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.         

FINANCE. Money's no kid's stuff

Kabeli Lichaba 

The rich world, the Smart World, is always keen stop poverty, squalor, hunger and the seemingly reckless behaviours in handling scarce resources and commodities like money. There are efforts taken everyday, by the Smart World, to tackle irresponsible misuse of money by her people, officials, her state organs and allieds. On the other hand, there are populations that are forever poor and which show no remorse for their dilapidated situation. They simply refuse to employ profitable strategies to change their poverty-stricken status. They make no efforts to halt the absence of money, prosperity and happiness in their communities. They kill the world.

Somebody, some institution, must step up and save the dead-walking mankind from hara-kiri by providing financial education to the youth of today and parents of tomorrow and stop the rot.It is not clear whose responsibility it is to make sure that coins roll down generously down future generations without trickling down to nought: is it parents who must make sure they safe enough and educate their children about their finances; is it the responsibility of the government to introduce proper measures on handling finance profitably; or must it be left to financial institutions like banks to educate populations about the prosperous use of money? It is an intricate matter, this money business. 

Governments want continuously prosperous communities for wealthy, profitable investments. Banks want their clients to make use of the institution's money and parents and children want happiness and prosperity. That it is an intricate matter is borne by the fact that since money was introduced into bartering it has always been an elusive commodity to some members of communities. Some make a lot of success out of it while for some it is a source of misery. For the so-called Third World, money and its administration is a complex, debilitating matter. It is a wonder why they do not just ignore it and do business without it, while for West it is a show of power and happiness. 

In Africa there is always an endless, barren land waiting for developments either in agriculture or infrastucture,but her leaders are always involved in endless discussions on how to develop her without much success. This happens until new leaders are either elected in democratic countries or, elsewhere, new leaders simply take over a country by force. Therefore there is always not enough time and resources to tackle issues of teaching populations on how to use money meaningfully and putting some away for future generations. Simply put, there is always no money to use for financial education. 

But, not so in South Africa. There is enough sufficient facilities in Mzansi to educate learners, students and others on the useful employment of money. Financial institutions can do clients a world of good if they were to ignore, presently, the lure of profits and bank on teaching future employees the joy in banking wisely. Then, everybody, including those who put their money under mattresses, would make use of the banks.

FINANCE. Adhere to the agreed spending spree

Kabeli Lichaba

It is always important to emerging business people to stick to agreed targets and principles-just in the same way you stick to your guns when conducting business in your favour. It is also equally important to stay true to the business plan-it is the guiding light to your business. When analysts predict that many start-ups fail within the first three years they are not simply prophets of doom, they speak from research done over many years.  

I am sure that one of the reasons that some of these businesses fail it is because of an acute mismanagement of money accrued and money owed to second parties. It is an undeniable fact  that many young people want to shine and flaunt their newly acquired status as ‘successful’ entrepreneurs, so the first thing they will do after much hard work and earning their first profits would be to make a statement to the world that ‘We have arrived’.  This statement is always invariably accompanied by a reckless spending of company money.

It is always a temptation to spend almost all the first profits in their entirety, the owner declaring, “I am thanking myself for the hard work since the conception of this venture”. Absolutely, there is no query that they may take some form of respite from their hard work and reflect while they celebrate. But, the old grey hairs shake their heads in disbelief when they read this. For them the first money into the business means trouble-and the beginning of hard work. Money, wherever it is, is a big temptation to immediately stray from agreed use, and the beginning of reckless spending just because “I deserve it, it is mine”.

So take heed when they warn that businesses fail in the first hurdle, they are right. In order to stay afloat through the first turbulent years, stay true to the business plan- and review it every six months so as to match it to the demands of the hectic business world. It requires tons of discipline to do so, but it can be done. People like Richard Branson operated from dingy basements for long periods just to hold on to that precious pound until the next pound appeared on the horizon. There are other successful business people who did like-wise. Read their biographies and learn.

The business plan should not only be used to control the company finances, it should be used in every day operations. You will be surprised how easily you will be acquainted with consulting it as soon as the situation calls for it, instead of only using it when you visit the loans bank manger. This will rub off into your personal spending behaviour as well. You will feel good every time you look at the bank balances.

So do not rush off to parade your gains in the first five years of your business. If you don’t, observers will respect you and admire your maturity so early in your flight to top business horizons.