The weather in the City of Nairobi and around the country is moving from dry to wet and cold storms. Elsewhere less clear mornings with little disparate showers in some parts of the country during the day will be taking shape.
This is quite a drift from the usual warm weather in July to September period. This pattern alternates naturally every year even though not in perfect sync to clean up the hill and replenish the dry grass with a fresh growth.
When it comes to our finances, each one of us has a “mental filter” which need regular realignment to remove unwanted inputs and realign the behaviours expressing outwards. We should use it to filter out the many negative influences which direct our money to less productive activity. We have the power to, declutter our minds and the resultant financial behaviours if we make some hard choices.
We can use the filters to remove the behaviours that repeat in our lives with almost predictable patterns and consequences. Like the unique Zebra’s patterns, each financial behaviour pattern that we repeat run on the back a mental pattern. The patterns and consequences so you unique to the holder.
The furnace filters in the factories are very selective about what passes through them and what does not. Our minds are selective too about the influences that we allow to affect our thinking and attitudes, and eventually the behaviours and their consequent financial outcome.
We are, however, limited in seeing through the consequences that will appear in the long term from the choices of today, which is the primary reason why most poor people prefer to enjoy their money today, rather than wait for it to multiply and eat more another day.
Schools opened in January after long Christmas holidays bringing with it plenty of financial stress that have since been forgotten as the pain subside. We have paid all the fees for this year and behold a new year is less than two months away. It is that time to review the financial behaviours that formed your patterns this year!
Consider removing the clutter of negative past influences in your life. It is time to turn off some things and replace them with others. Take for example, a situation where you pay school fee by taking a loan every year. From the point of view of meeting the educational needs of your children, you score very well. However viewed from the point of view of personal growth potential that drove you into joining the savings and credit Society, you have missed the mark again one more year.
It takes a typical Kenyan boy or girl over twenty-three years to complete education and become financially independent. Three boys in a family following each other spaced two years apart, translates into at least twenty-eight years of school fees and maintenance on their parents.
For a parent aged twenty-eight years at the birth of the first born child, this means that they will be free from paying school fees at age fifty six, having worked all their lives to keep children in school.
Such a parent would most likely take on “panic investing in assets” to catch up, and without knowledge because they never invested time to know a “good from a bad” investment at that age. The family soon retires to leave on pension and depend on their investment in their children education for the supplemental income above the meagre pension proceeds. A cycle of poverty is maintained in the family unless their children take a different tangent which is unlikely.
Your mind can only focus on one thing at a time, so direct it to good things. Rather than allowing yourself to be paralysed by fear and worry, take action with the little money you can save from your present income.
Patrick Wameyo is financial literacy educator and small businesses consultant. He is the lead consultant at Financial Academy Business School, a unique for budding entrepreneurs. Comments and inquiries to [email protected]
