Whenever I ask my friend about money, quite often they are not always comfortable talking about anything related to their finances. Although I am not a financial advisor but very much interested out of a passion, to know what it takes to build wealth as I have come from a not wealthy or privileged family. Also, the topic of wealth creation, money, and getting Rich is never taught to us in school and the government doesn’t really want the people to know what to do to create wealth.
Consumers are getting more squeezed financially day by day, now the bank of England has increased the interest rate from 0.25% to 0.5% and with inflation projecting to be 7.5% in April 2022. The effect of this as we speak would not be good news to the people rather, we would see an increase in the price of goods and services, the energy bill is going up, our grocery shopping bill is not exempted either, it is going up as we speak.
I noticed the HP and Canon printers I used to buy last year certain amounts have gone up in price, what about post office as someone who have online store that uses post office to send goods to customers, I have noticed the same increase in the prices of postage fee. In all these, people in employment have noticed increase in tax and national insurance. While the wages are not increasing some employers are reluctant to give employees a pay rise, the higher interest rate would make borrowing very high.
Some people may have argued that savers would benefit from the high interest rate but at the same time, the savers are also the people that borrow money to pay for their mortgage.
This increase in interest rate would make mortgage loan to go up but for people who have fixed interests on their mortgages, it may not affect them in that aspect. What about the supermarket bill, services we use in our homes like broadband, energy bill, car insurance and home insurance these areas would be affected as I have noticed an increase in the price recently when my broadband and home insurance expired. I spent hours on the internet looking for a cheaper deal without tangible result.
I thought to share with you 13 things one needs to start doing if you want to be rich.
STOP BUYING EXPENSIVE GIFT
You need to stop buying expensive gifts, recently a friend of mine threw a big party to for her 10-year-old daughter invited numbers of her friends in the party, hired a hall, paid for Disc Jockey (DJ) and paid for the foods and drinks from the restaurant, gave designer clothes as present to the invited guests and at the end of the day, he ended up with massive credit card bill of £5000. How about doing a low-key birthday and use that money to invest in an index fund for the young person so that by the time he or she turns 18 years, she would have reasonable amount to put on in a deposit in mortgage.
STOP BUYING NEW CARS
A friend of mine said and I quote “I like buying new car so that his car doesn’t breakdown on highway that new cars are reliable with full warranty. I get it but I want to say, car is a necessity. As I have seen another of my work colleague who travel on the train to work who save a lot of money on petrol by using public transport. I travel far and wide in UK to work and I know the frustration it can be when your car breaks down on the motorway and if you don’t have a breakdown cover it is even worst as you are under the mercy of breakdown service providers who know that you are in a desperate situation and they would try to rip you off as much as they can as there is no fixed amount that they can charge to help you. My car recently broke down and was asked to pay $700 to transport my car back to my base, which is barely 1hour drive, I felt that was exorbitantly high, but again I had no other option. If you buy a new car, the moment you drive it off from the garage the price would start depreciating immediately. Recently a well-known footballer lost $27000 from selling his Astor Martin car which he said that he never feels comfortable driving the car that it was over the top. That $27K would go a long way for someone to put deposit in a house or start buy to rent business. Buying used cars as old as 3years would be good idea as it would still give you the same comfort and reliability you get from new car. Getting rich and ending poor depends a lot on choices and lifestyle we choose to live.
PENNY STOCK
Investing in stock market is a proven way to build wealth but some people go into it to buy only penny stocks as the price is low without doing the necessary fundamental research about the company or try to diversify their portfolio with other quality bellwether stocks.
FIRST CLASS HOTEL
I have studied many successful entrepreneurs Grant Cardone author of The 10X Rule is one of them he said, and I quote “you need to take 10 times the action that it requires to be successful” If you read a book titled Automatic millionaire, you would see how one needs to automate his savings and invest heavily in assets that appreciates in value, as the rich live decent life. We pay for hotel room to sleep whether first class or second class, if you are trying to stand on your two feet financially, it requires radical change and different mindset. Paying for first class hotel would be a waste of money while the second class would still give you the same end goal, which is a room to sleep when on holiday or business trip. Even Airbnb is not a bad idea, you would be surprised you may even have a better hospitality from the service received from Airbnb.
