Securing your money

Before now I used to belong to the school of thought that those who had so much money were more likely to be careless with it; while those who had little or nothing would fight tooth and nail to keep their wealth secure. Alas this is not the case! It is people in the middle and lower classes who aspire to amass wealth that could be extremely careless with their small earnings while the rich make extra efforts to keep and secure theirs.

Is your hard earned money secure? You might well be saying to yourself that your money is secure even though you are not rich. I am afraid but if you are guilty of engaging in any of the following activities below you are highly likely to lose money that currently exists in an unsecured manner in your environment:

You give your Debit and Credit card access details to your domestic help at home, and the Office Assistant and Driver at work. You cannot be bothered to go to the ATM by yourself preferring to always send someoneinstead. I guess you cannot be bothered when one of them gains access to your account and steals you blind. Perhaps you are banking on always getting the ever steady alert whenever any transactions are done on your account but alerts could be delayed and by then it is too late. Cards can easily fall into the wrong hands and before you know it all your hard earned wealth is gone! Please proceed to change your PIN numbers immediately and make sure you go to the machines yourself henceforth. Start making payments electronically and cut down using cash where possible so you don’t have to send anyone to the ATM.

Directly related to the use of cards are the codes or PIN numbers that can be used to access or unlock your accounts. You currently use easily recognizable numbers such as your date of birth, address, age or a combination of these numbers as your PIN code. Sadly most people use either these options or simple codes that they can easily remember. Desist from making this mistake forthwith. These are normally the first set of numbers anyone trying to access your account illegally will use so don’t make it easy for them.

Your money cannot possibly be secure when the instrument needed to access your funds is accessible to the unauthorized. How do you keep your cheque books? Are they locked up somewhere or does any unauthorized person have access to them? Your cheques and other financial instruments are supposed to be under lock and key always. Don’t you know that your signature can easily be forged and your hard earned funds withdrawn?  Don’t make your money easy prey for people. Get a safe and lock all your cheque books and other valuables away.It also makes sense to lock your living quarters as well. You can also put limits to restrict the amount of money that can be withdrawn from your account on a daily basis.

Beyond securing your financial instruments you need to stop keeping reasonable amounts of money at home! Your house is not a bank! These days cases abound of domestic servants being hypnotized by unscrupulous people to go into the rooms of their bosses and extract all their valuables, including cash. Your money is extremely unsecured when it is kept at home. You need to do all you can henceforth to avoid opportunities that allow you to transact business in cash. You can tell your customers to transfer money to your account or work out an arrangement with the nearest bank to your place of business to grant you access to make deposits even after closing hours. You could even get a POS machine on your premises that all your customers can use to make payments for services you render.

Many cannot imagine living life without their smartphones as these phones are multi-functional and make life easier. Most of use our smartphones for banking transactions these days -what would happen if your smartphone is stolen? A good hacker could attempt to hazard a guess of your password and attempt to transfer your money away. Taking precautions like password protecting your phone, promptly deleting alerts on past transfers and endeavoring to keep your phones securely when you are on the move will help you to better secure your money. Most smartphones have additional security features whereby you can block the phone or wipe out your transaction history remotely so ensure you register for them.

How do you treat your loved ones demands for loans?  Do you take very little into consideration before loaning out your hard earned funds to relatives and friends with fantastic, too-good-to-be-true tales of wealth and opportunity?  Many times these loved ones may be economical with the truth, or plain naïve and end up squandering your money! You would be better off giving people amounts you can afford to do without, rather than giving them loans. Many times they do not even want to pay you back, expecting you to forget it because they are your loved ones. Your financial future is not secured if a huge chunk of your earnings are in other people’s pockets where the risk is high that they may not return.

Finally what factors do you consider before you invest in available opportunities? Any investment you make without a thorough understanding of its pros and cons, risks and rewards is akin to putting your money in an insecure mode. Don’t invest in anything you do not understand and ensure you are completely abreast of the rules that guide anything you intend to invest in plus the investment environment.

Having worked so hard to put a little aside that you intend to multiply avoid these mistakes above that will cause you to end up losing money. Have you lost money in the last one year? I am willing to bet that it could be as a result of one or more of the points indicated above. Keep working towards securing your money always.

Kenneth Doghudje