lization
of to-day, property assumes ten thousand different forms; is held mostly
by individuals; and has for its universal symbol, money. Hence the
practical duty is to lay aside a certain sum of money out of our regular
earnings each month or week during the entire period of our working
life, or from sixteen to sixty. Persons who acquire a liberal education,
or learn a difficult trade or profession, will not be able to begin to
save until they are twenty or twenty-five. Whenever earning begins,
saving should begin. If earnings are small, savings must be small too.
He who postpones saving until earnings are large and saving is easy,
will postpone saving altogether. The habit of saving like all habits
must be formed early and by conscious and painful effort, or it will not
be formed at all. Saving is as much a duty as earning; and the two
should begin together. Earning provides for the wants of the individual
and the hour. It requires both earning and saving to provide for the
needs of a life-time and the welfare of a family. Savings-banks and
building and loan associations afford the best opportunities for small
savings at regular intervals; and no man has any right to marry until he
has a savings-bank account, or shares in a building and loan
association, or an equally regular and secure method of systematic
saving. In early life, before savings have become sufficient to provide
for his family in case of death, it is also a duty to combine saving
with life-insurance. Both in investment of savings and in
life-insurance, one should make sure that the institution or
organization to which he intrusts his money is on a sound business
basis. All speculative schemes should be strictly avoided. Any company
or form of investment that offers to give back more than you put into
it, plus a fair rate of interest on the money, is not a fit place for a
man to trust the savings on which the future of himself and his family
depends. Security, absolute security, not profits and dividends, is what
one should demand of the institution to which he trusts his savings.

Economy eats the apple to the core; wears clothes until they are
threadbare; makes things over; gets the entire utility out of a thing;
throws nothing away that can be used again; gets its money's worth for
every cent expended; buys nothing for which it cannot pay cash down and
leave something besides for saving. It is a manly quality, or virtue,
because it masters things, k