Young adult, before you leave home…

Take care that you have learned to earn money. It will shock you that money turns the world around. Yes, you have grown older and it is now time to grow your own wings. Time to see the world. You believe you can fly.

Hang on there. Who bought you these wings? Are they borrowed? Did your parents give them to you over time? Have you grown into them? Are you riding on someone’s wings?

Young person, you need to earn your own money. Everything you take for granted is now on you. Your parents may have been a call away when there was an emergency, you will need an emergency fund. You were called for meals, heyyy, you will need to go shopping, think of storage and meal preps. You will need to wash all the dishes after your meals. What is the going rate for the lady that washes clothes? Or the live in help? Let’s talk about moving from your home to work or hang out with friends.

Photo credit: Pinterest

There is a new phenomenon called bills. Bills are regular, they are delivered and even if you ignore them, they keep piling. How much is a unit of power? What about water? How many units were you using as you stood under that shower or filled the bath tub? How about the lights that never go off in your home? Did you say daddy knows these things?

First off, your salary is not enough to cover all your expenses. Yes, it looks exciting because it has so many zeros. It will not be enough. Because you must spend less than you earn.

Second, your schooling may have restricted you to do only 4 or 5 subjects. You can do so much more than the one job you now have. Even within the job, you can handle multiple things. It is the way you are designed. God made you in His image, think of all the diversity in the animals, birds and plants. You are just as diverse and even more because you have the capability of creating something out of what doesn’t exist.

If you have a head and two hands, then poverty is a choice.

Moses Mukisa, Straight Forward Financial Growth (2018)

Third, you do not exist for yourself but for others. Think about it, what is the excitement of moving out about? The prospect of meeting new people and spending more time with your friends. So you need to factor in others. What will your contribution to this world be? How will the people around you benefit from your existence? Money is a currency that can be used to access other capitals. It is the one currency that expresses how much you value a thing. So if you want people to know you value them, you must do it in a currency they understand.

Having financial resources is what enables you to turn your concern into compassion.

Moses Mukisa, Straight Forward Financial Growth (2018)

Fourth, you will not always be young. You have to plan for the future. Savings and investment. You must plan for a time when you will no longer be young and agile and when your friends will not be there to bail you out. This means you must be earning money now, right?

Fifth, your parents have invested and if I may so has the entire nation in your life this far. Your one job now is to attempt to repay them for their goodness towards you. You remember that beautiful graduation speech with tears streaming down expressing your gratitude. It’s now time to act on it.

Without work, you’d have nowhere to start, nothing to save and nothing to invest with, no matter how many opportunities show up.

Moses Mukisa, Straight Forward Financial Growth (2018)

Start by evaluating your strengths. A great hack I have found is to list down 100 things you are good at. Only 100. Get a pen or pencil and paper and write them down. You might not exhaust it in one hour because of all the negativity you may have lived through. Press on and determine to list 100. Ask your friends, your siblings and family. Reflect on all those comments and compliments you have received.

Determine which ones you would love to pursue before you die. Some people call this a bucket list. The things I must do. This is what you are passionate about. They should not exceed 25. Go over the list and cross out the ones which are not so close to your heart.

What can the market pay you for? Go over what are now your 25 ideas. Every idea has a conception, incubation, prototyping and roll out phase. Assess each of the 25 ideas. You should have at least three that you have been prototyping. If all of them are at conception, like light bulb moments, my dear young adult, stay home. Prototyping means you can sell a product or service in the market and earn some money. It may not be exactly what you like but it people are willing to pay for it. For example, you can bake 12 cupcakes and sell them all at the office. Your capacity later maybe 2000.

Before you leave home, you should be able to earn money from more than one source of income.

A tale of how salary conspired against me.

