Ben Benson’s The New Rules of Wealth — Twenty-Seven Assumptions about Money

At Samsung’s New Management meeting in Frankfurt in June 1993, Lee Kun-hee told his executives that change had to start with him and reach almost everything else. He committed himself to years of reform and spoke bluntly about what it would mean if the company still couldn’t change.

Lee’s Frankfurt remarks became closely associated with the shift in strategy he led as Samsung grew into a global company.

I used to read the story as a moment in corporate history. With age, I’ve found more to think about in the part where he starts with his own habits.

How We Think about Money

Ben Benson’s The New Rules of Wealth asks readers to look again at the beliefs they bring to money.

That can matter even when becoming rich is no one’s main ambition. An increase in pay does little for your freedom if your spending automatically expands to meet it.

Twenty-Seven Assumptions

Benson takes familiar sayings about money and gives each a competing interpretation. Readers of Rich Dad Poor Dad or The Millionaire Fastlane will recognise some of the ground. Benson refers to ideas from the former.

The opening question asks whether the problem is money or a lack of it. Money itself has little to say about what is good or bad. Its effects depend in part on what people do with it and what they can do without it.

The twenty-seven headings below give the shape of the argument. They present Benson’s alternatives, which are often deliberately provocative.

• Is money the root of evil, or does the trouble begin when money is scarce?
• A good job brings a salary. Returns and investments are another source of wealth.
• Can a family pass wealth on? How much of it has to be built again?
• What looks like greed from outside can look like ambition to the person pursuing it.
• Does money matter? What does it make possible?
• Risk can bring losses. It can also open an opportunity.
• Money can buy some of the conditions in which people find happiness.
• A downturn changes the opportunities available to build wealth.
• Luck matters, and people can put themselves in its way.
• Effort often includes mistakes, and mistakes can teach you something useful.
• How do friends react when one of them becomes wealthier?
• A higher income can lead to higher spending as easily as to more saving.
• Wealth says little by itself about whether a person will help someone else.
• Giving and accepting help both have a place.
• Growth can compound over time.
• Work you love may pay. Work already in front of you also deserves attention.
• Thinking about how you work can matter as much as working longer.
• A large initial sum is one way to start investing. There are smaller starting points.
• An education and a financial return are two different things.
• Look at the purpose and terms of debt as well as its amount.
• People’s sense of what they deserve can affect what they try.
• Frugality can be useful. Hoarding money is another matter.
• Talking about money makes it easier to understand it.
• A transaction can leave both sides better off.
• Money creates choices and responsibilities.
• A person with wealth can still recognise what they owe to others.
• Money accumulates, and it also circulates.

What You Know Before the Money Arrives

It seems worth working out what you believe about money whether or not you aim to become wealthy.

A windfall doesn’t tell its recipient how to keep or use it. The work of thinking about those decisions can happen well before there is a large sum to decide about.

The book invites readers to examine their assumptions now, while they can still change them at their own pace.

Book Information

The New Rules of Wealth

Author

Ben Benson

Publication

15 December 2012 (Korean edition)

ISBN

9788997838066

View the book at Kyobo

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