Keep money afloat lest you tilt the flow

Money is not only a problem for those who are employed. It is even a bigger problem to those who make it. Like business people.


Employed folks struggle to make enough money to achieve a fraction of their dreams and have to live with the fact that they have to wait for thirty days to receive the exact amount of money they received thirty days before. And with that kind of amount of money these souls do not meet all their financial obligations. Those who manage to meet their budget and save are blessed; sometimes have to forgo some of their worldly cravings in order to satisfy their financial aspirations.


Employed people have a cosy cushion, a guarantee that every thirty days they have someone to give them money to live another month.


Business people have to make sure that they make enough money for themselves and their businesses to survive. Business people have to sell, buy, sell, save and buy and sell, and save again. Without money they cannot buy raw materials. Without raw materials they cannot supply to their customers. Without customers, and raw material, they cannot be in business.


There are people who are in business to survive. And there are people who are in business because they are solving a problem for their customers.


People who are in business to survive are sometimes a desperate lot. And most of the times these people are in an informal business. When no one uses their business they become frustrated and shrug their shoulders, asking the question ‘why is everyone not using my business?’ And when, miraculously, the business is not doing well and they have no money to spend on themselves they find that as an opportune excuse to raid the till and fiddle with the cash-flow. And once the business owner starts disturbing their cash-flow then we know that the whole flow of the business will be negatively affected.


So be wise and start a business for the right and correct reasons. Look for a problem to solve for the people, for the customers. Look at the times when you wanted something so badly and it was not readily available at the time. It was not available because the concern was closed, or the stock is not always available. And that something is something that is a matter of life and death, and sometimes, it is even more than just that. So your quest is to make sure that situation does not happen again-to you and possibly to a myriad of others.


You start to make inquiries and the reason you want to help yourself and others it is not to compete with the other business. No, you want to provide a service to people who need it when the other concern is not available. Or you know where to get the stock much cheaper, or your clients need the service or product differently.

That way you will run a better business which will make money for you and your business.  And so you will not stress much and so you will not raid the till.


But I am far away from the mark. I wanted to chat about financial management, and more especially paying your self as the business owner. It is simple. Draw a salary, a wage, like everybody else in the business. Pay your wife and pay your children as well as the cousin and the uncle. And bank the business money according to the specifications of your business plan. And to make this measure work even better employ a stern, shrewd bookkeeper. Not so much shrewd to con you, but stern enough to keep you in the black. Make as if you are employed by someone else.     


That way when you look at your business bank balance you will smile even if personally your salary or wages is depleted. And you should harvest a habit of personal banking, because remember you are working for somebody else. You should pay personal taxes and buy endowments, retirement and funeral policies.

When you are in business you have actually not solved your money problems. You have actually created a problem for your self-how to deal with money.

If you apply commendable financial skills, happiness can be bought

While in life there are so many aspirations that people can toil for, it would seem for most, happiness is the most aspiration people would die for. Well, we can not fault them, as there is nothing wrong with being happy, folks. Happiness is one, or maybe the only one emotion, that, most of the time, brings the best out of us.


But how does happiness last? Or put the other way round, can happiness sustain itself, by itself, always, forever? You need other variables to contain happiness.


This article is about success with money. And, financial success might be the only aspiration that can sustain itself. If it fails to sustain itself, then it breaks your life. Come to think of it folks, financial success can sustain other life’s variables and emotions, including happiness. Financial stability makes peace possible and it keeps the flicker of life’s hopes alive.

So good money skills are essential and should be top priority for all of us. And so should financial success.


There are people who are just happy to be employed. During the interview they do not ask about employment benefits like promotions. Many would-be employees do not ask, ‘Is money is attached to these promotions’.


Promotions are a very good perk; they increase your salary package. There more your salary package grows the more your pension contributions grow.

That is the point I want to make. Many people are miserable when the pension pay out is small, not realising that their own contributions were small to start with.


But do retirees enjoy financial life after hanging up their workers’ tools? This is even the most important question where the employee has no personal savings to their name, where there no endowment policies and so forth. Most people boast of a long list of funeral policies, which, I think, have no value to life. Oh, I see. To these people, funeral policies do have value in death. To some of us death means more than life does.


Often, to most retirees, pensions pay out is miserably paltry and disappointing, making retirement life a rough in the tumble and an abject drag.


