THE BIGGER PICTURE – How Money Lives

You can make EXCUSES and earn SYMPATHY, OR You can make MONEY and earn ADMIRATION. The choice is always Yours. 
                                                       Manoj Arora

Good evening wonderful reader. Thanks for your patience all this while as we migrated to this new domain. Thanks again for always lending some time to read from here, and not bothering to grant a share or recommend this blog to others.  This post promises something absolutely amazing.

Thought about the title of the post and felt is he now into the class of elite financial advisors? Well, this post isn’t for the scholars. This doesn’t contain what would make you an investment tycoon. Rather, it is what will rewire the thought process on how you see money and how you have unfortunately misconstrued its schemes. After reading, it should set you out on the path of seeking more and asking yourself more questions. Thank you and have a great read.

After the first twenty-four birthdays of my life, I realized all I had been doing was clearing the bush, and gathering the lots for a life yet to unfold. All these years seemed like laying down the foundations of what actual life would mean. Don’t get me twisted – having spent 24 years of one’s life almost evens out a third of the persons current life expectancy. Should such a person shockingly pass on, would their life in our era have really been one worth celebrating? Well, maybe so for others but not what I had lived so far – not by my personal standards. So, I mean, these first few years, no matter how well lived, though highly relevant, do not impact so much on human lives to make good claim on a well lived life.

A few days after my call to the noble profession of a Medical Doctor came, I approached the Branch manager of my bankers to engage in a few discussions. The revelations from that discussion, changed a lot about this mind. I had been wanting to know how the rich people in life became as rich as they were. I felt at a point that there was some secret hidden somewhere only revealed to a special kind of people. I still hold the thought somewhere in my brain that – it isn’t possible to make a billionaire from a mere single cedi-note Ghanaian, at least not in one legally lived and apt lifetime. Maybe unless an earlier family generation laid down a mountain as a start point.

 

Ask and it will be given to you, seek and you would find; knock and it will be opened to you.
                                                 Matthew 7:7

Well, my quest to know more about being financially sound took me to the works of Robert Kiyosaki, Brian Tracy, and the likes. Reading the popular “Rich Dad, Poor Dad, Cash Flow, the 7 Habits of Highly Effective People” amongst others was no brainer. I read about Mark Zuckerberg, Rockefeller and other rich men – how easily summarized their path to success is made and the exploits they’ve done thereafter. I sort how spirituality imparted being wealthy and realized the lineage of Abraham, running through Isaac, Jacob, David, Solomon were no mere wealthy men. How Job became as wealthy as he was…well!!! Let me leave that there. All of such inquisitiveness dawned things in my mind which I share today. Take time to analyze them and you would be blessed.

Continuing from where I digressed, the visit to the branch manager – who had become a friend from earlier cooperate transactions – was mainly to find out how I could switch my account from a student account to an actual savings account – one that could migrate from receiving trickles of a student’s paltry savings to a voluptuous haven. That bit took no time. A savings account meant I had somewhere to leave some figures and hope they grew up without much risk. 

The plan was to grow 5-digit figure in that account. She looked at me with amazement and said, “Well, Doc, if you are going to keep this savings account and be disciplined with it, you could have at least GHC 100,000.00 in 10 years.”  Hundred thousand Ghana cedis seemed like the highest mountain of money I could imagine in my account. I gave it a short thought and realized it wasn’t possible. So, I asked “You mean I can save to have GHC100,000.00 in this my account after 10 years? How is that possible? Wouldn’t that mean me not doing anything else apart from saving all I make?” At that point in time, all I could see was a huge insurmountable amount of money which seemed bigger than the bearer of the account himself.

                       The only reason to save money is to invest it.
                                                                                    -Oscar Auliq-Ice     
   

She replied “That is why I said if you are going to be disciplined enough, and not go about wasting money unduly, then its possible. It wouldn’t all come in as hard-earned savings. You may come across some piece of land at a point in time, buy, resell and make some profit. Then that initial amount of money increases for you without having to save to get there.” By the time I took leave of her office, I believed to some thin extent it was possible to have such an amount in my account. However, that believe hadn’t been perfected yet. Ten years meant one hundred and twenty months. I couldn’t afford converting them to weeks let alone days. So, I felt, all the books I have read over the years need to be put to practice now. Reading them for knowledge sake without reflecting them in wisdom is tantamount to no work done.  It was time to know practically the ways of money and the art of investment. So below, after three years, I share with you how practicality and perpetual quest to know more about the tiny bits of how money works has revealed.

