MONEY SENSE IS COMMON SENSE
When it comes to finance, your actions speak louder than your knowledge. This is true because your money can only work for you when you apply to work, practical principles to its use.
It’s amazing how many of us know a lot of these basic personal finance principles but don’t apply them.
We all know the popular saying: “Common sense is not common”, however, having common sense is not just enough. At some point, common sense has to move on to common practice if we want what we know to work for us.
Like Gary Vaynerchuk would often say, “ideas are sh*t, execution is king.”
In a previous blog post, I shared with us the habits that make millennials get richer and we found out that successful people apply these principles every day, you can even call it a daily habit.
These habits are not magical; they are just simple working principles we all know, but fail to implement in our daily lives.
And one would wonder why the rich get richer and conclude it is sheer luck, but it isn’t. Sheer luck or fickle fate has absolutely nothing to do with it.
They simply make smart moves with consistency and in return, their money grows consistently. They know that when what you know becomes practical, winning is inevitable.
Let’s take these working principles one at a time:
MONEY SENSE 1:
Save at least 10% of your income. The best finance advice I have ever gotten has to be this right here.
Just like Arkad advised his friends in the book The Richest Man in Babylon, “A portion of what you earn is yours to keep”.
A lot of us, when we get our income, we spend it all, and we think we have done ourselves a favour.
We forget that investing in ourselves after a month or a year of labour is paramount to our success being achievable. For Christ’s sake, allow for rainy days.
I bet we all have heard this advice one too many times, but the question is, do we heed it?
With the way 2020 turned out, time has only revealed those who work all-year-round, but never have this simple principle as common practice.
You don’t necessarily have to build a box with a very small hole on it to put in money.
There are some really dope platforms for saving which are very convenient and could even yield you some extra cash for saving.
Let me give you an experience:
I was fresh out of NYSC and got this job as a content writer. I recall I would blow up my salary just as soon as it came and before the end of the next month, I’d be broke again. I’d run to my friend for money every time until she got fed up and introduced me to Saversclub.
She made me set a target amount for a six-month tenure on Saversclub and made sure every month, I put a part of my salary away to meet up. When that target expired, I didn’t just get my money, I got a whopping 14% interest on it.
Bottom line is, I saved and I earned while at it. No commercial bank in Nigeria would give you even up to 5% interest on your savings. You can quote me.
I didn’t need her to tell me to do it all over again and this time, I set a larger target for myself.
See, I knew what to do, but she made me put my knowledge to work. God bless her.
MONEY SENSE 2:
Put your money away in investments. The place of investments and savings can never be over-emphasized. Do not listen to those singing about spending your last 2k because I can assure you, premium tears await you.
If you have some money and you don’t have anything to do with it, invest it. Make investment a habit especially secure and real-time profit yielding ones.
There are so many investment platforms out there that are safe, secure, and provide real-time profits on every penny.
Onesqm is one of them, as well as other forms of investments such as mutual funds, real estate or even buying shares.
I had a friend who put in some cash in Onesqm real estate investment scheme, and she bagged a 16% upfront paid interest within 48 hours of putting in her principal investment.
Her term would run for one year and when her term was over, she converted her investments to equity and paid for a choice two-bedroom apartment in Lagos, while she paid the rest through their mortgage finance scheme, which she spread over 15 years.
It seems like a dream but it is real. This kind of mortgage financing would happen to be the first real estate innovation in Nigeria.
She was so impressed with the turnout, and invested more, this time for longer. She would be moving into her own home, with a convenient mortgage scheme while reaping the benefits of her other investment. Smart people think and act this way.
MONEY SENSE 3:
Never Invest without the necessary knowledge. A lot of people, myself included, know this and never do it. Most times we tend to invest based on how we feel rather than what we know.
Though investment is important for success, it will be wise if you seek financial advice before going headfirst into any investment plan.
Information is key, you can’t implement what you do not know, and what you do not know cannot work for you.
When you understand the way investments work, nothing would come to you as a surprise.
Ask as many important questions as you need to and read up anything you can find about the type of investment you are considering to go into. Just be curious!
One of the attributes of successful investors is their curiosity. In the world of investment, curiosity does not kill the cat.
MONEY SENSE 4:
Know your risk tolerance. You would understand that in the world of investments, values are volatile. interests can go up or come down depending on the state of the economy, asset prices can fluctuate and loss is inevitable in some cases.
Knowing how much financial risk you can tolerate is very important because you need to learn to get comfortable with being uncomfortable.
Take a risk assessment test to find out how much financial risk you can endure before you begin that investment.
MONEY SENSE 5:
Do not take loans to settle liabilities. Funny enough, a lot of people do this. Using a liability to settle a liability will only leave you with more liabilities.
Take loans, if you must, to buy assets instead.
Carrying substantial amounts of high-interest debt directly affects your ability to save and invest for your future. It stresses everything else in your financial life and you will have to work much harder to pick up the slack.
MONEY SENSE 6:
Never live to impress. Wealthy people know their “why” behind their money and you should know yours too.
Why do you work, why do you invest, why do you do any of it? Your answers will be specific to you, but it ultimately comes down to being able to live the life you want.
The goal is to have your money work for you so that you can reach your full financial potential, but you have to start with “why”, otherwise, you have nothing to fight for.
You can’t live intentionally with your money if nothing is guiding your behavior.
So, tell me what other money sense practices do you know but have not practiced?
