By Ndu-okeke Michael
Like
all typical Nigerian parents will say, “study hard so you can get good grades
and a good job afterwards”; Most of us
grew up with the notion that a good job after school is the key to the good
life we have always dreamt of.
A lot is being taught during ones schooling days,
on our various choices of discipline, and schools often go the extra mile to
ensure their graduates are the best among their peers with slight advantages so
as to ensure they fare well in the ever combative war zone called the Nigerian
Labour Market. But after all this education and preparations, many
individuals with excellent degrees and good jobs still struggle financially and
are often covered in debt before it is time for the next pay check. Education
is of great importance especially in this information age, but does it
necessarily guarantee a successful life? Many school graduates leave their schools with
excellent professional and scholastic skills but are mostly financial
illiterates with little or no knowledge of how money works apart from just
working for it. This is because the topic money is never taught in schools and
many educated individuals go into the labour market working for money; not
knowing how to make money work for them.
A large percentage of Nigeria’s’ middle
class and lower class citizens engage in what multiple award winning investor,
entrepreneur, author and financial educator, Robert T. Kiyosaki called the “rat race”. This term he used to describe
people whose expenditure is equal with their income or even more. This he
described as, a financial situation caused by a low financial ineptitude due to
the individuals low understanding of the science of money or wealth
acquisition. The poor and the middle
class often spend their income on liabilities instead of acquiring assets like
the rich do. Liabilities can simply be put as things that take money out of
your pockets, while assets are the opposite. The difference between the rich
and the middle and poor class is the ability to tell the difference between an
asset and a liability.
The poor
and middle class knowingly or unknowingly go about acquiring liabilities which
in turn drain their income and invite debts, while the rich put all they can
into the acquisition of assets which increases their cash flow instead of
expenditure. The poor and middle class live with this illusion that a raise or
a promotion, which often comes with an increase in income, would put an end to
their financial struggles; but this never really happens because of their often
poor financial ineptitude which leads to their inability to differentiate between
an asset and a liability. Due to this fact, an increase in income is often
followed by an increase in expenditure so that the raise or promotion has no
significant change on the person’s financial status. This is what is called the
rat race, working so hard just to survive with barely anything to save. The
rich folk on the other hand might not be as educated as his peers but has a
better financial knowledge which he exploits to get ahead. An increased
acquisition of assets results in a situation Robert T Kiyosaki described as “financial freedom” when the
individuals’ assets generates a cash flow that adds to the normal income
leading to an increased income. Here the rich man’s income supersedes his
expenditure by a large margin due to the additional source of income created by
his assets. Example of such assets are stocks, bonds eg. FGN bonds, mutual
funds, shares, real estate and any type of business that produces steady income.
In
conclusion, we should all endeavour to increase our financial IQ and background
regardless of our line of work. You can do this by reading financial
educational books mostly written by world renowned investors and entrepreneur
eg. the Rich dad series by Robert K Kiyosaki; The warren buffet way by Robert G.
Hagstrom, and many other proper books on the art of wealth acquisition- or make use of the good old internet to
research on many available information pertinent to this subject matter . Lol*
I hope I did not bore you out with the money talks. Nothing is pleasurable
about money. The only pleasurable thing about money is spending it. Making it
or managing it properly is the hard part. So brethren, next time you’ve just
got paid and you are about to go cop that designers watch you’ve been drooling
over, or that new gadget which you know you don’t really need you might like to think twice so you don’t fit
into the popular expression that says, “ A fool and his money is one big party”.
By
Ndu-okeke Michael
Email:iamdaflymyk@yahoo.com
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