How I Ate Rice and Bought Books

At sixteen I read a book by a man named Tryon recommending a vegetable diet, and I determined to go into it. Everyone around me found this irritating and I was frequently chid for my singularity. But I had not taken it up for my health, and not for my conscience either.

My brother did not keep house, so he boarded me and his other apprentices with another family, and he paid for it. I taught myself Tryon's way of preparing a few cheap dishes, boiling potatoes and rice, making hasty pudding. Then I proposed that if he gave me half of what he paid weekly for my board, I would feed myself. He agreed instantly.

Here is what he did not calculate. Feeding myself on rice and potatoes cost me a good deal less than half. So I kept the difference, and the difference bought books. I also ate alone at the printing house while the others went out to dinner, which left me the shop to myself and time to read in it.

That is the whole method, and it is not really about food. I found one line in my own accounts where what I preferred and what was cheap happened to point the same direction, and I converted the gap into the only thing I actually wanted. Nobody had to grant me anything. I did not need better wages.

Look through your own spending for the place where your taste and the cheap option agree. Take that difference in cash and put it into the thing that compounds. I bought my education at sixteen with money my brother believed he was spending on meat.