Want to make money? Not easy these days, but our grandparents knew how. They saved it by being thrifty. In fact some of our favorite sayings came from some of the things our grandparents, and their parents knew. They remain some of our best advice. Perhaps it's time to take a second or third look at them and put them into practice in our own lives.

Best advice. A Stitch in Time Saves Nine: Grandma knew that if something was ripping apart, it was important to stop it by a little repair right away. What she did was to prevent a bigger problem by doing a little repair early. With money this means to stop spending on things you don't need if money is going out everywhere on items bought at random. It means that if you begin to have financial problems, begin solving them right away. Get a credit counselor, talk to an accountant, or just sit down at the kitchen table and take a good look at what you've been doing and how you can prioritize what you need to do. This saying can also mean that if you're planning long range, by beginning to begin saving early you can achieve your goals. Best of all: any one of these meanings and ideas that come from them can work towards helping you make money by conserving what you have and taking action when you need to rather than waiting until the last minute when it's too late. Like the Federal Government Never a borrower nor a lender be. Oh, those credit cards. How tempting they are, and how they end up getting a chokehold on our finances. Borrowing money by racking up credit can get us into trouble. Those dear old grandparents of ours, of way back when, knew what they were doing with this great piece of advice.

Shakespeare, the ultimate source of this wisdom, said a little more: "For loan oft loseth both itself and friend. / And borrowing dulls the edge of husbandry." How many of us have fought the battle with some creditor over the phone or in person over some over extensions of our borrowing? Plenty of us. Shakespeare thought about borrowing as one person from another, as was done centuries ago. He would have been bewildered, and likely quite cross, were he to be living now and watching how his good advice has been ignored on such a massive scale. Take a look at the second part of Shakespeare's great wisdom, because there's more, much more to learn. He tells us quite frankly that the more we borrow the more indolent we will become. Laziness takes many forms. It can mean that we extend our finances, like buying material goods beyond over capacity to pay for them without recognizing that we don't have and might not ever have the capacity. It doesn't make us work harder; it makes us think we're quite okay. Until we wake up and find out that we're not. We borrow money, and the fact that it's around makes us feel like we have more than we do. This can make us think we don't need to do as much as we really should. Good old Shakespeare, he knew the human frailties and mind as well as any.

The Bible and the Words of Solomon: "Consider the lilies of the field. They toil not; neither do they spin. But I say unto you, Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed as one of these." So how does this become good advice for making money. Indeed this passage from the Bible tells us that nature has beauty in ways that we might emulate. Just being ourselves and appreciating what we have, rather than worrying about what we don't, can make us richer. By appreciating the person apart from material goods we place value on what is really important, rather than ephemeral things that leave us one day anyway.

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