A teaser:
If you ever had the chance of being gifted a huge amount of money. That very amount you have always wished for, and it didn’t just remain a ghostly promise, but landed in your bank account or place of keeping money and made you feel like a human (The multi-dollar question), what would you use that money for?

THE DYNAMICS OF MONEY AND INVESTING:  7(Seven) Fast Facts about Money and Investment.

  1. They require a plan: You don’t just wake up and start investing. Money doesn’t just rush to you for no reason. There should be a plan on how to make your investment line go – both long term and short term. If there is anything most important, it is about how we plan to invest. There is this funny cliché from childhood (as earlier teased) where you’re asked what you would do if you were offered a huge sum of money? I believe majority of us would state a few pressing needs which wouldn’t consume a third of the amount and push on to avert that we will invest the rest of the money. Isn’t this reassuring enough? Push them further on what they would invest in and majority will say, maybe put it at a bank, buy a bond or treasury bill. The rest opt to go for the vague statement of “I will do business with it”. 
 
  1. Sorry to say, majority of these so-called investments we think we may go in for should we chance on money, are not things we’ve really sat down to have plans for. That shows our unpreparedness for the very uncertain thing we seem so sure about. Note: Plan your investment options 10 years away from today, right from now. Lay down the skeletal framework. When you get the necessary requirement, it makes putting them into action easier. Use these times to go about on feasibility studies on such investments. The yield currently may seem untoward, but when the right time comes, they would come in very handy.

  • Money owes allegiance to no one: There is no sure way that anyone was born to be wealthy. Decisions, actions, reactions and inactions determine to the greater extent how monetary outcomes will be. You have more power over your financial stand than any other person. If you decide to know about the mechanisms that feed into financial liberty, you would do what is necessary in that regard and thereby end up where you wish to be. You might have found the key to financial liberty today, but if you don’t remain in the business of handling that key well, money stands the chance of slipping its way out of your life. Money has no heaven-sent command to remain stuck to you no matter what you do. Handling it how it should be is what determines how long it would remain with you. In the same way, the lack of or inadequacy of money at any point in time isn’t an heaven sent program which cannot be altered. If you found that key, and remain persistent in its usage, turning the tables wouldn’t be too much a thing to ask. Feeding on wrong information can lead to wrong outcomes.

  • Money requires conquering: Money runs a system of its own. Monotonous as this may be, it can be conquered. It runs a cycle where you would start from a point of working to make money, to the point where you make money work for you. That cycle starts right from the mind. There are several people who are outrageously hardworking, however, their efforts do not end in the sort of liberty they seek. Maybe such people are finding themselves in the part of the cycle where they are always working for money. The fact about working for money is that, your efforts and value reveal your income. So, where your efforts end, your income is terminated. It is a linear sequence. What goes in has a definite expected arithmetic return. 
 
  • The other end of the cycle where money works for you is when you have conquered the mind-based battle and have started sending money on errands to go place where your physical presence and efforts cannot reach. Here, the rippling effect is unpredictable. Until you conquer the stage of working for money to reach that of making money work for you to make more money, the message of this piece to this point hasn’t been homed. Funny enough, it isn’t as easy as it sounds as you read it. Reality has in more difficult than your ability to conceptualize this now. It can take you years and for some people, maybe never to make that leap.

