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Pay Yourself First
"Don't bother working if you cannot afford to pay yourself!"
PAY YOURSELF
Between 1964 and 67, Max Krause was one of the waiters
who trained me. Max was then in his early sixties and had waited on many world leaders in
Petersburg, Vienna and Berlin. Max also had been a waiter for the German Rail Road company
and he had sailed around the world as a steward on German Cruise Liners.
I liked him and his stories about the world outside my
own world. I listened to him with envy for I hadn't been any place then but to Munich,
Berlin and Hamburg. I mentioned to Max that I planned to make lots of money so I could
travel the world.
He answered, "To travel the world is easy. To
keep money together takes discipline, which you don't have."
I didn't care to be told that I am lacking
discipline. I listened to his words but I didn't really listen. Twenty years later in my
mid-thirties when I started to work at the Old House Restaurant in Old Monterey, then a
four star restaurant, something changed. I had just gone through seven years of dealing
with the wreckage of my past. I was broke, but debt free at last.
All my high hopes, speculations, and my liquid assets
had turned into nothing but problems. Starting over I remembered what Max used to say.
"Don't bother working if you cannot afford to pay yourself!" Finally I started a
savings account at the local Credit Union with twenty-five dollars. Shift after shift I
dropped one-tenth of my nightly tips into the bank's night-deposit-slot. It wasn't much
money at any given time, but as much as I could afford to save. I left this account alone,
and it was purely to save up some money. For check writing and all my other banking needs
I used a different bank. After the initial couple of weeks it became a habit and still
today I drop a tenth of my money into savings. Naturally I was often, at least once a
week, tempted to use part or all of my savings to buy things, I thought I needed. I did
not and I am glad I didn't. Looking back today more than ten years later, the daily ten
percent have been growing fast.
It took me twenty years of earning money, and
spending it as fast as it came in, until I was ready to try the simple conservative
approach which Max had recommended, "Whenever you work put ten percent away into
savings." He also said, "Savings means you save it and you don't spend it. As
your savings grow, the same become a tool and help you to earn more money but only if you
never spend it."
It didn't make sense back then neither did his,
"Helmut you will get up there to my age and one day you will be sixty, seventy years
old, if you don't die before! Put money aside now while you are young, plan for your
retirement!"
Naturally I didn't do such while I was young. Today
looking back and knowing how savings can add up I wonder why I didn't care to listen when
I was younger. I thought I was smart, but I wasn't. To built up savings over time is
simple, it takes little a day to add up to a very impressive figure over forty years.
Maybe the concept of paying myself for my work did not appeal to me then, for it wasn't
risky? There was no gamble, no big deal involved with saving money and most of all, I
guess Max was right, as a young man I was lacking the needed discipline.
GoTo The
Milieu 28
01/03/09
