"If you are afraid to use your money, if you are closed, saving and skin-flinty, in word, thought or deed, you are laying the foundation for unhappiness and poverty.
The miser is not really rich, he is poor, poor, POOR."
-William E. Towne
I [write this] because I want to be reminded of it all the time. I don't know where to draw the line between 'economy' and 'skin-flinty,' and it gives me constant trouble to decide.
It is awfully easy, I find, to follow out the economy bent till it becomes 'closeness,'- at the same time, it would be very easy to give myself the rein the other way, and 'just let her go' into extravagance. I suppose it might be said: 'Draw the middle line.'
'Give and it shall be given unto you'... and if a man asks of you a coat, give him... twice what he asks for. As I look at the great God of Nature, He is extravagance itself, - the grain of wheat is multiplied many-fold...
The man who, desiring a certain thing and having the dollar to pay for it, yet "hates to spend it," and thinks of a dozen other things he would like to have "thrown in" for the dollar, - such a man is a skinflint. He is not spending like a lord.
The man who, desiring a certain thing and having the dollar to pay, parts willingly with the dollar, even if it is a last one, and goes rejoicing on his way with the new purchase, this man spends as he should He is willing to pay full price, and he enjoys his purchase.
