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Health is Wealth: The Alkaline Paleo Diet for Prosperity
The main character leaves a small amount of money in his will, five lots of 100 livres, to collect interest over one, two, three, four or five full centuries, with the resulting astronomical sums to be spent on impossibly elaborate utopian projects.[102]
BF, who was 79 years old at the time, wrote thanking de la Cour for a great idea. He told him he had decided to leave a bequest of 1,000 pounds each to his native Boston and his adopted Philadelphia.
BF died five years later and left this will and codicil:
http://sln.fi.edu/franklin/family/lastwill.html
As of 1990, more than $2,000,000 had accumulated in Franklin’s Philadelphia trust, which had loaned the money to local artisans in gold and silver at 5%, as stipulated in the will.
From 1940 to 1990, the money was used mostly for mortgage loans. Defaults reduced the actual return from 5%. When the trust came due, Philadelphia’s leaders, after considerable legal wrangles, including the mayor’s idea for throwing a huge party with the money, decided to spend it on scholarships for local high school students, having earned a compound annual return of 3.11%.
Franklin’s Boston bequest accumulated almost $5,000,000 during that same time; at the end of its first 100 years per the will a portion was allocated to help establish a trade school that became the Franklin Institute of Boston with a land donation from Andrew Carnegie. The whole fund was later dedicated to supporting the Institute.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benjamin_Franklin
Despite Boston Franklin funds spent at the first Century anniversary, more conservative lending in Boston garnered a more consistent and higher compound annual return of 3.58%.
Time is more important than timing, and return of principal is more important than return on principal.
It’s never too late to start being generous and prosperous, although it certainly helps to start young and live a long time.
One of my teachers used to say he planned to live to be 120, like Moses.
