Laying foundation for financial freedom

The desire of everyone is to become financially free; to be able to afford all the good things of life. Apart from the air that we breathe, this quest perhaps makes money one of the most important parts of our daily activities.

Money solves majority of your daily problems, which include fuelling your car, buying a healthy lunch, paying your water bill and much more. It is extremely difficult to separate money from human existence and comfort. But how you make, spend, save, invest your money will determine whether you will, someday, become financial free or not.

And that is why it is important for you to expose yourself to the 3 essential tips needed to grow your money. These tips are as constant as Newton’s third law of motion regardless of the fact that you are an employee, self employed, business owner or investor.

Tip Number 1: Financial knowledge: Knowledge in this context simply means to acquire the required information and skills about money through education and experience. Financial knowledge can also be the theoretical and practical understanding of the subject of money.

It is simply to understand how money works in the world; how you can make, manage, save, spend and invest it. The possession of this specialised knowledge and good understanding of money will help you make excellent decisions pertaining to certain financial areas of your life. This financial knowledge should not be short of understanding the difference between asset and liability, cash flow and capital gains, good debts and bad debts and making your own personal financial decisions.

I must be honest to tell you that this required knowledge of money is not part of an MBA class or any university curriculum. I have seen countless of professors who are struggling financially. This knowledge is also not available to those who work in financial houses. Hundreds of thousands of bankers are living in bad debts and struggling financially too.

But this knowledge you must seek from those who are financial successful because these people see money and how it works from a different point of view. Also this knowledge can be available to you in financial literacy books, seminars, conferences and workshops.

I am not from the school of thought that you should read financial books equal to the number of your age or attend at least two seminars in a month; but I will advice that you identify those whose financial knowledge can be trusted and are living proof of what they talk about. Read their books and attend their seminars if ever they are giving any talk.

Tip Number 2: Financial planning: Once you have a good understanding of money and how it works, it is important that you have your own financial plan. The difference between the rich and the average is that the rich don’t follow the crowd. They set the trends by making their own financial decisions because they have the knowledge of how money works.

Once you have acquired the required knowledge of how money works, you will need to draw out your financial plan of how you intend to travel from where you are to where you want to be. Without a plan, it is extremely difficult to be financially comfortable. It is a decision you must make.

Every single day, according to studies, an average human makes about 612 decisions. This equals to 4,284 decisions in a week and 222,768 in a year. Decisions are what structured your life. You are where you are today because of the right decisions you have made and you are locked down in your present state because of the decisions you are yet to make or take.

So decision making are perhaps the most important part of your life and that is why you need to consciously take most of them so you can see the desired result that you want to see in your life. When it comes to growing your money, your decisions are not going to be instantaneous and unconscious; they must be conscious decisions.

You must deliberately choose to take the necessary decisions that will point you in the direction of growing your money and that is why you must have a plan that you need to follow to achieve your financial goals.

Tip Number 3: Financial discipline: Discipline simply means to train someone or oneself to obey some certain rules or code of behaviour. It is a systematic instruction designed to train someone or yourself. It could be a course of actions leading to a greater goal than an immediate satisfaction.

We can conclude that a disciplined person is someone who has set a greater goal for himself, and such is willing to deny himself immediate comfort in other to achieve the set goal. So it is when you have to grow your money. You must discipline yourself to adhere to the financial plan that you created to take you from where you are to where you want to be.

This might required that you deny yourself of some comfort and self gratification. Financial discipline requires that you work with a plan that helps you spend wisely, but save, invest and multiply your money. Once you can disciple yourself to do this, in no time you will grow your money.

Alfred Ade-Ijimakinwa