A penny for your thoughts?

Slumdog Millionaire was a bit of wishful entertainment – how nice to be asked questions whose answers I actually know in a big–money game show.

However, I left thinking not about the slumdog hero, but about the guy on the US$100 bill. Yep, Benjamin Franklin, who signed both the US Declaration of Independence and the Constitution, but who never became President. Nevertheless the chap is on the big note, and deservedly.

That’s the man who flew a kite in a storm, and proved that lightning was electricity. He also invented bifocals, which I expect to become very grateful for as I edge towards long-sightedness.

However, what I find most admirable about Mr Franklin is his values. He never patented his many inventions, explaining in his autobiography, “... as we enjoy great advantages from the inventions of others, we should be glad of an opportunity to serve others by any invention of ours; and this we should do freely and generously.”

It is not as if the man didn’t know the value of money. He did say “Time is money”, and industry was among the 13 virtues he worked on. However, unlike modern man, who has pursued money to the point of exhaustion, inventing the 12 to 14-hour workday, Mr Franklin balanced this with the virtue of frugality: “Make no expense but to do good to others or yourself; i.e., waste nothing.”

And if we thought that the film Pay It Forward - where Haley Joel Osment starts a movement of not returning favours but doing good to others instead – was a Hollywood innovation, sorry, Ben Franklin came up with the idea in the 18th century.

What I really like about the man is this bit of wisdom: “A penny saved is a penny earned”.

This points to another option to the ever-faster treadmill of work. Instead of working harder and harder, and longer and longer, you can just spend less.
In fact, in view of CPF deductions and taxes, a penny saved is worth more than a penny earned.

I once worked on a booklet about retirement, and came to the conclusion that Mr Franklin’s idea is excellent when it comes to working out how to retire. Basically, everyone is supposed to calculate how much they will need for retirement, and then crack their heads on how to lay aside the amount, or grow it from investments or insurance or whatever.

Having a frugal stance is useful, since you’ll come up with a smaller Number to aim for, and, as far as the savings part of the getting to the Number equation goes, it’s less torturous.

In this economic climate, with minibonds and Hi-Notes going bye-byes, I daren’t speculate on the investment part of the riddle. Maybe we should try to get onto a big-money game show and hope they ask soft questions.