The key ideas

The Richest Man in Babylon

George S. Clason, 1926

It’s a familiar pain: your paycheck arrives and almost immediately vanishes, as if it slipped through your fingers. George S. Clason answers with ancient Babylonian parables: it isn’t the person who earns more who gets rich, but the one who knows how to save, protect, and put money to work. These simple rules are thousands of years old, and they still work without fail.

Who it is for

Anyone who wants simple, timeless money rules without complicated terms

Part of all you earn should stay yours — that’s where wealth begins.

What the book is about

This is a book about the simplest money rules — ones that have worked for thousands of years and haven’t gone stale for a single day. It addresses a pain almost everyone knows: you earn money, yet it seems to slip through your fingers, and by month’s end you’re broke again. The author shows that the problem isn’t the size of your income but your habits around handling it. It isn’t the person who earns more who gets rich, but the one who knows how to set part of it aside, save it, and put it to work. These rules are so simple that even a teenager can grasp them, and yet so powerful that they change an entire life.

So that these timeless truths don’t sound like a dull lecture, the author dresses them up as ancient parables about the people of Babylon — the richest city of its time. We hear from Arkad the gold merchant, a camel trader, an armor maker, a clay-tablet scribe. Their stories are fictional wrapping, but the lessons inside are entirely real and apply to a paycheck and a credit card just as much as they once applied to a bag of gold coins.

Idea 1. Pay yourself first

The main secret of wealth is embarrassingly simple: out of every sum that comes to you, keep a part for yourself — no less than a tenth. We’re used to paying everyone else: the store, the rent, the phone bill, our friends, and only ourselves last, on a leftover basis, which means never. Flip the order. The moment money arrives, set aside your tithe first, and live on what’s left. Why this works: what’s set aside first never enters the spending stream, so it actually accumulates instead of dissolving.

Marina gets paid and immediately transfers 10% to a separate account she doesn’t carry a card for. She lives on the remaining 90%, and, to her surprise, barely feels the difference, while a year later she has, for the first time in her life, a real cushion of savings.

Set aside a tenth of your income before you start spending the rest.

Read in Livria

About the author

George S. Clason was an American businessman who laid out the rules of money as parables set in ancient Babylon.

All books by this author: George S. Clason

Terms from the book

  • Tithe
  • Budget
  • Reinvestment: When income you earn isn’t spent but put back into your venture so it earns even more.

All terms

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