Read the full transcript of Christopher Music’s talk titled “3 Rules To Manage Your Money—From Ancient History” at TEDxStGeorgeStudio, July 19, 2025.
Listen to the audio version here:
Introduction
CHRISTOPHER MUSIC: Have you ever seen the movie Alexander? There is a scene where the massive Persian army is battling the much smaller Macedonian army commanded by Alexander the Great. Now imagine the sight as Darius commanded his archers to let loose the bows covering the sky in a sea of black arrows over the heads of Alexander’s army. Now imagine what was going through the minds of those soldiers as they were trying to shield themselves from an onslaught of those black arrows.
Well in October 2009 I was watching my Bloomberg terminal as most financial advisors do and I was confronted with a sea of red arrows on the screen. At that moment I knew that my clients were losing a significant portion of their wealth due to the crashing market and I sat back and I realized that I wasn’t having any fun anymore.
You see, as financial advisors we are entrusted to protect and maintain the wealth our clients place with us. That day I knew something was wrong. Our modern financial planning paradigm was broken. At that moment I decided to find a way to discover and utilize the natural laws of prosperity to create prediction and certainty in one’s financial life so that people can attain and maintain financial freedom.
Discovering Natural Laws of Prosperity
And I’m referring to the laws that are of money, prosperity, that are just as true and observable as gravity. I began my research with a fundamental idea that there had to be natural laws of money that were always true in all times and all places without variation to guide us into what works.
You know, ancient and modern civilizations alike all had something to say about these laws.
So I started with the oldest civilization and got to work. I started with the writings of ancient Sumeria, then studied the Chinese, the Egyptians, the Romans. I studied seven major world religions, the classical economists of Europe, the modern day financial gurus, and distilled down a list of these basic principles that were most often repeated and tried to create a list of these workable laws.
I found about 25 of them that had the greatest usefulness in creating positive results in wealth management for thousands of clients. For if we applied the laws, we got improvements in financial conditions. But when we violated them, financial conditions worsened.
Now this can happen for you, because if you want to have more money, stay out of debt, and protect your assets from loss, well let’s take a look at a couple of these natural laws and see how they’ve been carried on throughout history.
Rule #1: Pay Yourself First
The first one, pay yourself a portion of your income before any other expenses. Now this fundamental concept is all over the ancient and modern civilizations. It is the well-known concept of paying yourself first, and it is the one that has the greatest effects on having accumulated money.
You know, in the book, “The Richest Man in Babylon,” written in 1926 by George Clayson, he says, “A part of all you earn is yours to keep.” This highlights the habit of not spending all that you earn, but taking a portion of everything you do make, and putting that for the future you, so the most important person, and that’s you.
Even the ancient Romans understood this, as statesman Marcus Tullius Cicero said, “Saving is the good income.” Now in modern application, this means that if you’re a business owner, you take a chunk of your income and put it into an account that you never spent. If you’re an employee, you take a portion of your paycheck and pay it into a retirement plan before you even receive it.
But no matter how much income you earn, if you make a dollar, you take at least 10 cents and put it away for your future. For as Benjamin Franklin said in his book, “The Way to Wealth” in 1757, “A penny saved is a penny earned.”
The second concept is stay out of debt. This is such a fundamental concept and so obvious to the wisdom of philosophers and economists that is ingrained in our collective consciousness. Both the ancients and the moderns alike knew the detrimental effects, both emotionally and financially, of being in debt.
As a matter of fact, the ancient Egyptians had a proverb which said, “Beware of being a creditor. For one loses one’s friends and acquires enemies,” showing the relationship between a creditor and a borrower when the latter cannot pay his debts.
Now I’m not referring to leverage, where you borrow money to purchase assets that go up in value like real estate. No I’m talking about consumer debt, where you borrow money to pay for immediate gratification such as using credit cards or personal loans.
You see it is this consumer debt that is the trap and as ancient Greek philosopher Plutarch said, “He who is in debt is not free.” To be and stay free in our modern economy means preventing yourself from forfeiting your future. Spending more money than you make on instant gratification is the source of the turmoil and as Chinese philosopher Confucius so carefully observed, “He who will not economize will have to agonize.”
Staying out of debt gives us prediction and certainty and peace of mind for there’s no greater feeling than knowing that you do not owe anything to anyone.
Rule #3: Protect Your Assets from Loss
And our third law is protect your assets from loss. The idea of protecting your assets from loss is a fundamental goal of anyone who’s gone through the blood, sweat and tears to accumulate anything of value. Therefore we find that any method useful in retaining the value of an asset is just as important as acquiring it in the first place.
You know the first thing that comes to mind is protecting the assets you already have. This was so well known by the ancient Greeks that there’s actually an inscription from the seven stages of Greece on the walls of the temple of Apollo at Delphi that says “Guard what is yours.”
You know one of the best ways to protect your assets from loss is to manage your greed. You know everyone wants to make money but as an investor you must prevent yourself from losing money on bad or long shot investments thereby violating the law the ancient Egyptians understood from the instruction of Aung San Suu Kyi who said “Do not be greedy lest you be lacking.”
We all must remember that all investments are in people and it is critical that we know with whom we are doing business. Even the ancient Romans understood that a good reputation is more valuable than money. As Latin writer Publius Serus wrote that more than 2,000 years ago.
Protecting your assets from loss is the greatest way to create prediction and certainty on your future level of wealth.
Conclusion
Now these are just a few of these natural laws and there are many more that can have a profound and significant impact on your financial well-being. But you see financial freedom is not a mystery. It is taking action in alignment with these natural laws.
Now I want to wish you a life of health wealth and wisdom while you live your art. Thank you.
