THERE comes to almost every prosperous man a time when he wishes to know the best way of securing a steady income from his accumulated savings without the burden or responsibility of managing property in order to gain this income. The merchant may not wish to put back into his business all the earnings he gets from it. The farmer realizes how soon his broad acres may be run down through soil-robbing when he rents his property "on shares." When such a problem arises the thoughtful man casts about him for information on which to act.

One of the first things he learns, if he studies the situation carefully, is that there is a wide difference between an income derived from one's own business ability, such as the profit secured from running a store, factory, jobbing house or farm, and the income which is the result of money "working" by itself. In the first case, one must keep up his business responsibilities; in the other, once he has selected a safe investment, practically all he has to do is to collect his income from time to time as it falls due. There is no depreciation of land, buildings, machinery or the like; no insurance payments to worry about; no crop failures to consider.

Investment Advice

If one wishes to put surplus money away and to receive a steady income from it without bother and worry, the most important thing to consider is how to go about it to select something which, once purchased, will turn out to be a safe investment.

Clearly, safety is the first consideration. This means only one thing: the sum of money you invest must be returned to you or your heirs in full at some definite time. Every safeguard to this end must be provided. You should not be satisfied with the mere ownership of property without definite assurance of the return of the money you put into it. This is just as true whether the property be in the form of a partnership in a going business, the stocks of a corporation, or pieces of real estate. No one is obliged to take these off your hands, and if you are to get back the money you have invested you must sell in whatever market you can find for the property. On the other hand, if you lend your money, it must be returned to you at a certain time, and you do not have to sell property in an uncertain market to regain what you have invested. From this you can see that a safe investment is not merely property, but it is a secured promise to pay - an obligation to return, for value received, a certain sum of money on a given date.

But the desirability of an investment does not end with the obligation to return the principal; the sum must provide beyond question a satisfactory income. This should not be as uncertain as the profits from the individual ownership, let us say, of real estate, for lands or buildings may be idle and the income cease. Neither should it depend upon the rise and fall of the profits of a business, as when dividends on stocks of corporations increase or stop entirely as the company enjoys prosperous times, or suffers reverses. Such methods of employing capital are of their very nature business risks, requiring skill of management to assure an income. If you wish to free yourself from these risks and responsibilities, provision must be made to have the income of a safe investment fair, steady and as certain as human foresight can make it.