Money Myths
Tulip mania did not ruin the Dutch economy, and the panic came later
Almost everything popularly known about the bulb bubble traces to a Victorian anthology of follies. Archive work has found very few…
Money Myths
Received wisdom about earning, saving and spending that does not hold.
21 articles · updated August 11, 2026 · page 2 of 2
Money Myths
Ford did not double wages so workers could buy the cars
The famous pay rise was announced in 1914, and the explanation everyone repeats came afterwards. The assembly line was losing…
Money Myths
Adam Smith used the invisible hand three times and meant something narrower
The phrase now stands for an entire economic philosophy. In his own writing it appears rarely, in specific arguments, and once in…
Money Myths
A penny saved is a penny earned is not what Franklin wrote
The almanac everyone credits contains a different and better line. The familiar version was in circulation in English before he was…
Money Myths
Sell in May comes from a horse race, and the evidence is thinner than the slogan
The saying is a piece of old City of London folklore about when to leave town. Studies have found seasonal patterns in returns, and…
Money Myths
The big pack is not always the cheap pack, and shops know you assume it is
Unit pricing regularly shows the larger size costing more per gram than the smaller one. The assumption that bulk means value is…
Money Myths
Buy cheap, buy twice is a good story with a weak record
The most quoted version of the argument comes from a comic novel about a fantasy city. Testing organisations keep finding that…
Money Myths
The customer is always right was a shop slogan, and the famous get-out is invented
Two large retailers used the phrase around a century ago as a promise about returns. The popular correction, that the original…
Money Myths
The statistic about lottery winners going broke has no source
A specific percentage is quoted everywhere, and the body it is credited to says it never produced it. The research that does exist…