MONEY SENSE: Wealth is a choice

Here are a few simple choices you can make every day to set you on the path to riches.

Here are a few simple choices you can make every day to set you on the path to riches. PHOTO| FILE 

In Summary

Here are a few simple choices you can make every day to set you on the path to riches.

• We tell ourselves, “I can’t be wealthy because I don’t have enough money, or because I don’t have the right education or qualifications or because I don’t know the right people, or because I came from a poor background or because I have too many responsibilities that take up all my money, or because I am too young or too old, or because I am not the right gender, or because I don’t have the right job, or because the cost of living is too high …

By WACEKE NDUATI OMANGA
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Two months ago, I wrote an article where I asserted that everybody can be rich. I ended it by saying that while everybody can be wealthy, not everyone chooses the path to wealth.
Today, I want to delve deeper into the choices people make that determine whether they will be wealthy or not.
Let’s think about some of our everyday choices: Why do some people choose vanilla over chocolate ice cream? Or why do others choose to like the colour blue instead of purple or vice versa?
Why do you use a particular washing detergent and not another? Why do you choose the particular brand of milk or bread that you buy? If you were to eat a fruit of your choice right now, would you pick a mango or a pineapple?

For many people, none of the questions I have asked above have logical answers. They will not choose a fruit based on its health benefits over another. Most of us do not research the manufacturing processes or ingredients of the detergents we buy.

Maybe you chose chocolate ice cream just because … or maybe you had a craving for that particular flavour. Just the same way that you make these everyday choices without overthinking, we shouldn’t rationalise our choices to create wealth.

We give ourselves so many logical excuses as to why we cannot be wealthy.

We tell ourselves, “I can’t be wealthy because I don’t have enough money, or because I don’t have the right education or qualifications or because I don’t know the right people, or because I came from a poor background or because I have too many responsibilities that take up all my money, or because I am too young or too old, or because I am not the right gender, or because I don’t have the right job, or because the cost of living is too high …

You’ll never run out of logical reasons to explain why you cannot become rich. How about you treat wealth just like you would when making a choice about whether to have a particular flavour of ice cream – leave all reasoning out of it.

Being wealthy is a choice and has nothing to do with all those reasons you are giving yourself to explain why you can’t become rich.

Here are a few simple choices you can make every day to put you on the path to wealth:

1. Choose to pay yourself. I don’t mean go buy something for yourself. You may enjoy the item, but you will have paid someone else for it. Track your spending just for one week and see who you are paying.

You may pay for transport or fuel, buy a newspaper, buy some lunch, do some groceries, tip somebody, meet someone for a drink, do your hair, give someone money, etc.  In all these choices you are making, money is going to somebody else.

We usually do the same thing day in, day out for 52 weeks and then wonder why we did not achieve anything that year. Everybody else, apart from you, got a bit more money in their pocket because of the choices you were making.

You can choose to be part of your own gravy train. Just make some choices to ensure that a portion of the money you earn or have in your hands also goes to you. You can choose to carry lunch instead of buying lunch. The money you would have bought lunch with can go towards savings or investments, i.e. money that will work for you.

You can choose to shop more efficiently. You can choose to use your phone more economically. If you can shave of one hundred bob every day from your spending, you will be Sh36, 500 richer at the end of the year. It’s your choice.

2. Choose to know and act rather than blame. My brother gave a sermon in church last Sunday. He is not a pastor by profession; in fact, this was the first time he was preaching in church.

His decision to put himself forward to do a sermon was motivated by the fact that people at his church were complaining about the quality of the sermons. Rather than add his voice to the complaints, he decided to become part of the solution and came up with a sermon, which was received very well. Are you choosing to be part of the problem or part of the solution?  The fact that expenses will go up is not a surprise, so let’s not complain about the higher cost of living.

What is your solution to that? School fees are not a surprise unless your children appeared from thin air. To pay school fees on time, what do you have to do? To accommodate increases in expenditure what do you have to do?  To go on holiday, what do you have to do?  To get a job what do you have to do? What are you going to do to solve some of the problems in your home, workplace, neighbourhood, and society?

Nobody owes you anything, so blaming other people – family, employer, spouse, and politicians, is not going to resolve anything. Nobody cares about your life and ambitions more than you so what are you going to do about it?

3. Choose to put yourself in a different frame of mind. Our environment greatly influences our thinking. If lack is all you think about, lack is what you will see and lack is what you will get.

So choose to think about something different and expose yourself to the environment that will allow you to think differently. I know someone who used to drive a matatu. He got a job as a driver in a particular company and because of his attitude and how he would go out of his way to understand the business and its clients, he was moved to office administrative functions.

We sponsored him for our personal finance programme and he started rearing pigs shortly thereafter. He struck up conversations with people who worked in one of the other organisations (in the same office building) that happened to be involved in capacity-building for farmers. He is currently on a farming tour in Germany that is fully sponsored.

My guess is that in a couple of years he will be wealthier than many people who might have more advantages over him. Choose to continuously expose yourself to something different.

Take a course, have a different conversation, read something. If your current social circle is not providing the kind of stimuli you need to create wealth, choose to spend some time with other people. Wealth is a choice.

Waceke runs programmes on personal financial management and entrepreneurship. Find her at waceken@centonomy.com | Twitter @cekenduati