stood the test of time (being written 150+ years ago). It goes to show how little we humans and the world around us actually changes.

One thing I disagree with is his assertion to “read the newspapers” – I think you’re better off reading (older) books. But looking at the spirit in which P.T. Barnum wrote the chapter, I think he meant to say to be well-informed about anything you endeavour in, and less about being up-to-date with news in general. If so, I wholeheartedly agree.

5 changes (or more like reminders) in my life:

• “Whatever is worth doing at all, is worth doing well.”
  • This is only possible if I continue to eliminate tasks, projects and work in my life to focus on increasingly fewer tasks, skills and projects. Continue to improve, say no often and have the opportunity be such a no-brainer that all you can say is “hell yeah.”
• “Never have anything to do with an unlucky man or place.”
  • Those who labour, move in the right direction with the right spirit have a tendency to be “lucky.” Those who don’t have a tendency to be “unlucky.” Let “luck” separate the doers from the talkers.
• No profession, trade, or calling, is overcrowded in the upper story.
  • The cream rises to the top. Excellence coupled with distribution will always find a place in this world.
• Never let a man foolishly jeopardize a fortune that he has earned in a legitimate way, by investing it in things in which he has had no experience.
  • Invest in what you know. Avoid everything else, unless you want to stack the odds against you. Remember Warren Buffett’s “too hard” bucket.
• “Idleness breeds bad habits, and clothes a man in rags” and “many persons are always kept poor, because they are too visionary.”
  • Have a bias for action.

The Art of Money Getting: Golden Rules for Making Money

1. Don’t Mistake Your Vocation 
2. Select The Right Location 
3. Avoid Debt 
4. Persevere
5. Whatever You Do, Do It With All Your Might 
6. Depend Upon Your Own Personal Exertions
7. Use The Best Tools 
8. Don’t Get Above Your Business
9. Learn Something Useful 
10. Let Hope Predominate But Be Not Too Visionary
11. Do Not Scatter Your Powers 
12. Be Systematic
13. Read The Newspapers 
14. Beware Of “Outside Operations”
15. Don’t Indorse Without Security 
16. Advertise Your Business
17. Be Polite And Kind To Your Customers
18. Be Charitable
19. Don’t Blab 
20. Preserve Your Integrity

Summary Notes

True economy consists in always making the income exceed the out-go.

So that, under all circumstances, unless some unforeseen accident occurs, there will be a margin in favor of the income.

You will not get ahead in the world, if your vanity and envy thus take the lead.

Prosperity is a more severe ordeal than adversity, especially sudden prosperity. “Easy come, easy go.”

A spirit of pride and vanity, when permitted to have full sway, is the undying canker-worm which gnaws the very vitals of a man’s worldly possessions, let them be small or great, hundreds or millions.

To make money requires a clear brain.

Don’t Mistake Your Vocation 

The safest plan, and the one most sure of success for the young man starting in life, is to select the vocation which is most congenial to his tastes.

Unless a man enters upon the vocation intended for him by nature, and best suited to his peculiar genius, he cannot succeed.

Select The Right Location 

After securing the right vocation, you must be careful to select the proper location.

If you should locate your house in a small village where there is no railroad communication or public travel, the location would be your ruin. It is equally important that you do not commence business where there are already enough to meet all demands in the same occupation.

Avoid Debt 

The creditor goes to bed at night and wakes up in the morning better off than when he retired to bed, because his interest has increased during the night, but you grow poorer while you are sleeping, for the interest is accumulating against you.

Money is in some respects like fire; it is a very excellent servant but a terrible master.

There is nothing animate or inanimate that will work so faithfully as money when placed at interest, well secured. It works night and day, and in wet or dry weather.

Persevere 

When a man is in the right path, he must persevere.

“There is a tide in the affairs of men, Which taken at the flood, leads on to fortune.”

The proverb of Solomon: “He becometh poor that dealeth with a slack hand; but the hand of the diligent maketh rich.”

Perseverance is sometimes but another word for self-reliance.

Until you can get so that you can rely upon yourself, you need not expect to succeed.

Take two generals; both understand military tactics, both educated at West Point, if you please, both equally gifted; yet one, having this principle of perseverance, and the other lacking it, the former will succeed in his profession, while the latter will fail.

One may hear the cry, “the enemy are coming, and they have got cannon.”

“Got cannon?” says the hesitating general.

“Yes.”

“Then halt every man.”

He wants time to reflect; his hesitation is his ruin; the enemy passes unmolested, or overwhelms him; while on the other hand, the general of pluck, perseverance and self-reliance, goes into battle with a will, and, amid the clash of arms, the booming of cannon, the shrieks of the wounded, and the moans of the dying, you will see this man persevering, going on, cutting and slashing his way through with unwavering determination, inspiring his soldiers to deeds of fortitude, valor, and triumph.

Whatever You Do, Do It With All Your Might 

Work at it, if necessary, early and late, in season and out of season, not leaving a stone unturned, and never deferring for a single hour that which can be done just as well now.

“Whatever is worth doing at all, is worth doing well.”

Ambition, energy, industry, perseverance, are indispensable requisites for success in business.

Fortune always favors the brave, and never helps a man who does not help himself.

Idleness breeds bad habits, and clothes a man in rags.