It all began a long time ago; once a upon a December, I received a call asking me to pick my appointment letter. My parents were very excited, I was working, finally! My linear progression scale also agreed- kindergarten- check, primary school-check, O’level-check, A’level-check, bachelor’s degree-check. All checked. I picked my letter with a litany of requirements, one of them was opening a bank account. My dad wrote my reference to his bankers and it should have been easy, only this was a long time ago. I needed to explain why I wanted to open the account and what the purpose of the account was. And so began the games that salary would play with me. Each account had charges, minimum bank balances and an insy, winsy bit of interest. I selected the one that only required one letter of reference, it had no interest and required an immediate deposit for it to be opened. I was already indebted to myself, or was it the bank, before I even started working. Never forget salary.

Do not wait till your first job, start saving on all monies you receive.

Moral. ⚠

The rich rules over the poor, And the borrower is servant to the lender.
Proverbs 22:7 NKJV

And with that sorted, we started work. Salary was sometimes late, sometimes early, sometimes just on time. Salary and time were clearly having issues. I decided to work with time, because well, time was more predictable. Salary’s mood swings were legendary, every one complained about her, whenever we were with time. Which was always.

Your most constant resource is time. If you manage your time well, money shall follow.

Moral ⚠

So be very careful how you live, not being like those with no understanding, but live honorably with true wisdom, for we are living in evil times. Take full advantage of every day as you spend your life for his purposes.
Ephesians 5:15‭-‬16 TPT

It was not long before I was introduced to advance. The office grape vine always has a vine dedicated to options that are available to maintain your current and dream lifestyle. So advance, had limits and could be contained within your salary for one month. Well, that did not sound too bad. Let us try this advance. And advance😀 was always on time. Advance was always in a good mood, it was easier than accounts opening. You even received a phone call when advance was paid. Wow. Advance became my new best friend, goodbye salary! But Advance was jealous, very jealous. I had so many conversations about my relationship with salary, and told advance it was nothing personal but I owed salary alot in life. Well, that did not go down well, advance started to sabotage my dreams. The more, I pursued advance, the less I had to spend on my lifestyle. Salary was constantly complaining because the bills were piling up and we could not keep up.

Advance is debt. Stay away from advance on your salary. Choose contentment.

Moral ⚠

Those who love pleasure become poor; those who love wine and luxury will never be rich.
Proverbs 21:17 NLT

With the ‘millennium bug’, came new innovations. The first one being a salary account, all one needed was a letter of reference ans, voila you had an account. It had no minimum balance and minimal charges on withdrawal. Little did we know, this was a setup.

Not all that glitters is gold. Read the fine print. Read the times.

Word to the wise ⚠

The plans of the diligent lead surely to plenty, But those of everyone who is hasty, surely to poverty.
Proverbs 21:5 NKJV

In they came, trip trapping on our bridges, unmoved by our troll nature. They walked in, all suave and kempt, high heeled and polished. They spoke English English, a bit accented and their words rolled off their tongues like it was their mother tongue. Once in a while, they switched to their mother tongue, fluidity just. The latest crop of banking relationship managers ushered in by the ‘millennium bug’ and the Great Recession aka the Crash of 2008. They sold us salary loans. If you had a salary account, it was easy peasy. Sign here, sign here, and voila, within four days, you could be a millionaire! If you did not, it might take slightly longer, more signatures, but you too could join the club. ✒️? So it was, that within a few months, we were all millionaires. It took us a few years to catch on that interest rate, the one in tiny letters that you could not read, was not our friend. By then, most of us were so indebted, even advance would not pick our calls. We had mortgaged our future. And we still had to live in it.

Salary loans are an overdrawn future. Walk away from debt.

Moral ⚠

A prudent person sees trouble coming and ducks; a simpleton walks in blindly and is clobbered.
Proverbs 22:3 MSG

Promotion and an adjusted salary structure brought great reprieve. The same relationship manager who once ruthlessly sold loans to beat targets advised to defer gratification and save over time to achieve my goals. He gave the illustration of the cumulative effect of saving over the same period vis a vis paying off a loan. And without the interest component, wow. It looked doable. I could also wait, even with inflation, the cost was so much lower. That’s how I started saving.

Never spend your money before you have it

Thomas Jefferson ⚠

The wise have wealth and luxury, but fools spend whatever they get.
Proverbs 21:20 NLT

So there is this series being run by Worship Harvest Ministries, catch it here if you have not yet watched it.