A dying father called his only son to the bedside and left him two pieces of advice: occupy yourself with Torah study, and give generously to tzedakah. The inheritance he handed on was 3,000 gold pieces. The son took the advice literally and divided the money into three equal stacks.
The first thousand he gave to help poor couples afford their weddings — hachnasat kallah, one of the oldest Jewish charities, paying the dowry that a bride's family could not. The second thousand he used to bury a great rabbi whose family was too poor to cover the funeral expenses, fulfilling the commandment of met mitzvah, the burial of the neglected dead. The third thousand he spent bribing officials to annul an evil governmental decree that had forbidden Jews to circumcise their sons or perform Jewish marriages.
When the money was gone, the son sat in his empty house. He had no income, no reserve, nothing to live on. Then Elijah the prophet appeared at his door and handed him ten gold pieces. "Start again," Elijah said. With those ten coins the young man rebuilt his life and became extraordinarily wealthy.
Before the young man's death, Elijah visited him one more time and showed him, in a vision, the reward that awaited him in Gan Eden. The three thousand pieces he had spent — on weddings, burials, and the preservation of covenant — had been transferred into a bank account in Paradise, and the balance was glorious.
Gaster's Exempla of the Rabbis (1924, No. 334, from Codex Gaster 185) teaches that the son's inheritance did not disappear. It had simply been moved to an address where rust and thieves cannot reach. His father's advice had been investment counsel in disguise.