Do all you can for yourselves, and then trust to Providence, or luck, or whatever you please to call it, for the rest.

Depend Upon Your Own Personal Exertions

The eye of the employer is often worth more than the hands of a dozen employees.

No man has a right to expect to succeed in life unless he understands his business, and nobody can understand his business thoroughly unless he learns it by personal application and experience.

A man buys his experience, and it is the best kind if not purchased at too dear a rate.

The possession of a perfect knowledge of your business is an absolute necessity in order to insure success.

Among the maxims of the elder Rothschild was one, an apparent paradox: “Be cautions and bold.” This seems to he a contradiction in terms, but it is not, and there is great wisdom in the maxim. It is, in fact, a condensed statement of what I have already said. It is to say, “you must exercise your caution in laying your plans, but be bold in carrying them out.”

If he has simple boldness without caution, it is mere chance, and what he gains today he will lose tomorrow. You must have both the caution and the boldness, to insure success.

The Rothschilds have another maxim:

“Never have anything to do with an unlucky man or place.” That is to say, never have anything to do with a man or place which never succeeds, because, although a man may appear to be honest and intelligent, yet if he tries this or that thing and always fails, it is on account of some fault or infirmity that you may not be able to discover but nevertheless which must exist.

If a man adopts the proper methods to be successful, “luck” will not prevent him.

If he does not succeed, there are reasons for it, although, perhaps, he may not be able to see them.

Use The Best Tools 

Understand, you cannot have too good tools to work with, and there is no tool you should be so particular about as living tools. If you get a good one, it is better to keep him, than keep changing.

Don’t Get Above Your Business

Young men after they get through their business training, or apprenticeship, instead of pursuing their avocation and rising in their business, will often lie about doing nothing.

There is no greater mistake than when a young man believes he will succeed with borrowed money.

Money is good for nothing unless you know the value of it by experience.

Nothing is worth anything, unless it costs effort.

In regard to wealth. Go on in confidence, study the rules, and above all things, study human nature; for “the proper study of mankind is man,” and you will find that while expanding the intellect and the muscles, your enlarged experience will enable you every day to accumulate more and more principal, which will increase itself by interest and otherwise, until you arrive at a state of independence. You will find, as a general thing, that the poor boys get rich and the rich boys get poor.

Young men loaded down with other people’s money are almost sure to lose all they inherit, and they acquire all sorts of bad habits which, in the majority of cases, ruin them in health, purse and character.

In this country, one generation follows another, and the poor of today are rich in the next generation

The great ambition should be to excel all others engaged in the same occupation.

No profession, trade, or calling, is overcrowded in the upper story.

As a nation Americans are too superficial—they are striving to get rich quickly, and do not generally do their business as substantially and thoroughly as they should, but whoever excels all others in his own line, if his habits are good and his integrity undoubted, cannot fail to secure abundant patronage, and the wealth that naturally follows. Let your motto then always be “Excelsior,” for by living up to it there is no such word as fail.

Let Hope Predominate But Be Not Too Visionary

Many persons are always kept poor, because they are too visionary.

The plan of “counting the chickens before they are hatched” is an error of ancient date, but it does not seem to improve by age.

Do Not Scatter Your Powers 

Engage in one kind of business only, and stick to it faithfully until you succeed, or until your experience shows that you should abandon it.

A constant hammering on one nail will generally drive it home at last, so that it can be clinched.

Be Systematic 

Men should be systematic in their business. A person who does business by rule, having a time and place for everything, doing his work promptly, will accomplish twice as much and with half the trouble of him who does it carelessly and slipshod.

There is a limit to all these rules. We must try to preserve the happy medium, for there is such a thing as being too systematic.

Beware Of “Outside Operations”

However successful a man may be in his own business, if he turns from that and engages in a business which he don’t understand, he is like Samson when shorn of his locks—his strength has departed, and he becomes like other men.

Never let a man foolishly jeopardize a fortune that he has earned in a legitimate way, by investing it in things in which he has had no experience.

Advertise Your Business

Those who deal with the public must be careful that their goods are valuable; that they are genuine, and will give satisfaction. When you get an article which you know is going to please your customers, and that when they have tried it, they will feel they have got their money’s worth, then let the fact be known that you have got it.

Be careful to advertise it in some shape or other, because it is evident that if a man has ever so good an article for sale, and nobody knows it, it will bring him no return.

The whole philosophy of life is, first “sow,” then “reap.”

Advertising is like learning—a little is a dangerous thing!

Your object in advertising is to make the public understand what you have got to sell, and if you have not the pluck to keep advertising, until you have imparted that information, all the money you have spent is lost.

Novel advertisement first struck their attention, and then, as he made a good article, they came again.

Be Polite And Kind To Your Customers 

Politeness and civility are the best capital ever invested in business.

The truth is, the more kind and liberal a man is, the more generous will be the patronage bestowed upon him. “Like begets like.”

The golden rule, “As ye would that men should do to you, do ye also to them.”

Be Charitable

Men should be charitable, because it is a duty and a pleasure. But even as a matter of policy, if you possess no higher incentive, you will find that the liberal man will command patronage, while the sordid, uncharitable miser will be avoided.

The only true charity is that which is from the heart.

The best kind of charity is to help those who are willing to help themselves.