FIRST-CLASS FLIGHT
Recently watched a Former governor of my state who is a very rich man talks about how he never flies on first class flight despite being a British Airways Amex card holder member. He talked about when his friend paid for first class ticket for him as he went to the airport, he asked for second class and received refund from the flight ticket then travelled to his friend’s village and called 10 market women and shared the refund he received to them. I thought that was very nice and thoughtful gesture that goes a long way to alleviate poverty. It is important to think about others and show some empathy towards others. Whether you buy first class or second-class ticket both passengers would still reach the same flight destination.
SUBSCRIPTION FEE
A lot of people don’t check the subscription terms and condition me included. I noticed recently that I was paying for a subscription for a maintenance of a boiler in my new house while the boiler has two years manufacturer warranty. There is a saying from the Tesco store that every penny matters, that money would have gone a long way to increase my savings. You many think it is only £10 or £15 a month but when you add up the total in a year you would realise that it is a huge amount.
TAKE AWAY
I often work away from home and have noticed how much I spend on Chinese take aways whilst food prepared from home doesn’t cost me that much, often less and I would still have so much food left that I can have for couple of days. Which makes sense to take home cooked food to work.
EXTENDEND WARRANTY
I’d like to share practical things I have done; I have bought extended warranty on my tech gadgets, laptop, and printers, but I never used this warranty, and the goods are still working perfectly fine. Which make me think it is a waste of money. All the service providers or sellers would like to sell to us heaven and earth if they can, but it is up to us to say no and make informed choices that would benefit us in the long run.
BEING ENTITLED
Many black people often have this mentality that rich person in our society supposed to help us. Even personal experience of having my classmates and members of my family expecting one to solve all their financial challenges instead of taking personal responsibilities. In life one needs to take personal responsibility and blames his or herself in any financial situation they are in, in other to make progress. But people who have attitude and feels that it is your obligation to help them they would not think of ideas of what to do to change their ugly financial situation or take massive actions that would improve their financial outcome. So, it is real about doing a reality check to understand that you can be whatever you want to be when you are focused and determined to succeed.
FIX WELL NOT THE SINK
According to Gary Vaynerchuk, people need to live humbler if they want to get ahead. That he doesn’t let people to get away with excuses of their inaction this is the reason I got to be real and brutally honest with you.
You need to document your journey, trying to figure out where we want to go (destination) and find out route to reach there. There are things that hinder us not to get to our destination on time, environment, our parents, lack of education and poor lifestyle choice. To break loss from all this hinderances once, we need to go the opposite way to break the cycle. It is about constant offense and keep pushing till things happen. It is about not listening to negative energy that hinder you not to take actions. To fix the well, one needs to win the inner battle that surrounds us instead of a quick action like shout out from people who have made it or successful think that is all it takes to be successful.
BUYING TO IMPRESS PEOPLE
Recently a neighbour wanted to sell his Louis Vuitton Armand briefcase which cost $4600 to me for $3100 with $1500 discount when I asked him why he was selling it, his answer was he bought it to attend a wedding that all his friends were going to this wedding with this bag, so he didn’t want to be the odd one out. Which made me realise the massive knock-on effect people get when they succumb to peer pressure or when they are buying things or living a fake like to impress others. Whilst deep down, the person knows that he or she cannot afford this but instead of being man or woman enough to say no I can’t afford it the person would sheeply go along with it to the detriment of his pocket. This needs to stop if you want to get ahead, if you remove affirmation from others, you will see a remarkable change in your finance.
NOT TAKE UBER
Uber would tell you movement is all they do but not in dispense of your pocket. It is very expensive to take Uber on daily basis to work. Like I mentioned earlier going about with public transport such as train and bus would save you a fortune which you can put in an instrument that would give you the reward which leads me to the final point
SAVING MONEY
Some people only know just one way to save money by putting it in the savings account in the bank. Evidence have shown us that cash is worthless. I talked about the interest rate been 0.5% according to the Bank of England. If you think of it so amount of cash, you save in a bank account that you would be able to live off the interest you get paid by keeping your money in the savings bank account. It is good to have the ethos of saving your money, but you still need to channel your savings into an instrument that would maximise your potential. This is where investing your money and putting your money in business ventures come to play. You got to put your hand in so many ventures, into multiple streams of income in order to be rich and create a generational wealth. I hope you find this article valuable, would like to hear your thought, like, comment, subscribe and share the blog.
