Three Clichéd Yet Crucial Maxims for Life

True wisdom is timeless

As anyone who’s spent any amount of time browsing the Internet can tell you, in addition to porn, crypto scams, and an endless variety of misinformation, the place is also chock-full of advice.

Good advice, bad advice, ambivalent advice, and advice that’s just plain bizarre or against all dictates of common sense — it matters not. If someone can think it, someone will offer it, often for the low, low price of free ninety-nine.

But be that as it may, advice remains a crucial element in navigating the myriad uncertainties and inequities of life, which is why it’s persisted throughout the ages. Offering and accepting or rejecting it is as much a part of what it means to be human as language and abstract thought itself.

As though taking a cue from the advertising industry with its memorable (if obnoxious) slogans, jingles, and catchphrases, much of the most valuable advice from earlier epochs has been passed down to us in the form of proverbs, maxims, and aphorisms. If it’s catchy, witty, and it works, it’s likely to stick around.

So with that said, here are three fully clichéd yet crucial maxims that have been highly beneficial to my own life and successes (personal, professional, financial, romantic, etc.), and which are central to my own personal ethos.

Apply them to your own life, and I promise they’ll do nothing but help.

Waste Not Want Not

This saying, while not formally appearing in print until 1576, almost certainly has origins stretching back to the dawn of humanity, for it’s an essential element of all sustainable cultures. Its essence is simple — if you make the most of what you already have, then you’re far less likely to be lacking in anything.

Unfortunately, Americans — consumed as we are by mass consumerism — seem to be particularly poor at adhering to this one. Take food, for instance.

It’s estimated that the carbon footprint of all of America’s wasted food annually is around 170 million metric tons of carbon dioxide equivalent. To put that number in perspective, it’s equal to the annual CO2 emissions of 42 coal-fired power plants, or about the same as the total carbon emissions of a mid-sized country.

Luckily, however, you as an individual have a lot of agency in deciding whether you want to be part of the problem or part of the solution.

When it comes to food, methods for wasting as little as possible are nearly endless. Here are some of the things I personally do to minimize my food waste.

Leftovers: I’m always blown-away at restaurants when I see waiters carrying away heaping portions of half-eaten food, or when I see two-thirds of a perfectly good pizza left sitting untouched on a table after the diners have departed. (I’ll admit, I’m not above snatching a slice or two in such situations. Think of it as a generous extension of the five second rule.)

Personally, if I don’t finish my meal, I always ask for a doggy bag. I’ll even ask for one for a dining-mate who was about to decline it. Typically, that then becomes my lunch for the next day or two. This not only prevents food being wasted, but it also saves a surprising amount of money, which is just as important in it’s own way, as we’ll see below.

Composting: For food that goes rotten, moldy, or past its expiration date despite your best efforts to use it first, composting is a great option. If you’re a gardener, it makes an excellent soil additive for growing lush crops or thriving landscape plants.

And for those in the city, most municipalities offer composting as part of your trash service. This not only keeps all those useful nutrients out of the landfill and puts them to beneficial use elsewhere, but it also goes a long way toward keeping your trash from smelling.

Second-hand goods: It’s not just food that gets wasted on a massive scale. Discarded consumer goods (clothing, small appliances, furniture, etc.) — although often still perfectly usable — nonetheless make up a significant component of landfill waste.

I don’t know how many times I’ve been at the transfer station and witnessed people throwing away brand new sheets of plywood, fully-intact wrought iron patio chairs, and all manner of useful items that they can’t be bothered to dispose of responsibly. And it doesn’t help that most transfer stations prohibit scavenging. (To that I say, try to stop me.)

I’m not the slightest bit ashamed to admit that nearly every single piece of furnishing in my home was either bought off Craigslist or rescued from a thrift store. Not only does this keep these perfectly good items out of the landfill, but it also reduces demand for dirty, child-labor-employing, overseas factories to produce new goods in the first place.

Besides, thrift shopping is fun. It’s like a treasure hunt, and it’s something the whole family can enjoy. And best of all, as with doggy bags, it saves a ton of money!

Waste not want not. It’s not a mere life hack — it’s an ethos.

A Penny Saved Is a Penny Earned

This saying, commonly, yet erroneously attributed to Benjamin Franklin, is closely related to our previous topic.

Making money, as the millions of Americans who work multiple jobs just to barely make ends meet can attest, is hard. In fact, as of 2022, the official poverty rate in the U.S. was 11.5%, equating to 37.9 million people. On top of that, it’s estimated that 57% of Americans don’t even have enough savings to cover a thousand dollar emergency expense, such as needing a new set of tires or a dental crown.

With money so hard to earn and even harder to sock away, the next best thing is to not waste the money you already have. In fact, you should treat money like you would a precious, scarce resource, such as survival rations on a lifeboat. Here are some crucial points to remember that will help you do so.

“Debt is slavery.” This may sound harsh, but it’s the cold, hard truth. As anyone in hock to a mobster and having their thumbs put in a vice for lack of repayment will readily agree, owing other people money robs you of your independence and can severely constrain your happiness.

