ey don't learn to spend less than they get.
If they learned that lesson in time, they would have little difficulty in
making themselves independent. It is this first saving that counts.

John Jacob Astor said it cost him more to get the first thousand dollars
than it did afterwards to get a hundred thousand; but if he had not saved
the first thousand, he would have died poor.

"The first thing that a man should learn to do," says Andrew Carnegie,
"is to save his money. By saving his money he promotes thrift,--the most
valued of all habits. Thrift is the great fortune-maker. It draws the
line between the savage and the civilized man. Thrift not only develops
the fortune, but it develops, also, the man's character."

The savings bank is one of the greatest encouragements to thrift, because
it pays a premium on deposits in the form of interest on savings. One of
the greatest benefits ever extended by this government to its citizens is
the opening of Postal Savings Banks where money can be deposited with
absolute security against loss, because the Federal Government would have
to fail before the bank could fail. The economies which enable a man to
start a savings account are not usually pinching economies, not the
stinting of the necessaries of life, but merely the foregoing of selfish
pleasures and indulgences which not only drain the purse but sap the
physical strength and undermine the health of brain and body.

The majority of people do not even try to practise self-control; are not
willing to sacrifice present enjoyment, ease, for larger future good.
They spend their money at the time for transient gratification, for the
pleasure of the moment, with little thought for to-morrow, and then they
envy others who are more successful, and wonder why they do not get on
better themselves. They store up neither money nor knowledge for the
future. The squirrels know that it will not always be summer. They
store food for the winter, which their instinct tells them is coming; but
multitudes of human beings store nothing, consume everything as they go
along, so that when sickness or old age come, there is no reserve,
nothing to fall back upon. They have sacrificed their future for the
present.

The facility with which loose change slips away from these people is most
insidious and unaccountable. I know young men who spend more for
unnecessary things, what they call "incidentals"--cigars, drinks, all
sorts of sweets,