Let's Celebrate Christmas But...

It's Christmas again. Time to be merry. We've spent the whole year preparing for this. Time to celebrate the end of another year and as usual, it's time to empty our wallets again, whether we like it or not. Trips to the village (or the cinemas and other leisure centres), new clothes, decorations, and oh...food, lots of it! Rice, chicken, turkey, beef, fish, yummmmmmy! Bring Christmas already, I can't wait! I've earned it (one way or the other.)

The year end is associated with spending, heavy spending for that matter. No one, I repeat, no one is exempted from the merry-making and the spending. This is what we've all been waiting for right? Hold on! Whoa! Apply some brakes and remember that after the lightening comes the thunder! After the joyous and lavish spending (and most certainly sybaritic to some epicurean folks ala the party freaks) associated with Christmas, comes the reality check of January...bills, more bills and more bills. To some, it's the rent, for some other folks, it's their childrens' school fees. Almighty January lays the law of conservation and frugality and that brings out the manager in all of us. Let's talk about that later, let's review 2010.

2010 has come to a conclusion just like that. Another year gone just like that? Let's take stock of the out-going year, dear reader. What have you done with the year? Did you do yourself any financial favours this year? Did you keep something aside? Anything at all...If you did, congratulations! If you did not, there's no need crying over spilt milk, 2010 just proved to us that time waits for no man! Does that mean you've failed in the area of financial planning? Not exactly, it only proved that you're human and prone to mistakes.

2011 is an opportunity to remedy that mistake. As the year draws to the definitive and inevitable close, the close of another chapter, please be determined to open the next year well. Hit the ground running! What are those factors that prevented you from having the time of your life? The factors that prevented you from living your dreams and giving life to your plans, need to be dealt with. You need determination, consistence, perseverance, focus and of course, prayers. We can't run from that fact, every single one of us believes in God regardless of the religion (am not talking about a 'higher power' like Gaia or the earth or something like that, that's just sad...am sorry I don't understand that kind of faith)

Be ready to embrace change. Many don't have a savings plan and don't care about one because according to them, they're trying to make ends meet. Everyone is doing that, even the folks living on the Banana Islands, the Oniru estates and Parkviews of this world would tell you that. It would be unfortunate if all you, my dear reader, wants to live for is today! Live for your own  life and your own comfort and do not plan for tomorrow. I wonder who you're playing? Married folks would say they can't save because of their childrens' upkeep. Who, I wonder, are you working for? Yourself or your children? Please take this advice...work for yourself! Why? Why not for the children? Well, do you need to guess that you're responsible for the children? That's right! It's your job to provide for your children, it's your job to prepare the path of life for them. You called them from the courts of comfort called heaven the day you got married and agreed to become a parent.

Singles would say they can't save because they're not comfortable yet. I support that logic totally! You can't do anything if you can't fend for yourself can you? Nah...the singles are excused from savings. Try to remember though, you can't be comfortable running after the latest designer labels and the cost that come with them and be comfortable. You can't be comfortable doing the Hennessy Beat Bar Crawl with Olisa every month, it's costly, damn costly! You need focus, you can't be painting the town red and wanting your account to grow or swell, that's having your cake and eating it. Consideration should be the singles' watchword. Think about the head start you can give yourself, when like my first unmarried clients, you're building something you can fall back on, your contingency plan when the load of marriage starts weighing you down. Oh...you've forgotten about getting married? You'd better not! This, after all is Africa, your folks won't take that from you no matter how liberal they are.

What would you do right with money in 2011? 

• Start with a good plan. Get a piece of paper and outline your financial priorities in 2011, do your opportunities cost and stick to the plan. Don't let it be like your usual new year's resolution to go to the gym to lose weight, it's much more serious than that. 
• Select your savings strategy (take a little time to go through my blog archive, savings strategies were discussed in the earlier posts of this blog)
• Get a hold of good financial advice. That's my job and there are several other guys you know out there that are in the financial service sector.

Dream big, start small. Think about building your dream small. Do not start thinking about loans right now, that's not very workable right now, the economy not kind to anyone and banks don't give small loans anymore. Think of starting your project by saving for it and that you can achieve by starting small. Do not have dreams that will swallow your finances. Nothing kills the spirit more than failing to achieve ideas you've always nurtured in your mind. While nothing is wrong with dreaming, do not conceive

Don't forget, time waits for no man. Start working on it right now. Do not do tomorrow what you can do today. Procrastination does not help to achieve anything, instead it is a killer of ideas, a very potent dream killer!

As Christmas is knocking on the door and you prepare to have all the fun you can get, don't forget if you're drinking, don't drive. If you're driving, don't drink. Have a fabulous ending to 2010!

I remain your friend, Olumide Ogungbemi (07056989820, 07033588160) and I'm Insurance marketer with Standard Alliance Life Assurance Limited.

