We make lots of money mistakes that hinders our financial success.
Some we do in ignorance, some because we can’t really help it.
As you move about your business striving to make more money, to live a better life, here are nine money mistakes that have kept you down.
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You Don’t Save
This is perhaps the most fatal money mistake. Because as long as the knowledge of personal finance goes, it all begins with saving.
The beginning of saving is the beginning of wisdom in matters of money. Because when you have saved a significant bunch, you want to invest it, you want to grow it, you want to be a better money manager for yourself.
Because of that need, you will start reading personal finance books, investment books, you will even start taking a pip into financial columns looking out for opportunities for your money.
This process will give you a whole new insight into money management.
But then we find it hard to save. A lot of us hide under the guise that they can hardly live with their meagre income talk more of having a surplus to save and invest.
This is a big mistake. You don’t know how much discipline forcing yourself to save can bring to your life. You don’t know how much you can grow because you started this wonderful habit.
You don’t know until you start to save.
{See: 6 Reasons Why You Should Save}
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You Save, But You Don’t Invest
It doesn’t end with savings. You must actively put that money to work for you, to bear children for you and help lift you up from the ruins of poverty.
But then, most of us hardly know what they are doing when it comes to investing their money.
For some, investment is putting money in Ponzi schemes. They hunt for Ponzi schemes the way one hunts for food. They can’t wait for new ones to come to town, perhaps the one that promises 100% returns in three days.
Learning to invest properly is hard work. Hard gruelling and long work. If you want to learn, you must be patient with.
I guess that is why people don’t really put much efforts in learning how to invest. Rather they prefer the easy and lazy Ponzi schemes that will give you nothing rather than heartbreaks.
People who have taken the arduous effort to learn how to invest their money are rewarded richly. You too can.
Start by being interested in the business section of your favourite newspaper.
{See: The Golden Rule of Investing}
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You Don’t Control Your Expenses
You want to dine in the best restaurants, vacation in the most wonderful places, wear the best shoes, carry the most luxury of handbags, smell like jasmine, drive the best cars and live in the most richly decorated houses.
Well, that’s all good.
It’s unimaginable the luxury at our disposal nowadays and the yearning to have them all. And we are trying desperately to live this luxury even with our meagre income.
The lure for a good life is strong but if you must grow financially, then you must obey that wise old saying:“Live within your means.” Click To Tweet{See: 8 Ways to Spend Your Money to Avoid Overspending}
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You Don’t Budget
Let me summarize what this means:
You don’t know what is coming in and you don’t know what is going out. It’s that simple.
With your money, you have the mindset of whatever happens. Whenever you see the money, you spend, if you don’t see, fine. There is no sort of accountability.
Yes, keeping a budget is a tedious job, but it’s a necessary one. If you must grow it, then you must account for it.
Let me tell you a simple trick which I started with, hopefully from there you can grow into doing proper budgeting.
Let say you earn fifty thousand naira as monthly income and you have savings goal of twenty percent (there must be savings goal). That means every month you first of all put away ten thousand naira into a savings/investment account, leaving you with forty thousand naira to survive with.
Divide that fourty thousand naira for thirty days, which in this case is N1333.3. Let’s just bring this to N1300.
This means you have only N1300 to spend everyday.
There are a lot of flaws in this: what if you fall sick and need to get medication? What if you need to replenish your foodstuff? What if you need to pay for a course or something?
That is why proper budgeting is the best. But if you start with the illustration above, at least you will have a mental picture of what you have to spend on a daily basis, instead of carelessly spending away the money you don’t have.
{See: Creating a Budget
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You Don’t Insure
We do not mitigate risks.
We leave ourselves open to situations that can make us start all over. As in from the very beginning.
Starting from our health to our cars, houses, valuable possession and even to our lives.
Everything is carelessly left at the mercy of fate.
A single health challenge can come up and ruin everything one has been working for all his/her life.
I believe that we need more insurance in Nigeria than anywhere else in the world because the roads are terrible, the health care system is a mess, there are no adequate fire service, everything that lessens the risk to one’s life and properties are in shambles
Protection is key.
{See: Why You Need Insurance}
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You Want to Be Like Your Wealthy Neighbour
Now in the world of social media, your neighbour is not only the man who lives in the best house in your street and who always come home once a year with a charming new car.
And it’s not only those your colleagues in the office either who makes you burn with envy with the sort of clothes they wear.
They also include all those people on social media who you’ve never met, but who you adore above anything else and you long to be like, because you thought they are classy and you will give anything just to be as classy as they are.
And despite your manageable income, you strive to emulate them. This is a mistake. You build your life from what you have. Any other thing, you are harming your finances and ruining your opportunity of building true wealth.
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You Are Father Christmas
You give a lot.
Yes, you give a lot.
I know what you are thinking: “who is this one to come between me and my God?”
Of course, I won’t do any such thing.
I’m only trying to make you find the right balance of giving so you won’t hurt yourself and your finances.
{See: How to Give So You Won’t Lose Your Head}
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You Are Not Disciplined
We all know the right thing to do. When we are overindulging, spending too much, somewhere in our mind we know we are not doing the right thing, that we should be saving more of that money, or investing more of it.
But we can’t seem to find a way to discipline ourselves.
We succumb at the slightest lure, completely unable to hold ourselves back.
To gain financial freedom, it is imperative to be self-disciplined. To do the right thing with your money. To save more and invest better.
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You Have Not Improved Yourself.
You have remained a stagnant water. You don’t read books, you don’t take courses, you’ve not considered getting a degree or masters. Nothing. You have not added any sort of value to yourself.
A lot depends on what you know.
If an employer will consider giving you a raise, the employer will first know the value you bring to the organization.
In the same vein, if you are self-employed and you want to grow your business, you have to first take time to learn new ways of doing things. You won’t grow if keep doing the same old things.
Learning, improving yourself is an eternal thing. You can’t rest because you think you’ve gained a whole new insight into your business. That knowledge will become obsolete in the nearest future. A whole new knowledge will be there for you to learn again.
That is why it is important to put yourself out there always. Read books, listen to podcasts, take courses, go to seminars and workshops, go to conferences, improve your academic qualification.
Just improve yourself and your finances will improve with it.
What other money mistates is hindering your financial success. Tell us in the comment section.
Comment
Nice article