THE RICHEST MAN IN BABYLON TAKE AWAYS {4/40}

By The stash — 11 Aug 2026

Entry 004.i

Pay Yourself First

The first lesson communicated by Arkad is to pay yourself first. This pairs well with the lesson "for each ten coins you spend but nine." As an expansion, paying tithes to the church should also be accounted for. The lesson describes a saving strategy, a discipline, which allows you to start utilising less of your income and divert the excess to set yourself up for your future.

In this chapter, Arkad describes a life all too familiar to many people, you go to work for a month, and after a long month of "toil," you get paid and have to pay everyone else, retaining nothing for yourself. He explains that with this scenario, once you have something small left for yourself, you'll opt to use it for other things due to the workload, like enjoyment.

It's important to understand this lesson isn't about restricting how you enjoy your money, it's about only using what's necessary and has been accounted for. The current flow of money goes from employer to yourself to merchants (obligations). Looking at it through another lens, you work to pay the merchants. Arkad advises using 90 percent (or 80, with tithes) of your income, explaining that even though it's not everything you were paid, you'll still be able to do everything you did with 100 percent.

.rootx1*

There is a principle called Parkinson's Law, a task will expand to fill the time you allocate to it. If a project should take 5 months, you'll take 5 months to complete it. But if you say this same project should take 1 month, it will take 1 month to complete. Likewise, I believe spending works in a similar way, the amount of income you allocate for utilisation will determine your spending. If you allocate 80 percent to be utilised, your spending will fit that constraint and the things you don't actually need get weeded out, freeing up funds that were hidden in plain sight.

Entry 004.ii

The Working

I used to work a job that paid me roughly £2k a month, and consistently I felt as if I had no money. I was stuck in the loop of paying my merchants, with poor financial discipline underneath it all.

A month before I got serious, an opportunity came up, a job paying double my salary. Only problem: it would take a month, and while I had the holiday time to do it, I didn't have the money to sustain myself for that month. Ultimately, I had to let it pass. Ever since, I've been determined to save and free myself from working just to pay merchants.

After gaining a proper budget, I decided to save a percentage of my income specifically to use for any opportunity that might present itself, so I'd never have to let one pass again.

The Template

Do a full self-audit and a budget. Understand where the money is going, how much, and make sure every penny is accounted for. Every last penny.
Audit your compulsive habits. I had a habit where once I broke a spending threshold, I'd subconsciously keep spending until it was gone, a hundred would become nothing, finding things to buy even when I didn't need them. Most of the time it was food.
Set an income utilisation amount. I used 80 percent. This forced me to only keep the things I used regularly, not the things I told myself were "decompression" but only used once in a blue moon. Netflix on my one day off dropped out. So did excess food purchases that had no real reason behind them beyond having time on my hands.
Look for cheaper alternatives wherever the numbers allow it. Overly caring about the penny, knowing exactly where it goes, gave me far greater control over my finances.
Pay your debts, then leave your money alone. A factor secretly driving my spending was my obligations taking the last of what I had, so I'd spend before they could take it. Once the debts were paid, my money could sit without that threat hanging over it.

Adaptation Notes

The number that started it all wasn't a big one, it was a missed opportunity that cost far more than the month it would have taken. You don't need a dramatic reason to start the audit. The habit of accounting for every penny is what turns "I felt like I had no money" into actually knowing where it went, and having something set aside the next time an opportunity, not an emergency, shows up.