OF Expense by Francis Bacon

OF Expense 

Riches are for spending, and spending for honour and good actions. Therefore extraordinary expense must be limited by the worth of the occasion; for voluntary undoing may be as well for a man’s country as for the kingdom of heaven. But ordinary expenses ought to be limited by a man’s estate, and governed with such regard, as it be with his compass, and not subject to deceit and abuse of servants; and ordered to the best show, that the bills may be less than the estimation abroad. Certainly, if a man will keep but of even hand, his ordinary expenses ought to be but to the half of his receipts; and if he thinks to wax rich, but to the third part. it is no baseness for the greatest to descend and look into their own estate. Some forebear it, not upon negligence alone, but doubting to bring themselves into melancholy, in respect they shall find it broken. But wounds cannot be cured without searching. He that can look into his estate but seldom, it behoveth him to turn all to certainties. A man needs, if he be plentiful in some kind of expense, to be as saving again in some other. As if he be plentiful diet, to be saving in apparel; if he be painful in the hall to be saving in the stable; and the like. for he that is plentiful in expenses of all kinds will hardly be preserved from decay. In clearing of a man;s estate, he may as well hurt himself in being too sudden, as in letting it run on too long. For hasty selling is commonly as disadvantageable as interest. Besides, he that clears at once will replace; for finding himself out of straits, he will revert to his customs; but he that cleareth by degrees induceth a habit of frugality, and gaineth as well upon his mind as upon his estate. Certainly, who hath a state to repair, may not despise small things; and commonly it is less dishonorable to abridge petty charges, that to stop to petty gettings. A man ought warily to begin charges which once begun will continue; but in matters that return not he may be more magnificent.