A very wise king once summoned all his wise men together and told them to write a book to document all the wisdom they had discovered so as to save the knowledge up for future generations.

The wise men came up with a 12 volumes of encyclopedias. The king told them that people would not read the books as they were too voluminous, he asked that they go back and reduce the books to just one. It was quite herculean, but they did it! When they came back, the king still wasn’t satisfied, he insisted that he wanted the book to be smaller. They had a series of backs and forth, each one shrinking the book of wisdom further. The king asked them to make it one paragraph, then eventually, the king asked them to reduce the paragraph to one sentence! Whew!

After several nights of brainstorming, the wise men came up with one sentence that met the wise king’s approval!

The Statement? – “There is no free lunch”!

This underscores the fact that nothing in life is free. “Free” cheese can only be found on mousetraps. Whenever something is called free, it’s because some else has decided to pay the price. Realizing that all value must be paid for, and that there is no such thing as free lunch, is indeed a good way to summarize financial wisdom. Always ask, who is paying for this?