A Penny Saved Is Not A Penny Earned

Frugality is a wonderful thing and most people impoverish themselves throwing their wealth away on things of no permanent value that fulfill no need beyond satiating some immediate desire. One should certainly enjoy their wealth, it is the whole point of earning it. There is nothing wrong with pleasure so long as pleasure is the reward for right choices and actions that truly benefit an individual in his pursuit of being all he can be as a human being. The mistake is that most people waste their wealth in the pursuit of pleasures that are disconnected from any objective beyond the immediate experience which neither satisfies or fulfills, but squandering their resources for true achievement and satisfaction.

Frugality assumes one already has a source of income, a means of accumulating wealth to be saved. One cannot acquire wealth simply by being parsimonious or miserly. The objective of frugality is not penury but prosperity.

What To Not Do

By all means do not waste any resource—your time, your energy, or your wealth—on that which cannot profit you. There is almost no concept more evil than the concept of, non-profit. To paraphrase from the commentary to, “non-profit,” linked above: “The product of an individual’s work is wealth. The more effective an individual is at producing the requirements of his nature, the more wealth he produces. Wealth is a direct measure of an individual’s success at being a human.”

How To Be Profitable

One question no one can answer for anyone else is what one should do to earn their wealth. “What kind of work should I do?” is the question every individual must discover the answer for themselves.

No one can possibly know you as well as you do. No one can tell you what is best for you. Since, “Everybody Is Different,” there is no one kind of work that is right for anyone.

Unless you choose to be entirely self-sufficient, providing all your own requirements, you will almost surely choose to live in a society, trading whatever you produce for the products of others. To have anything to trade you will have to produce either a product or a service. While no one can tell you what product or service you ought to produce, there are some general considerations that can help answer that question.

Producing a product—What do you like and what natural abilities do you have, both physical and mental? There are products that require some natural skills and strengths, which will help you determine which kinds of products you are able to produce. You can consider products that are already being produced, food, clothing, tools, toys, machines, buildings, etc. or perhaps a product no one is producing, similar or entirely different from what already is being made.

Performing a service—There is virtually no limit on the kinds of services one can perform. Services may be performed as an individual or entrepreneur—including cleaners, plumbers, care-takers, tutors, carpenters, painters, decorators, electricians, private nurses, secretaries, writers, etc. Most services are sold to someone else as, “employees,” of some larger enterprise. In such cases, “employers,” usually do not think of, “employees,” as selling a service (doing whatever job the employer is willing to pay them to do), but you must always understand you are simply selling your service to whomever is willing to pay you for that service. That attitude is necessary to maintain your own individual choice in all you do. You owe nothing to an, “employer,” except what you agreed to do for the agreed payment. Any change must be negotiated.

Whatever you do you will do as well as you possibly can, because you cannot possibly be satisfied with less than your best. It means you will be self-driven and creative:

Being self-driven—The free individual is motivated by one’s own desire to be the best he can be in all things. His initiative comes entirely from within his own conscious desire to be and achieve all he can. He needs no outside motivation, encouragement, or agreement. In whatever work he chooses, he learns all he can about his work and how to improve it and make it more efficient. He works to become more skilled at whatever he chooses to put his had and mind to. He is a, “self-starter.”

Being creative—In, “Against The Flow,” I pointed out, “The hallmark of the free individual is that all he does he freely chooses to do. Every choice one makes, using their own mind and knowledge is an act of creation, an action only that individual could have made—even if others have done similar things. What makes it a creation is the fact it was chosen by one’s own reason and not copied from others or in following or obeying others. It is an act unique to that individual.

In all that the free individual does, they are always innovators, because they are always finding ways to improve what they do, ways they have not learned from others and they have discovered for themselves. Whatever they are doing, even if they are working beside others doing a similar job, their way to thinking about and doing it will be original—it will be their own.

In the entire history of the world, it is always the free independent individuals who are the inventors, innovators, and discoverers that produced every advance in knowledge, science and technology, and every free individual is just such an innovator, in his own life whether anyone else ever recognizes it or not.

—(11/26/2020)