I saw a samurai era movie titled Abacus and Sword.

It’s about a clan of medieval era Samurai who specialize in a skill called accounting.

I liked the movie because growing up as a kid, I liked fighting and developed a taste for consuming media that romanticized violence, fighting and war.

There’s a scene, where the protagonist’s son, rebelled against his father and joined the army.

Instead of assigning him in the infantry, his initial request, he was assigned to the command and was put in charge of the army’s accounting and logistics.

The general or so told him that there’s an oversupply of people who can pick up the sword but very little who understand how numbers work.

If you sincerely want to help our cause, then you will use your gift (accounting) to help us win.

Some more lessons:

Be mindful about daily and household accounts.

Log all of your expenses.

What do you spend on?

What are the top two things that bring you the most value?

What are the top two things that cause the most waste and frustration?

Consider increasing the positive and decreasing the negative.

Be mindful about spending for the future.

It’s a story about accounting.

There are a lot of short stories in the film about this.

Keep good records.

There’s a scene where the family was able to review the family history simply by looking at the expeneses.

Selling items that don’t hold value is good practice.

There was a scene where they ended up selling most of their belongings.

Being fat is a modern problem.

Some background, in Japan, wedding gifts were a big deal.

The Samurai was the upper class in medieval era.

There’s a scene where a wealthy family gave the samurai family a small box of sugar.

Here’s what I took from that scene. Sugar was previously a luxury item. Now it’s everywhere and added to most modern food.


Thank you for reading.

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