Book Review – The Richest Man in Babylon
The perspective of wealth is mostly taken in a wrong way. Indeed, money is like energy. It changes from one place to another.
For instance, if you spend 50 Lakh rupees on building a house, that doesn’t mean all your money is disappeared. Money is just distributed to the hands of other craftsman like daily labor, and the workers involved in designing, furniture, basic amenities etc.
50 Lakh rupees is just distributed. You also created employment for other people in the process and the best part is you still have 50 Lakh rupees worth in the form of your newly build house.
The ‘Book Richest Man in Babylon‘ is based on such principals and has lot of wisdom to share. Let us dive into the story.
There existed a prosperous city ages back called Babylon. The city of Babylon is considered the richest among all in the world. Babylon is full of beautiful and tall buildings with hanging gardens. The richest people lived there.
Unfortunately, Babylon is collapsed because of invaders. Today, there is nothing left in Babylon except the historic walls and a few evidences which depicts the existence of the city. But the knowledge and wisdom that people of Babylon passed on to the next generations is timeless. This Book walks you through a few stories happened in Babylon when it was in its prime time.
In those good old days of Babylon, there lived a man whose name is Akrid. He is one of the richest and successful man in Babylon. On the other side, there lived some daily wage labors too. One of them desperately reached out to Akrid to seek advise on how to create and accumulate wealth to become successful like him.
Akrid was pleased by the poor man’s humbleness and advised him to gather more people like him who are in similar situation.
The poor man assembled with his fellow daily labors.
Akrid, the richest accepted all of them as his students and began teaching the principals of money.
Akrid talked about the fat purse and a lean purse. He insisted ‘one must focus on how to fatten a purse’. They must understand the cures of a lean purse in the first place.
To avoid a lean purse, one must follow these principals :-
1) Start the purse to fattening.
2) Control the expenditures.
3) Make the gold multiply.
4) Stop the loss.
5) Make profitable investments.
6) Save for Future.
7) Up skill – one must be constantly developing the skills to earn.
(Note: In this entire context, gold is referred as money)
Besides that, people of Babylon are always believed in Good Luck. They call it as ‘Goddesses of Good Luck!’
Akrid ignited their minds about Good Luck. He told them that Goddesses of good luck was quite misinterpreted and often misunderstood.
The man who takes the action when the opportunity knocks his door is a lucky Man. Indeed, so called ‘Goddesses of Luck favors only him’. As simple as it is.
Avoid procrastination.
Akrid finally teaches them about 5 important laws of gold which are useful to create and accumulate wealth.
The 5 laws of gold are: –
1) One must keep 10% of gold aside from his earnings for the future.
2) Gold comes to the hands of a owner who puts it for profitable investment and find ways to multiply it. So be wise while investing your money.
3) Gold comes to the owner who seeks the advise of a wise man who handles it correctly. Be Cautious and take suggestions from superiors while handling money.
4) Gold leaves the owner who misuses it by investing it without prior knowledge or skill.
5) Gold skips from the owner who misuses it for Gambling and for pleasures and romantic desires.
There were many times enemies attacked Babylon. But people of Babylon encountered and defeated them easily
From the strong walls of Babylon. The walls of Babylon are very strong and built in a way that enemies find it difficult to combat the people of Babylon and withstand a fight.
Therefore, Just like the strong walls of Babylon, one must build solid income so that the money will protect you in tough financial situations.
These laws and principals of money are timeless. Because they are proved.
At the end of the book, you will see a letter which was written by a person who works at Department of Archeology.
He wrote that letter to a professor at British science expedition to confirm that he received a clay tablet which was found in a recent excavation in Babylon.
The clay tablet consists of scripts i.e. knowledge that people of Babylon wanted to share to the rest of the world. These laws and principals of gold are carved on the clay tablets in the form of scripts.
The man from archeology department thanked The professor for sending the clay tablet to him. He also said that he himself applied those set of principals in his daily life.
The results are great.
This letter is a testament to the Financial wisdom of people lived in Babylon.
Book has lot of stories attached to each principal they followed. They are very intriguing and practical. This is One of the best books for financial literacy.
P.S – All the images used in this story are created by Artificial intelligence. If you want to create AI images for free, watch this video
