WASTE MANAGEMENT I: you don’t need more cash, you need more commonsense!

This is the first in a 3-part series.

Do you feel like you could do with some extra cash/income at the end of the month? Then you don’t need more cash. You don’t need a higher income/multiple streams of income. What you need is more commonsense!

Yes, you heard me right- You don’t need more cash, you need more commonsense in managing your personal cashflow and then having more money to save or spend. Ok, let me ask you a few questions (please answer sincerely). How much do you earn monthly, in total? How much do you spend on recharge cards? How much do you spend on cold drinks and entertainment? Do you follow a budget when you spend? Can you list every single expense you made last month? If you know the exact answers, then you will begin to see why you need more commonsense. If you don’t, then that’s exactly why you really need more commonsense!

Some years ago, I was always broke. I just couldn’t seem to have enough pocket money to spend all through the month. And no matter how much I started the month with, my account always ended up in red. So I started learning how to invest in order to have more money. I bought stocks (before and during the boom around 2005/2006 period). I learnt and traded forex. I also tried my hands in managing a computer business centre, and was constantly looking for more money. But I wasn’t saving. So, whenever I made some money, my expenses increased.

Moreso, I wasn’t tracking how much I was losing in bad spending habits, and my inability to live frugally.  So no matter how much I made extra, I was always short by the end of the month. So I didn’t need more money, I simply needed more sense in managing the little I had! 

Eventually, the stock markets crashed and I lost money in forex, so I was virtually worse off, with my standard of living already raised. I was not managing; I was not living frugally, or learning to save more. I was more or less living like a politician/yahoo boy. So I developed bad spending habits.

Many Nigerians are also like this. We all want to live fast, drive fast cars, and make millions of naira and dollars, with little or no work to show for the millions. We want to get rich fast and we are not ready to be patient or make any personal sacrifices. In fact, it is this very mindset that has made our country the way it is presently. NIGERIANS DON’T LIKE TO MANAGE OR MAINTAIN, we will rather get, buy or build a new one, than maintain the old one.

However, nature does not operate like that. In nature, we see cycles- Kreb’s cycle, Nitrogen cycle, Water cycle, etc. Nature recycles its waste. Nature manages. Nature maintains. And nature is successful, in fact so successful that the earth is millions of years old and self sustaining. Can you be more successful than the earth?

The secret to great wealth likes in recycling waste, and managing your present resources efficiently – not getting more money, cars, shirts, wristwatches, wives, etc.

A great man once said, ‘Wealth consists, not in having great possessions, but in having few wants’.

‘…and in being content with the few you have’, (I added this, for you won’t be content if you don’t know how to survive on the few you have).