YOU MUST SAVE…BECAUSE IF YOU DON’T, YOU ARE POOR!

Credit: wealthmoney.org

Note that I didn’t say ‘…You will be poor’, I said, YOU ARE POOR! And I hope your savings zeal and habit is not as beaten up as this bandaged piggy bank. lol.

Listen, if you cannot save at least 10% of your earnings consistently, monthly and over a long period of time, you are poor! It does not matter whether you earn N250,000 monthly or N10 million monthly. You might wear expensive jewelry, and go on regular vacations abroad, or even drive the latest model of Mercedes…it doesn't matter, you are still poor!

I was like that. I could make money any time -and I did make money- from forex, Medicine, WWTBAM, and the many other ‘genius’ skills I have, and others that I can monetize if I want to (including music), but I was poor.

I was poor not because I could not make money. My girlfriend will say to me -especially when I announce that I have made some money, “I don’t care how much you make, because you don’t have a problem making money. What you have a problem doing is keeping and managing what you have made.”

I had thought I had a money-making problem so I started learning about how to make money very early. In fact, when I look at any thing, I try to decode how to make money from it, and how I can make more money too. But I kept spending like a Nigerian politician, and yahoo boy, not saving enough, if at all.

Moreover, when another friend of mine heard that I was broke he said, “I know people of the kind like Siji…even if they make $1 million, they will still end up broke because they all they make.” And He got the diagnosis right.

Do you know that Michael Jackson was so successful that he sold 750 million records in his music career and signed a record deal equivalent of about $1 billion yet he died broke because he kept buying things he didn't need?  Whitney Houston was successful and so also was Mike Tyson, Marvin Gaye and M.C Hammer, and Francis Ford Coppola (Director of The Godfather), as well as many other celebrities such as footballers, actors, etc. But do you know that all of those people ended up broke? Why?!

Simple.

They refused to save, thinking because they were making a lot of money their source of wealth would not run out. Read my article ‘Do you also act financially stupid when you have a lot of cash?’ If you presently think lack of money is the only problem you have and once you get money, you will have the solution to all your problems in life, you are in for the shock of your life.

Some of you think the government should provide more money, or more jobs or more opportunities and that will solve your problems. You think the government isn't doing enough to help its citizens live comfortable. While I agree that it is the responsibility of the government to cater for its citizens, the citizens themselves have to be responsible too. The first responsible thing you need to do is start to save more. Take your financial destiny in your own hands, do not place it in the government's.

When you save even out of that little, you tell yourself subconsciously that there is abundance and that you can survive on little. And do you know the funny thing? You will survive on what is left!

But if you don’t save at all, the little you have will still not be enough, because after you have spent it all, there will always be something you could still buy.

So that is why it isn't because you don’t save that you are poor…. It is because you have a poor man’s (scarcity) mentality, that you don’t save. But no matter how little your income, don’t spend it all. Pay yourself by (finding a way to, and) putting aside little regularly!