I’m sure that we have all heard the idiom “A penny saved is a penny earned.” But, did you know that this saying, in truth, is nearly 400 years old?

As incredible as this sounds, it’s true!

This idiom is often incorrectly credited to Benjamin Franklin (writing as Richard Saunders) in Poor Richard’s Almanac.

However, from what I can find the saying first appeared, albeit with slightly different wording, in Jacula Prudentum: Outlandish Proverbs, Sentences, Etc. written by George Herbert in 1633!

The original phrase was actually “A penny spar’d is a penny twice got.” Citation 1, Oxford Reference

The idiom went through a few phrasing changes before being widely popularized by Benjamin Franklin in the late 1700s, but the sentiment remains true to this day!

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