Comments on: 8 Personal Finance Lessons from Benjamin Franklin

By: Rubén Montoya

Rubén Montoya — Fri, 03 May 2013 15:39:52 +0000

I started my own 13 – week virtue program to developed in my the virtues proposed by Dr. Benjamin Franklin it automatially changed my life, it is really amazing. I managed to free myself from vice and from tendencies that made my life miserable in the past. I own my life to this gentleman and the world should have more man like him. I have learned the 13 virtues (13 stars) 13 steps of the pyramid.

By: Kebasile

Kebasile — Mon, 18 Feb 2013 14:51:27 +0000

Impressive…nthin much

By: Kevin

Kevin — Sun, 23 Dec 2012 15:31:24 +0000

Except Ben Franklin was really good at giving out advice but terrible at following it. He was considered a lackey of French foreign policy and very easy to manipulate because he owed the French crown so much money. If you want someone with economic sense to emulate, I would say John Adams (who had to deal with Franklin in France) is your man who believed in saving money and investing it. He frequently wrote about what self-serving hypocrites both Jefferson and Franklin were.

By: Visakan

Visakan — Sun, 04 Mar 2012 07:55:09 +0000

Fantastic. Masterfully done. I wish I wrote this.

By: Brian

Brian — Fri, 02 Mar 2012 01:23:49 +0000

I heard alot about the Founding Fathers growing up. They were often brought up in reference to separation of church and state. I took the Southern-Conservative stance on the matter at face value until I was floundering through (junior) college. I picked up the autobiography of Benjamin Franklin in paperback… LIFE CHANGING, and all for $3.95 (US).
AoM gets much love for anything Franklin!!!

By: James Petzke

James Petzke — Fri, 24 Feb 2012 04:59:13 +0000

I really like the tip about investing in yourself, that’s something I try to do a lot.

By: Grant Miller

Grant Miller — Wed, 22 Feb 2012 14:15:06 +0000

One of the most inspirational and complete articles I have read in a long time.

The small community I founded embraces all of these values and we continuously strive to help each other practice them. Franklin’s advice on surrounding oneself with people of like values resonates so clearly. This is one of the many reasons I decided to retire from the corporate world and build a community of like-minded people. We strive to be industrious, learn continuously, enrich each other’s lives with our learning and creativity, live frugally and self-sufficiently, and avoid paying too much for our whistles. We are the Village on Sewanee Creek on Tennessee’s beautiful Cumberland Plateau.

Thank you for this excellent piece. I just posted a link on our private community board.

By: Avon Barksdale

Avon Barksdale — Tue, 21 Feb 2012 15:41:45 +0000

@R.L.
Credit to both you and your wife that is very impressive, well done keep it up. God Bless

By: Jameson

Jameson — Mon, 20 Feb 2012 21:13:25 +0000

Amazing. I love being reminded of Franklin’s wisdom. One reason he has been my personal favorite founding father since I was a little boy. So much to learn from him.

By: R.L.

R.L. — Mon, 20 Feb 2012 19:11:21 +0000

@AOM, thank you for the great article and web site. Please keep up the great work.

@Avon Barksdale
My wife and I made a decision when we marry not to buy a television because we did not see any benefits from having one. It’s been 5 years now and we still have no TV. We spent our free time learning something new all the time.

Don’t get me wrong, we enjoy watching movies and documentaries (from Nat Geo, Discovery, PBS, and others), for which we have a large monitor and use sites such as Netflix to watch them. But not having a TV service saves us from the temptation of sitting down in a couch and waste our time watching the non-sense shows and way-too-biased news in the USA. For news I normally use Google news and podcasts which most news providers have hourly ones.

All that free time have helped me learn so many (useful) new things and I try to focus on a two or three a year. This year I’m focusing on three things. Personal Finance (as a couple) with a specific goal of saving x amount by end of year, learning how to make men’s shoes by hand (18 century style) and getting certified in a new programming language (I’m a software programmer).

These are simple things and I’m not saying this to brag but to give an example of things people can do with the time they spent on TV. There’s so much to learn about life and this world (or beyond) that there’s no time to waste. These days, with the help of the Internet you can almost self-teach you anything or at least locate the resources needed. So your imagination is the limit.