Financial Lessons of America’s Founding Fathers

By Jacob Davidson

In theory, the founding fathers should be the ultimate financial role models. After all, they’re literally on the money. Warren Buffett might be every investor’s hero, but he can’t count his earnings without seeing the faces of Washington, Hamilton, Franklin, and Jefferson.

And even John Adams, perhaps the most neglected of the founding fathers, has been commemorated on the dollar coin.

What can the men who adorn our currency teach us about our own finances? Quite a lot, actually, but not because they were all as good with money as they were at creating a nation.

Here are some of the lessons, still applicable today, that can be drawn from these historic financial lives.

Have a Back-up Plan

Alexander Hamilton may have been the greatest financial visionary in American history.

After the Revolutionary War, as Washington’s Treasury Secretary, Hamilton steered the fledgling nation out of economic turmoil, ensured the U.S. could pay back its debts, established a national bank, and set the country on a healthy economic path.

But it turned out that he was far better at managing the country’s finances than his own

When Hamilton was killed in a duel with vice president Aaron Burr, his relatives found they were broke without his government salary. Willard Sterne Randall, biographer of multiple founding fathers, recounts that Hamilton’s wife was forced to take up a collection at his funeral in order to pay for a proper burial.

What went wrong? Hamilton’s law practice had made him wealthy and a government salary paid the bills once he moved to Washington, but he also had seven children and two mistresses to support. Those expenses, in addition to his spendthrift ways, left Hamilton living from paycheck to paycheck.

The take-away: Don’t stake your family’s financial future on your current salary. The Amicable Society pioneered the first life insurance policy in 1706, well before Hamilton’s demise in 1804, andterm life insurance remains an excellent way to provide for loved ones in the event of an untimely death. Also, don’t get into duels. Life insurance usually doesn’t cover those.

Diversify Your Assets

Conventional wisdom holds that investors shouldn’t put all their eggs in one basket, and our nation’s first president prospered by following this truism.

During the early 18th century, Virginia’s landed gentry became rich selling fine tobacco to European buyers.

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