Page 87 - Benjamin Franklin\'s The Way to Wealth: A 52 brilliant ideas interpretation - PDFDrive.com

39 BEWARE OF BARGAINS

Like Pavlov’s dogs we can’t help but salivate at the sound of the word
‘bargain’. And yet as Franklin points out ‘…many have been ruined by
buying good pennyworths’. With a looming financial slowdown that has
never been truer.

DEFINING IDEA…
If there is a conflict If there is a conflict between making profit and
generating or saving cash, go for the cash alternative. Loss-making
businesses can survive, but businesses that run out of cash will not.
~ MICHAEL IZZA, CEO, INSTITUTE OF CHARTERED ACCOUNTANTS IN ENGLAND
AND WALES.

Somehow a bargain is more than a financial saving; it encompasses a sense
of opportunity not to be lost and even a degree of wisdom in the choice.
There is a Monty Python sketch featuring the British comedians dressed up
as housewives discussing their day:

Mrs Non-Gorilla: ‘Have you been shopping?’

Mrs Gorilla: ‘No…been shopping.’

Mrs Non-Gorilla: ‘Did you buy anything?’

Mrs Gorilla: ‘A piston engine!’ She reveals a six-cylinder car engine on a
white tray, on a trolley.

Mrs Non-Gorilla: ‘What d’you buy that for?’

Mrs Gorilla: ‘Oooh! It was a bargain.’

While he was unlikely to have had piston engines in mind, Franklin’s ‘good
pennyworths’ are exactly the same idea—items with prices that tempt us to
snap them up without due consideration of their real value.‘And again, at a
great pennyworth pause a while: he means, that perhaps the cheapness is
apparent only, and not real; or the bargain, by straitning thee in thy