Now, granted, certain major purchases such as a home or a vehicle, are difficult if not nearly impossible to attain without taking out a loan. But the rule of thumb should be, only go into debt for items which appreciate in value. So basically, mortgages are the only type of “smart” debt.

If you can make do with the car you already have, do so. Or if you must get a new one, buy it used. (I’ve never owned a new car in my life. After all, they lose 10% of their value the moment you drive them off the lot.) New cars are a nice-to-have but unnecessary luxury, and you should treat them as such.

As for other consumer and credit card debt, if you don’t have the cash to pay for it up front (or better yet, to pay off the credit card statement balance in full and milk the rewards points), don’t buy it. You can’t afford it. Period. No matter how badly you may want it. Save and wait. Practice delayed gratification for all non-essential items and comfort goods.

With three out of five Americans having recurring credit card debt, and nearly one in four going deeper into debt every month, I know that advice won’t win me many friends, but once you get yourself indebted to the credit card companies — who charge rates that would have been considered “usury” for most of history — it can be extremely difficult to escape. It’s far better to avoid it in the first place.

There are many ways to do so, a few of which I’ve already mentioned as far as food and household items go. But you can take this further yet. For instance, haircuts.

I started cutting my own hair back in my late teens, and I’ve never paid for a haircut since. I know that if everyone did the same, it would be awfully hard on all the hairdressers of the world, but nonetheless, it saves me around forty bucks a month. Do that for a year or so, and there’s that new set of tires.

And it’s not nearly as hard as it sounds. Get yourself a pair of scissors, some electric clippers, and a hand mirror and you’ll quickly get the hang of it. There’s no reason to overly fear messing up either, for as they say, “The only difference between a good haircut and a bad haircut is two weeks!”

Another great way to save money is to learn some handyman skills in order to build “sweat equity.” Again, this won’t be great advice to help my contractor buddies with their businesses, but if you consider that labor usually accounts for about two thirds of the cost of a home-improvement project, your savings can be considerable if you can do the work yourself. Basically, every bathroom I remodel on my own equals a free kitchen remodel for the perennial fixer-uppers I call home.

And as with cutting hair, it’s really not that hard once you get used to it and grow your confidence in your skills. There are numerous online and community resources that can help with this (e.g. YouTube videos and volunteering for Habitat for Humanity).

And beside just saving money, there are substantial mental health benefits to building things yourself. For when you do a good job on a project and then get to directly enjoy the fruits of your labor, it’s super satisfying!

The Key to Success Is Self-discipline

This one is not only true, but it fits neatly on a key-shaped keychain. (Literally. When I was in high school, we had some motivational speaker come in who handed out little, rubber, key-shaped keychains with that slogan printed on them. Reinforced by that admittedly cheesy accessory, the lesson has always firmly stuck with me.)

There’s no better way to train yourself not to be wasteful and to learn to save money than to cultivate a strict sense of self-discipline.

Of course, as with any worthwhile endeavor, it’s easier said than done. But that’s the whole point. It’s hard.

As JFK memorably exclaimed, “We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard.”

Or, to paraphrase another notable figure of the past, “Most people don’t recognize opportunity when it knocks, because it’s dressed in overalls and looks like work!”

There are a lot varied techniques various experts recommend to enhance your self-discipline, but what they pretty much all have in common is that they all require focus and commitment. That’s pretty much what self-discipline is. And ultimately, it’s that “self” piece that has to do the work, so, what that looks like for every individual self will be unique.

Personally I’d recommend two areas to lean into.

One is to find a role model. As hokey as that may sound, it’s actually really important. Whether it’s a public figure or someone within your own social circle who you admire, having someone to look up to, someone you can learn from and pattern your actions after, is critical to mirroring their success. After all, why reinvent the wheel when you can buy one at the tire shop?

The other method I’d suggest is to learn to focus on the goal, not the arduous path that stands between you and it. The more you keep that end goal in mind, the less you get distracted or discouraged by the journey.

And luckily, the journey can be broken up into a thousand steps, which makes it far more manageable. Or, as another proverb puts it, “The only way to eat an entire elephant by yourself is one bite at a time.”

In the end, you’ll have to find a method that works best for you, which might require a bit of trial and error. But the important thing is having the desire to make the necessary effort, and then following up by making it.

If you can master the art of self-discipline and cultivate good habits that constantly reinforce it to where it’s reflexive and automatic, you’ll find it will benefit you in myriad ways.

As stated before, it will make you less wasteful, and thus a better steward of the environment. It will make you less broke, and thus less at the mercy of an uncertain and continent universe. And it will even keep you fit, regardless of all the excuses the modern zeitgeist makes for being otherwise.

So there you have it. Three simple maxims that can set you on the road to success. Waste not want not. A penny saved is a penny earned. And the key to success is self-discipline. Best of luck to you all!

Colby Hess is a freelance writer and photographer from Seattle, and author of the freethinker children’s book The Stranger of Wigglesworth.

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