I AM inclined to think that one great secret of being able to save is to know what you want and what you don't want. Knowing how to employ most efficiently the money which you do spend is also very important, but first and most essential is to learn to know most emphatically what you don't want. Never get into the habit of saying: "I can't afford it." Have the strength of character to say: "I don't want it." How many people know what they actually desire? Do you know what you want, why you want it and what you expect to do with it? Hard thinking, and sometimes long thinking, is needed to learn what your needs are. But don't be afraid to think. People who keep repeating that they can not afford this or that proper and wholesome object kill within themselves ambition and narrow their minds. Skinflint economy is the most wasteful extravagance. But most objects of pleasure for which we spend money are not worth having. Things which are really worth having, that we desire intensely or need insistently, can usually be had if we are willing to pay the price of physical and mental effort.

Nothing so confines our growth as to repeat continually that we "can't afford" worthy and desirable things. The wealth of the universe is hardly more than scratched, and efforts devoted to constructive, progressive money-making are sure to bring great results. No man should get the idea that his income is forever fixed. It is both wise and necessary to get enjoyment out of life as we go along. Those who live only for the future may find their capacity for enjoyment utterly gone when the future becomes the present. A good rule is to live respectably and save a little, and if you can also live respectably and save a good deal, so much the better.

Charles Naeher is president of one of the big savings-banks in a large eastern city. He came to this country more than sixty years ago, and he reached his present position by a combina-tion of ability and thrift. He did not increase his expenses when his income grew larger.

"But I always lived well," said Mr. Naeher in a recent interview. "My family had good substantial food and clothing, all the comforts, but somehow I never could enjoy spending money foolishly. I still wonder at the lavish display in restaurants and the silly vanity of those who ape the rich."

Liberal expenditure is not inconsistent with saving - quite the contrary. There is a tremendous difference between intelligent, liberal expenditure and foolish extravagance. But miserly stingy expenditure tends, strangely enough, to limit a man's income. Misers almost never grow very rich because all their energies are concentrated on saving a penny. A miser once walked nearly half-way across the continent on a necessary trip to save car fare. The time he consumed was worth far more than car fare to any trained worker.

"But how is this?" I hear some one ask. "This fellow is not very consistent. A moment ago he was urging us to save, and now he says the best way to save is to spend."

Well, there is no inconsistency in that advice. Of course I am urging no one to live beyond his means in the hope of making it up from a larger income later on. What I would hammer into the consciousness of every young man and woman in the land is the necessity of learning to say NO to extravagance, and YES to what is worth while. Liberal expenses for useful purposes, provided they are within the limits of one's income with some margin left over for regular savings, have the tendency to raise men and women to positions of higher responsibility and larger money-making capacity.

But don't be afraid of people calling you names. YOU know whether your qualities are those of the "tightwad" and "piker." Spending money just to impress a hotel clerk, a dining-car waiter, a cabman, or from a miserable and petty fear of supposed public opinion, brings in no returns. Don't spend money to show off.

"Rather than be looked upon as tightwad," says a writer in The Silent Partner, a bright little magazine full of practical helpfulness, "I have seen poor traveling men pay for a high-priced room at a hotel before they would ask the clerk what the rate was.

"You are not out on exhibition - you are out on business.

"Why try and make a hit with the hotel clerk? Why try to impress the dining-car waiter? Why show off in the smoker? Why not get the orders - sell the goods? Then come home and let the firm show you off.

"In a dozen ways each day the 'Easy Mark' pays an extravagant price in preference to being called a 'piker.' And most of these men are right where they were twenty years ago - only they owe more."

I believe that extravagance has become more than a mania. It is a sort of disease. It indicates a decline in character, a fatty degeneration of the moral fiber, almost more than a lack of financial sense. It is the "easiest way," the "line of least resistance." It is certainly contagious. It becomes a fixed habit.

If young men would only stop to think that extravagance most often leads to the excesses which undermine character! It is seen at its worst in a mining-camp where every one spends freely and no one obeys the law. Most defalcations begin with extravagance. Surely it is the road to ruin. And why are most people so prodigal? To buy things they really don't want. Chiefly is money wasted to make a vain show. At least that is the opinion of Julius Rosenwald, Chicago millionaire, philanthropist and head of a great business. Is it not the common observation of all of us?