How To Make A Living: Suggestions Upon The Art Of Making Saving, And Using Money

Written in 1875, two years after the Panic of 1873, which was the start of a long depression in the United States. The panic was precipitated by the bankruptcy of the Philadelphia banking firm, Jay Cooke & Company. A lot of the information in this handy little book, one in the; "Putnam's Handy Book Series of Things Worth Knowing" series, may also be of help to get by in the present economic times. (125 pages).

The Publisher has copy-edited this book to improve the formatting, style and accuracy of the text to make it readable. This did not involve changing the substance of the text.

Contents:

Chapter 1. The Value of Money,(Its Relation to Other Things, Its Value Not a Fixed One, The Cost of Money, Too Much Money)

Chapter 2. The Duty and the Danger of Making Money, (The Limit of one's Right to Make Money, The General Rule, Sources of Error)

Chapter 3. The Choice of a Business, (The Importance of Choosing Wisely, How to Choose a Business, Persistence in Business)

Chapter 4. Marriage and Money, (The Value and the cost of a Family, Marrying for Money, The Extravagance of Wives, The Advantages of Domestic Partnerships, The Difficulties in the Way)

Chapter 5. How to Live on Your Income, (Mr. Micawber's Rule, What is Your Income, How to Keep Within the Average, When to Save, Where to Save, How to Economize, Purchases by Wholesale, Concerning Little Bills, The Paralysis of Debt, The Expensiveness of Sham, Personal Expenses, The Habit of Self-Control)

Chapter 6. What to Do with Savings, (General Principles, Keeping Money at Work, Safety of Investments, The story of John Law's Life, Our Own Bubble, The Question of Convertibility, Shall We Buy or Rent, Mortgaged Houses, The Advantage of Buying, Buying a Home as an Investment, Where to Buy, How to Secure the Profit of Your Investment, One Man's Story)

Chapter 7. Life Insurance, (What is Life Insurance, Why Should you Insure, How to Insure, The Object Sought in Insuring, Another Objection, The Chief Objection to Endowment Policies, What Kind if Policy is Best, For How Much Ought One to Insure, What Companies are Best)


Excerpts:

.....This Little manual makes no literary pretensions whatever. In preparing it, I have been concerned only for its practical usefulness.

.....It is especially desirable that you shall find your level. A large percentage of life's failures, and many of life's miseries are due to people's persistent attempts to do things for which they are not fitted....and there are hundreds of people who, by dint of favor shown, and by the unwise assistance of friends, manage to waste a life in the doing of poor work for poor pay, while they might be doing excellent work of some other sort, and living a life of personal independence.

.....Everyone wonders, now and then, where all his money goes, but not one man in a hundred ever satisfies himself on the subject. Not one man in a hundred indulges unnecessarily in things which must be paid for in a lump. When called upon to pay out a sum of money which is considerable if measured by the standard of our ability to pay, we are sure to scrutinize pretty sharply the desirableness of the thing paid for, and our ability to do without it. In short, we are not apt to be extravagant in large matters. It is the little things that we buy thoughtlessly in which we are extravagant, and it is these things which we may do without, either in whole or in part, without serious inconvenience. It is by cutting off expenditure for these that we may save, and the aggregate of the cost of these is always much greater than their purchaser imagines.