Page 113 - Benjamin Franklin\'s The Way to Wealth: A 52 brilliant ideas interpretation - PDFDrive.com

52 BE REALISTIC

The very last message of The Way to Wealth is a very human one,
namely that Franklin knows full well what people are like and how
much notice they tend to take of good advice about thrift and hard
work. After his ‘harangue’ is done he notes that ‘The people heard it,
and approved the doctrine, and immediately practiced the contrary’.

DEFINING IDEA…
If you’d have my advice, I’ll give it you in short, for a word to the
wise is enough.
~ FATHER ABRAHAM—AKA BENJAMIN FRANKLIN

We are all like the crowd in The Way to Wealth—we hear plenty of good
advice, nod our approval and promptly ignore it. We know it doesn’t make
sense to have large credit card balances but we still use them as stop-gap
loans. We are fully aware we buy things we don’t strictly need, but the new
i-Thingy is sooo bright, sooo shiny. Whatever advice Franklin gives us we
will still be suckers for bargains, and we will still be tempted to keep up
with our peers. As sure as tomorrow follows today, we will put off
unpleasant jobs and will inevitably splash out on luxuries to reward or
compensate ourselves for making it through the daily grind.

Franklin recognises that; in fact, his final point is that while the audience
completely ignores the advice the one person struck by it, almost shamed
by it indeed, is himself.‘I resolved to be the better for the echo of it’, he
promises, ‘and though I had at first determined to buy stuff for a new coat,
I went away resolved to wear my old one a little longer.’ Having heard his
own advice spoken back to him, he has at least decided to make one little
concession and keep his old item of clothing for a while longer rather than
replace it right then. It is a small step but, as he notes repeatedly
throughout the treatise, such small steps add up to great savings if repeated
and multiplied.

His final promise to us can therefore be seen as being at the same time