  • Every denomination of every currency has a purpose: in my recent post, Start. Pause. Don,t Stop- The subtle principle of giving it a try, I indicated the two parts or purposes of money, with stress on it being a seed. The main purpose of every ounce of currency can be categorized under being a seed or a fruit. Fruits have their early ends as meals, eaten, digested, absorbed and the remains gotten rid of. Seeds however are meant to make more – seed and fruit. Every amount that comes to you has a purpose and that shouldn’t be mixed up. What an amount is meant for is what it should be used for. Some part of every money that comes your way is meant for one investment of a kind. The other is meant to keep you going on day to day activities. There should be a good balance between what is used as fruit and what is invested as a seed. Money meant for investment should not be procrastinated to end up filling the belly. Draw out the balance well and keep yourself disciplined. The natural tendency of man is to spend and only remember there was need to invest when there is none to invest. Keeping money as a fruit is sweet and makes the body feel good. Investing is bitter and feels like having the hair in the nostrils pulled. May grace abound to you in this regard. Discipline is key. A good balance is requisite here – with a bit of tilt towards keeping money more as a seed even the better.

  • Investing takes time and patience: We have entered or face an era in life where things move very fast. Hence, we have been made to believe all things follow such manner – the fast life. Fast foods, smart gadgets, fast means of travels. Gradually, patience is becoming an extinct virtue. The fanciful life on social media adds worsens this and clouds the imaginations. A look about the status on the next social medium and all you would come about is a life of flamboyance. You are likely to see more of the bright coloured life of people than the dark side. This eventually unknowingly conditions you to believe they came in as easily as you are able to view them. To the current generation, everything must move with great pace. Truth has it that all such schemes cannot outwit natures principles. It takes time for certain things to evolve. Life does not multiply in heaps and bumps. There are no exponential jumps without prior arithmetic progressions. There are times you would have to wait to build better capacity for the more troubling situations ahead. Whatever you choose to do with the seed of money you may come about would require time. Just as the process every seed goes through, without skipping the next stage, so should yours.

  • Money follows creativity and problem solving: Look around you. Is there any wealthy person who isn’t solving a societal problem of some kind? Think of Facebook, think of online marketing, think of the transport and aviation industries, throw your imaginations to the world of entertainment, to science, to agriculture, to politics. People are doing things which are solving and changing the norms of human existence and that is what puts food on their table. A story is told of two college graduates. One decides to go on job hunt, perusing work directories as much as he can on daily basis and spends the little, he has on throwing need for employment letters at all offices available. 
 
  • The other decides to start the sale of water, looking executively dressed after he realized no one dresses in such manner to sell water. At the end of every passing day, he ends up getting enough to save. Which of these two puts themselves in a better position? The guess is yours to make. However, there is the phenomenon of intellectual masturbation (do you care to know what that means?) Click here. If that made sense, next time you see a phrase or word in any post of mine in different colour, it means something is hidden in there, follow it up. Whatever you are being creative at or whatever problem you are solving, find out if there is money in it. If there isn’t, you just tickled yourself. That bit of creativity or problem solving should have money in it if you aim is at financial liberty.

  • Money presents opportunities. No matter who or what you do, a good and huge enough capital good for paving way for your financial liberty would come your way in a lifetime. Either by you purposely creating it or circumstances leading you to that end. This is a golden opportunity which might not present again in your particular case. To others, it offers the opportunity over and over again. Just like any opportunity, it is how you grab it, value it and what you make of it that defines the sort of opportunity it is. Be on the guard. Don’t let that golden moment pass you by. The globe might be too vast for it to revolve back to you. Someone may catch it and you would end up on the patronage end of that opportunity.

Let’s end this here. The discussion isn’t done yet. The second part of this post would be out soon. But for now, brood as long as possible on this. If time permits, we meet again on that next awesome continuation.

Oooooppppps!!!! Have you had a concrete plan for the teaser up there? Well, it’s never too late.

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26 thoughts on “THE BIGGER PICTURE – How Money Lives”

  1. Getting money isn’t easy. Keeping money requires discipline but making money grow is the real challenge.

  2. Samuel Esamoah

    Great work on a very complex issue. At the end, both the art and act is captured. Waiting for the next episode.

  3. Very relevant information you’re putting out here Obed. Lots of people need to read this as young as possible. It’ll save us in future. Thanks for your insightful write ups dear.

  4. Gideon Montgomery

    Well thought out piece. You’ve literally summarized the wealth of experiences found in books many may not be able to read. Good lessons in there.

  5. Wow, very educative and informative. An eye opener as well as a light for vision in the darkness of hardship and poverty. Thanks for sharing.

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