Part 33

As you go along this year you should make statistics of the receipts and expenses by the day, week, month and year. With these figures you can make up a budget of your receipts and expenses for the coming year with reasonable correctness.

Keep your resources well in hand. Buy often rather than buy in large quantities.

If you are owing money to the bank, have your plans arranged so that you can realize on your assets quickly.

The good general always plans his campaign to be ready for attack that may come through unexpected sources. The good financier is always ready for an attack on his finances.

The concerns from whom one buys may be prosperous. The bank with whom one deals may be flourishing, and yet without warning something happens and you are suddenly called upon to liquidate your indebtedness. You should be prepared for this sudden call.

Financing is an art, and you will never be a good financier unless you have had perplexing problems to solve. In order to solve problems you must have the pro and con, in other words, the details of your receipts and expenses. These figures should be put down plainly, with elaborate detail, if necessary, so you may count on your figures and make your plans accordingly. Preparing for emergencies is one of the first things the financier should understand.

Discontent

While in another part of this book we show that ambition is one of the things that makes success, yet it must not be forgotten that discontent is another great factor in bringing about success.

When the young man quits school he has life before him and has ambition to succeed. It is not particularly necessary that we find out what his ambition is to start him on the right path. Let the young man get started at any thing. If he is ambitious and has ability in him to manage a business he will get there finally.

He may get started in the wrong line and this will make him discontented. The discontent will cause him to try another tack, and so long as discontent makes him change he will finally get into the right line by the process of eliminating those callings which make him discontented.

Time after time we find in reading the stories of successful business men that they have floundered around in the beginning of their career from one business or calling to another. Discontented with each of them they changed and changed and changed until they finally struck the thing best suited to them, and all the changes they made in the past were distinctly beneficial because of the experience they obtained.

If it were not for discontent many of the leaders in the business world today would still be on the farm or clerking in a country store.

Keep busy, young man, do the first thing that comes handy. Change your job if you are discontented, for no one can do his best work if his heart is not in it. When discontent causes you to change frequently you may be sure that some day you will strike your gait, and then ambition will fire you to stick at it.

When you get on the right track and are not discontented you have struck it right.

The Generalist

The chapter on "The Specialist" is almost inseparable from this chapter. One is the positive, the other the negative. What we have said about the specialist we could repeat by taking the opposite of the question for the generalist.

This one point, however, we wish to make clear, even at the risk of repetition. Do not be a generalist in business. If you divide your efforts your results will surely be divided. The business man who goes in many outside ventures will not get along as far in the matter of wealth as the man who does one thing well.

We hear about "The jack of all trades," but the aftermath of the jack of all trades is "master of none."

Only one concern in fifty succeeds in business, therefore it calls for your best efforts if you wish to succeed. It calls for a singleness of purpose.

If you make more money than is necessary in your business put out the money in some form of investment that will require little of your attention. Buy mortgages or real estate. Get stuff that you can put in the green box in the safety deposit vault and not have to worry about.

The stockbroker has a lot of unwritten history about the business man who divides his energies between his office and the ticker. The business man who is trying to make more progress than his competitor in business and at the same time trying to beat out the stock market is dividing his energies, and between the two occupations he is likely to fail. Be a generalist in pleasure and recreation, but not in business.

Our Aches and Pains

When we work hard with our body all day our backs ache and our muscles ache. This is all right, for Nature has given us sweet refreshing slumber to drive away the aches and pains so that on the morrow we are ready for the fray.

In proportion as we have endured these backaches and pains and are patient in our occupation, the aches will lessen until finally we have laid up a store of energy so that the aches will not bother us.

The backaches and muscle-aches and headaches we have, when they come from honest work performed for the benefit of those we love, are sweet aches and pains. They represent sacrifice, these aches and pains do, and sacrifice brings happiness. The only way to be truly happy is to do something for somebody, and doing something for somebody is making a sacrifice for somebody.

The aches and pains we have endured in performing labor for those we love is the best evidence of genuine sacrifice.

We gladly suffer when our efforts are appreciated, and when those for whom we work are grateful, but there is one pain that never lessens, and it is the pain that kills. That pain is a heartache, and the heartache comes from ingratitude.

After we have endured backaches and headaches for those we love and find the effort has not been appreciated, then comes the heartache, and that is the ache that kills.