Financial Freedom

Hello everyone. Hope we are all doing great today? Like I said in my last post, we shall be talking today about becoming financially free, or better still, gaining financial freedom. During my Master’s degree, I learnt a lot about financial freedom and I was really shocked that all of these things have been in great books like “Rich Dad, Poor Dad” by Robert T. Kiyosaki. From this book, I realised that youths of today do not spend time to read books that can tickle their minds towards innovative ideas that can bring some cash into their pockets. About financial freedom, it simply means that a life where you do not worry about money. In other words, you do not sit and worry about where you will have money to do this or that. I want to put it to you that youths of today find themselves at one point having money given to them by parents and guardians especially when they are going to school, but within a short period of time, the money is finished and they cannot give a useful account of the way the money was spent. This is common with most youths especially Cameroonian youths. I will always use the example of Cameroonian youths because I am a Cameroonian and I have spent all of my life so far in the country. I have been asking myself some questions relating to what I have been writing in this blogg. Some of them I can say for now I have their theoretical answers and others, I already have their practical answers and solutions which I am successfully living in them. In school, we are being trained to study hard and earn good grades so that we get scholarships to travel abroad and study. It will surprise you that even when some of us have the scholarship to study within the country, we do not consider it to be a scholarship because we have designed our minds to understand that a scholarship is that which we earn to study abroad. In this light, when we have good grades, get a degree and at the end after the degree, we have no job and we are like “What is happening?”. The problem that brings up this question especially in the minds of unemployed Cameroon graduates, is because we are not being taught in school to invest, even a small portion of our daily allowance. I do not blame the youths or even the teachers, but it is just the way we have been brought up to think and live. If youths can make it a habit to assess themselves and save 10% of any pocket allowance they receive either daily or monthly from their parents and or guardians, then, I bet you, no youth will complain of having financial problem. If you save this 10% always without touching the money for a period of at least a year, you will realise that you have a reasonable amount of money to start up or invest in legal business in Cameroon. For youths who are just entering the University, I will want you to think this way: After your 3 years in the University, what will you do? Most people will not be able to answer the question. Ok, why not take this piece of advice from me. From your first pocket allowance, save 10% of it for the entire 3 years you will be in the University and see at the end what you have made from it. It is going to be difficult because you will have go hungry sometimes just to save money, but at the tail end you will see that it is worth the cost. Towards the ending of your 3 years stay in the University, you would have been acquainted with the environment and have a lot of experience in the area so that you can be tickling your mind for startup or business that will worth your savings. Some people will be posed with the question like “What if I have some money and I invest the money into a business, but the money invested is not the sufficient capital I need to fully operate my business, do I still need to save or reinvest my profit in order to meet up with my expected capital?”. My answer to this question is that you should always save no matter the circumstances. Try it and see. I want to thank you all for reading this post of mind. You can always leave a comment and we shall discuss about it or better still, you can contact me on WhatsApp via Phil Collins Chidi