The Cook County news-herald. [volume] (Grand Marais, Cook County, Minn.) 1909-current, 1920-03-31
The MONEY THAT GETS AWAY.

Remember when you were getting
SIP a week. Spent it all of course.
Then you were raised to SIS, spent
that too-and perhaps didn't enjoy
life any more than when at SIP a !
week you bought the photograph at
81 a week. Sure, the photograph
was a good investment because it
made life more pleasant, but have
all the 50 a week you spent without
noticing it" been so wise an invest
ment?
And speaking of investments,
spend a few moments of your time
reading the following editorial re-
Gently printed in The Duluth Eve
ming Herald. 1t may pay you unex-
pected dividends:
Here is common mystery that
is not a mystery, though it puzzles
many of those who do not save.
"You are earning fifteen dollars
week, say, and living on it. You
think: If l only had twenty-five dol
lars week, we could live better and
save something.' Very well; your
employer comes through and raises
you to twenty-five. Presently you
find that nothing is changed. You
got fifteen and lived on it; now vol
get twenty-five and you live on that.
What has become of the increase?
That is the mystery which is no
mystery.
1T is the same as your earnings
increase. You have meant to save.
Looking ahead to each upward step,
you did not save. Nor was living
made much easier, if any, Indeed, it
may even have been made harder;
for the capacity to absorb increased
income grows more rapidly than the
rate of increase in earnings. Hence
this is not an uncommon phenome-
non: People who lived comfortably
on two thousand a year but find
themselves miserable on five thous-
and
This is the mystery But it is no
mystery. Here is what does it: The
insidious automatic expansion of de-
sires to the new limit of income
and beyond.
"When you earned fifteen dollars
your desires strained at the leash.
When you advanced to twenty-five
they Immediately took the full
length of the extension; and so on
up the line.
"And the reason is that you had
no system of capturing part of the
increase. Unrestrained by any fixed
system of saving, with each increase
your desire Immediately absorbed all
your gain.
again, suppose you have been
spending fifty cents day for tobac-
co and you stop smoking, or sixty
cents a week for being shaved and
you start shaving yourself.
"Manifestly, you are that much
ahead. But unless you take that saw
ing and salt it down, you will realize
no benefit. Some desire will reach
out and snatch it away, and you will
never realize how it happened.
Nov the rule that goes with this
and is it's antidote as follows: No.
body, not a born miser, saves much
except by some set system of self
compulsion.
"That system may be to bank
fixed proportion of each weeks or
months pay. If, when you went
from fifteen to twenty-five, you had
determined to save half the increase,
the instructive expansion of your de-
sires would have been checked half
way. Instead Of learning to live on
twenty-five a week, you would have
learned to live on twenty. You
would have formed a habit as valu-
able as an inheritance valu-
able because it would build character
besides building bank account.
"The installment plan, often VIC
ious source of extravagance, can be
put at work for you if you apply it
with little wisdom. That set of
books you bought dollar down and
dollar MONITOR the monograph
or the expensive furniture and per-
haps even the automobile that YOU
acquired the same way-has this
taught you no lesson? Suppose you
had applied this system to the pur-