For the English Lit Majors and Readers Amongst Us! "Want to Get Rich? Read Fiction!"

[KoKo]

Want to get rich? Read fiction
5 financial lessons from Dickens, Tolstoy, Eliot, and other novelists
['b]In times of money trouble, smart people turn to a financial adviser — or, if the creditors, repo men and SEC are already pounding at the door, a spiritual one, perhaps. I read books.

By this I don’t mean anything like “The Science of Getting Rich,” “The Automatic Millionaire,” or the countless similar titles adorning many an Ikea bookshelf. No, I’m talking about fiction. Novels. Nineteenth century novels, mainly. Dickens is my financial adviser. I’d rather spend an hour with Edith Wharton than with any graduate of Wharton.

Granted, if the keys to building wealth and a sound financial plan were really to be found in literature, then universities would mint far more English Ph.Ds. than MBAs. They don’t. A degree in English was never exactly a blue-chip investment, but these days people seem to think it’s a penny stock. Junk. And it’s hard to argue, in terms of career moves at least, that one isn’t better off (and likely to be more well off) as a bookkeeper than a book reader.


Yet there is money in books. Literature has always been a vessel for nuggets of practical wisdom — Homer’s epics contained a Wikipedia’s worth of ancient schooling, oral poetry being the original textbook. Fiction provides us “equipment for living,” in the words of the theorist Kenneth Burke, an assertion supported by a recent study linking literary reading to greater empathy.

Don’t expect, however, to find explicit tips on spending, saving, and investing baked into the texts like messages in fortune cookies. Novelists and dramatists seem suspicious if not disdainful of those who dole out advice about money — which is perhaps why, when they do offer worthwhile personal-finance counsel, the words tend to be put into the mouths of imbeciles.

“Neither a borrower nor a lender be,” Shakespeare writes in “Hamlet.” But this monetary Monroe Doctrine is espoused by the blowhard Polonius in an absurd speech (riddled with cereal-box platitudes) to his son Laertes.

In “David Copperfield,” Dickens shares the seemingly sensible sentiment one should live within his means: “Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure nineteen nineteen six, result happiness. Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure twenty pounds ought and six, result misery.” This line is delivered, in between stints in debtors’ prison, by the comical Mr. Micawber.

“The person who possesses wealth is not made happy by having it but by spending it, and not spending it haphazardly but in knowing how to spend it well.” This isn’t advice from Jean Chatzky or Suze Orman, but Don Quixote.

So if literature offers no pecuniary prescriptions and might send overzealous readers off tilting at windmills, why should seekers of financial advice invest any time in it? Based on my own quixotic reading, and after putting the question to both financial pros and professors of literature, there are at least two reasons, I think:

So here, with the help of people who know a lot more about money and books than I do, are five financial lesson plans for readers. DICKENS THROUGH TOLSTOY!
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MUCH MORE OF A GREAT READ...for US ENGLISH LIT and ENGLISH MAJORS to CHALLENGE the MATH MAJORS amongst us.

Truly interesting read here with Dickens through Tolstoy! 's

http://www.marketwatch.com/story/want-to-get-rich-read-fiction-2013-11-22?pagenumber=1

[last1standing]

1. Great article, but should you be posting more than four paragraphs?

Hate to be the DU policy police but I'd hate to see this locked.

K&R either way.

[KoKo]

2. See if this Edit works for you...It's truly a Great Read..and hate to see

it Alerted. Because I think the WRITER would want it seen.

[msanthrope]

3. I think the copyright holder would want that respected. Which is why it's copyrighted. nt

[last1standing]

4. I can understand this is a hard article to do justice in four paragraphs.

But I know that DU has a pretty firm rule about it due to being sued a few years ago. Anything past four paragraphs puts an obligation on them to remove the post or possibly be liable for copy write infringement.

I won't go on about it. Instead, I'll just enjoy the article. Thanks for posting.

[KoKo]

5. I think it's okay...and will snip more if I get alert about it.

It's truly an interesting read for us "literary types." Thanks for the alert and for hopefully reading the whole thing.