The danger of Procrastination

It happened to my friend lately as he was driving down the streets of Lagos. He ran into the traffic light as it was about to turn red in just fractions of a second. He had the chance to continue moving but as he's contemplating to move or stop, he got caught between traffic. Needless to say we were guests of LASTMA's for some hours because of that slight moment of hesitation, it taught him and me a major lesson. What's incredible is that he got caught again the following weekend repeating the same offence!

Hesitation is the prelude and relative to procrastination. While We're guilty of hesitating when making some of life's decisions, when finally we've decided what to do, we go on to procrastinate. We postpone what we can do today till tomorrow. We wait, pass time turning the decision in our minds, asking if we've chosen right or not. The sad reality is that we could get caught on the wrong side of life and life may decide not be as kind as LASTMA. Life might just hit us when we don't expect. Hit us hard! Where else do we hesitate and procrastinate the most as human beings? Financial matters.

I'm not trying to be a self-proclaimed prophet of doom but from what I've experienced in the insurance industry, a lot of young folks out there are playing with their financial future! We think we have time in our hands while each day does nothing but draw more strength and life from our bodies. Each moment we wait and waste on being indecisive may cost us...and God forbid, it may cost us big. Ask yourself this question, (please be frank) 'What foundation am I laying for my future?' 

Ruminate on that question for a bit of time and you realize that majority of us intend to start saving tomorrow, not today. Mind you, tomorrow, like the saying goes, never ends. It can only lead to a chain of other tomorrows that have their own chains of other tomorrows. In other words, we find ourselves living in a state of uncertainty. Can you imagine something so careless and unsafe as living in uncertainty in this yo-yo like economic state of the globe and the cataclysmic instability the Nigerian state of things can add to such volatile mixture? Finances, investments and financial plans could go up in flames at any time and the question is, what would you do after the whole thing explodes!

My guess like yours is that the world has always taken care of itself (with God's infinite mercy and help as always) but which side of the divide do you want to be standing? The safe and prepared side or the uncertain and perpetually hopeless side? What are you doing about your savings? What plans do you have towards savings? What strategy have you adopted so far? What are you doing about financial protection? What are you doing about insurance?

The earlier you start, the better for you as that would give you a head start in the race. Unless you're a politician of clout and stature, in Nigeria you cannot become an overnight millionaire. Financial stability is not in the lotto nor promos nor gambling, these schemes might get you some money but they won't sustain you, trust me. 8 times out of 10 fast money leave as fast as they come. Simply unstable and unsustainable, they have a way of getting to the head and are more often than not, spent on satisfying the thirst of wants, not of needs.

Many of the prospects out there would love to get insured, many confess they like what being insured means to them but they would want to do it later. "Why not now?" I usually ask them, the funny thing is they have no concrete answer. They claim not to know why. The answer to that is simply...human nature. Since being insured is an intangible and future investment, we tend to ignore it because we cannot grasp the result of our effort in the shortest time possible. Therefore, being insured looks like a tall order to many of us, except those with the will and vision of what tomorrow could look like. The time to may hay while the sun shines is now. The time to put something away for the rainy days is now. The time to start building for tomorrow is now.

"It's too early for me to consider insurance, am not yet 30, single and independent and would not have financial problems anytime soon. In fact, I can't even see where it would come from." said the young man I was prospecting the other day. What he does not realize yet is he's very ripe for it. He is by far the luckiest young man I've met since I started insurance marketing, there's nothing stopping him, he has everything it takes to do the business. But unfortunately his hedonistic tendencies and the uninformed and misdirected mindset coupled with the unwise notion occupying his head and pumping into every pore of skin - that he must enjoy life, to put it mildly, is what is preventing him. He would consider it in his latter days. What gives him the assurance that he would have the same vitality and bounce 10 years down the line? How sure is he that he's prepared to face this battlefield called life?

For all of us young folks thinking we have time and enough money to last our lifetime, try find out how many NBA and NFL stars in the U.S are still living the dream after retirement. Mohammed Ali has more fans under the age of 25 than 'Iron' Mike Tyson (how many under 25's know that guy?) The time of youthful exuberance could push one into reckless spending and inefficient financial planning, ask those who know. While Jodeci

Don't push till tomorrow, the financial decision you can take today. The cost may just turn out to be too much for the mind bear. Nature and society would soon beckon on us, young folks, to come take the place of our fathers while they retire to rest their limbs, do you think that would be the appropriate time to handle your own future. By the time you're laden with family responsibilities, you might not have the time and resources to build anything anymore. That is why at Standard Alliance Life Assurance Limited we're not just into insurance marketing, we offer all kinds of solution to all sorts of financial problems. Don't wait till you're neck-deep in the financial quagmire, take the decision now. It's unbelievably sad what can happen when we hesitate. My name is Olumide Ogungbemi (07056989820 and 07033588160) and I'm with Standard Alliance Life Assurance Limited.