Here at Radica Personal Finance, one of my missions is to understand, identify, and elucidate

for you the fundamental principles and philosophies of personal finance and wealth.

Principles and philosophies are those things that do not change over time.

Tactics and techniques may change, but principles do not change.

They are constant throughout time, they are constant throughout the earth.

They are true things, regardless of context. I love to find and pull apart these

principles in old writings or from cultures that are not my own. And today I have a treat for you. I'm going to

share with you an essay written by Benjamin Franklin in the year 1757. It's called The Way to Wealth.

I think you'll find that 250 years have not dimmed the value of these underlying principles. This essay is a collection of adages and advice that was presented by Franklin in his poor

Richard's almanac for the first 25 years of publication and he's organized it in this essay into a speech given by a man named

Father Abraham to a group of people. I hope you'll find it useful. I think this type of

story or parable is a particularly effective way of learning because it forces you to take and understand the principles discussed in a different context to your own, and then to translate them to your own context.

The great problem and deficit or deficiency of speaking always on tactics and techniques, such as, well, if you want to get

rich, put money in a Roth IRA. The great deficiency of this method is, if you don't have access to a Roth IRA, you no longer

know what to do. Perhaps your income grew to the point where you can't contribute.

And if all you knew was a tactic or a technique, then you're like a fish out of water not knowing what to do.

But if you can understand the underlying principle or philosophy, in this case, the principle is frugality, the minimization of expenses, especially the expenses of

taxes.

Then when your income rises to the point that you can no longer participate in a Roth IRA, you are not left

without knowledge of what to do. You're just simply looking for the next tool, the next tactic or technique that will help you to

accomplish same purpose, namely lowering expenses, lowering investment expenses, especially minimizing the expensive taxes.

So allow me to step back and allow Benjamin Franklin to teach you today.

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