Let us look at one reason why for some people the pension pay out is so dismally low and insignificant, even after a working period spanning more than forty, fifty  years of a dedicated and selfless devotion to the employer. Lack of financial promotion at work is one of the detrimental elements that lead to worthless life later on in your life, because the money is not enough to sustain life.


It is a great feeling when we get employed after a long slog to look for, for some of us. Most people are quite happy to be employed, to get the foot in the door. That announcement, that the job is yours, calls for a big celebration, a big festival. And, with the arrival of the first instalment of wages, another celebration follows. And as long as they are happy and the employer is happy, workers are happy to trudge along and stand by their work stations, (my machine, they would say), for the whole of their employment period, neglecting efforts to be promoted from their machine to an occupation that pays more.


The only time they get an increase is during the annual general increase. It does not worry them that while the general percentage increase is equal for all; it is not translated to the same amount for everyone. If your salary is low then the increase will be low. If it is big then the increase will be big. 

Furthermore, it does not matter to them that inflation fluctuates higher every time they blink in boredom. It does not worry them that the cost of life eats into their money every time they open their mouths to eat. For them true happiness is being given awards and honours as the best employees in the company for manning that machine, for instance. It does not matter that their machine has been upgraded several times up to the new digital one they now operate, where just  push in a button rather than operate levers.


Sometimes a call might be made in your senses to leave an employer and go work where the salary is much better. But for people in a job that is not always a possibility. But if you do it then you just transfer your pension pay out to the new fund if that is the case. Do not take it and deplete it.

·       

      Make sure your employment work for you.. Ensure that you work to succeed in your new job. Make certain that there are promotion possibilities and that each promotion carries a financial increase. 

      Each financial increase affects your pension fund.

     ·         Change companies if there are no promotions with a salary increase partnering them.

·                  Have a separate retirement annuity policy to augment your employee pension fund.

·                  Have an endowment policy.

So you see, if your money situation is taken care of, happiness can be bought. At your work place.          

When it comes to money- Fasten you strings. Keep your assets intact.

Money is a strange commodity. It is unlike other commodities.

It is as if there are people with a magnet made just to attract money, while there are people who get rid of money as if they throwing water down the drain.


You will have to choose whether you like your money or you are keen to give away. When you are a business person the quest is to use as little money as you can afford, and make a lot of it to bank away in your name. I am sure ordinary people feel the same way too. So what is the magic formula we will use to make the above scenario play itself in our lives?


I think as business person you must put financial systems in place. These systems, your micro elements, must ensure that you spend as little money as you can and then make lots of profits. You must make sure the inputs and the outputs work in tandem to make your money work for you. Like, for instance, your employment practice- employing a certain number of skilful people who will manage with less but do the optimum. Machinery, do you buy, rent, lease or outsource? Do you use e-filing or are you going to buy paper to store information and use e-mailing and so forth? Where is the work- administration and production going to be done-in an office or will staff or some of them work from home? Will staff wear uniform and safety apparel? Look at your insurance options and the kind of banking that will suit you.


In all the above you will have to make informed choices that will save you money even before you start production.


In your personal life the same above considerations go. You would not just marry anyone because you love them. Love is not life, it is an emotion. It has no material value in life. You will want to marry someone who will bring food on the table for you and the kids when you are incapacitated to do so. Love will not do so. So look at the things that will enhance your life style rather that bring you misery.


Make money before doing every other thing in life. Lock it away and be careful how you give a nickel away. Surround yourself with people who are capable to make more money for you, rather than having people who are going to deplete your coffers.


Buy wisely.  A transport means is just that, a vehicle to get you from point this to point that. How it looks and how it behaves is not the issue. The looks, most of the time, take away too much money for the one ogling, but those who look at functionality have much money to play around with and arrives at the same destination as everybody else. A functional ward robe is sensible to a flashy one. Those of you who have seen South African Afrikaner farmers will know their take when it comes to dressing for the occasion. I am not saying become a white South Afr5ican farmer. But make money in the manner in which they do.  


Luxuries like liquor drain your money away. Work at your discipline and learn to drink to enjoy and not to get drunk. When you are drunk you are useless and you don’t want to be useless. Know why you must drink that time. But please do take you staff once in a while to go and let their hair down, by all means.


If you are a man, don’t make babies every where. Discipline your desires and fasten your belt. Babies, and children and kids, are bloody expensive. They take more and give noting back. If you are a business woman, close ranks, dilute your desires too and tell your counter parts to fasten their belts tighter instead of wanting to tamper with your core assets.