Below is another book review installment from Rachel Stephens. Rachel is a 20-something financial analyst.
In the 1926 classic, The Richest Man in Babylon, author George Clason shares a timeless set of principles for “those who are ambitious for financial success.”
Billed as “the Bible of financial freedom,” Clason’s book unfolds its lessons through a series of short stories set over 4,000 years earlier in ancient Babylon. The lessons themselves are straightforward and show that the secrets to wealth building have remained unchanged and applicable across history.
The common theme of the tales is that a person can work hard, learn from their mistakes, and become wealthy. While none of the concepts are likely to be earth-shattering for most readers, they encapsulate the fundamentals that are the basis of money management.
Despite titular connotations, The Richest Man In Babylon is not religious. But the effect of framing the book as a religious tome is that the advice given comes across as wise and infallible. Whether that’s true is debatable—though, that said, there is a strong basic framework here and several sound principles.
The primary lesson comes from Arkad, the proclaimed richest man in Babylon. At the bequest of the King, Arkad shares his “seven cures to a lean purse” so that both individuals and society as a whole can reap the benefits of fiscal growth.