9 Proven Strategies to Survive and Thrive in the Post-COVID-19 Economy — Part 2 (Eradicate Wastage)
While you are acquiring financial intelligence, you would learn that one of the fundamental rules to adhere to if you do not want to end up in financial ruin whether you are a millionaire or not, is to completely eradicate wastage of all kinds…starting from financial wastage. Because every resource, contact, ability, knowledge, experience, and pain in your life has economic value and can be easily transmuted into the desired monetary equivalent. You should learn not to waste anything ever again! Fundamentally, there are two means of ensuring that you always have enough money at your disposal. The first is to increase cash inflow into your life, while the second is to block cash outflow from your life. So, you need to begin to put a value on your experiences, your resources, your network, your platforms, your relationships, your knowledge, your skills, your health and most importantly, your time. The waster will always be in want. Next, I quickly discuss some things you should never waste.
- Never Waste Your Time
The most important resource you have is time. Sadly, it is very exhaustible and irreplaceable. Once used, it is gone forever, never to be replaced no matter how wealthy you are. On a daily basis, both the rich and the poor have the same amount. But in total, nobody really knows how much they have. If there is one thing which financially thriving people do not waste, it is their time. They would rather share or give anything than give their time. Because you do not know how much time you have left, you should never waste any minute of your life. The greatest enemies you can have are the ones that waste your time. Because time is irreplaceable, wasted time is worse than wasted money. “Waste your money, and you are only out of money, but waste your time, and you have forever lost a part of your life”. Simply put, “Time Management is Life Management”. If you can manage your time well, you probably would manage every other thing in your life well too.
2. Never Waste Your Money
This needs no explanation. When you waste money, it is only a matter of time before you won’t have any more money to waste. And there are many ways people waste money without knowing that they are actually wasting money. Below are some of the ways and items on which you waste your money without actually knowing that you are in fact, wasting money.
Bank Charges
To be fair, many people are unaware of this. When you make a transfer, you get charged by your bank. When you get a deposit in your account, you get charged. For both transactions, you get an SMS and you get charged for the SMS too. When you make ATM withdrawals from a third-party ATM, you get charged. Some of these charges, you can avoid. Others, you cannot. The trick is to identify those you can avoid, and plan better to avoid them. Every cent or kobo counts.
Books
Don’t get me wrong, one of the wise investments you can make is to buy a book. But spending on books becomes an act of waste when you buy books you don’t need, that are not about anything related to your expertise, that cannot improve you professionally, and most importantly, that you do not read. The last point is the biggest reason why buying books may be a waste of money. A person who buys books and does not read them is not different from the person that doesn’t buy books at all.
Betting & Lottery
Betting and Lottery leverages on the indefatigability of hope and potential luck if consistent. The waste and consequent loss of money is never truly noticed because people who bet tend to do so in small, nearly overlooked sums. However, when these sums of money are summed up, they tend to really amount to huge sums over the long run.
Cable TV
Let’s face it, nobody really gets the full value paid for cable TV. Most people only get to watch news when they get back home at night, and some sports during the weekend. That’s all. So, if you are looking for one more thing you are wasting money on, it is cable TV.
Mobile & Phone Recharge
This is another item that takes a lot of money without your knowing it. Particularly with the ability to auto-recharge directly from your bank app on your mobile phone. There are many ways to mitigate this. You may want to look at having a weekly and monthly budget for your phone recharge. Also, consider using other less cost-intensive options such as WhatsApp.
Food
Oh yes. We eat too much. Why do you think more and more people are increasingly suffering from obesity? Not only are we a consuming generation figuratively, literally, but this is also perhaps the highest consuming generation. There are too many options, and digital media shoves them all into your face via your mobile phone. Besides, you don’t even have to step out of your office or home to access all this great looking food.
Branded Clothes
You can blame this on social media, and the need to be cool. Social media dictates behaviour now, and the cool thing, particularly among young adults, is to look cool and ‘fab’. And according to social media, wearing branded designer items is the true definition of cool. The pressure likely compels you if you have the means to choose and buy rather expensive designer clothes over equally high quality, low cost, but unbranded clothes.
Soda
You probably have had one in the last 72 hours. Most people averagely drink more soda than water, which from a health perspective is not wise. Nonetheless, soda purchase is another way people waste money without knowing. The accessible pricing and the handy nature of the various store keeping units of soda make it easier for you to just buy them for yourself and other people too, without any consideration of how much it is costing you over time.
3. Your Food
This is very true. At home, and out of the home. I see people buying a plate of food at a restaurant, and eating just about two-third of the meal, and then walk away. At home too, a look at most bins would show that over half of the trash is leftover food. In an economy as these, one of the greatest injustices you can commit both to yourself and to others is to waste food.
4. Your Energy
Your energy is what gets you around. It is what makes the time you have productive or not. You probably would never know the value of the energy you have today, till you are old and have lots of ideas of things to do, experiences to have, and places to go, but you can’t conveniently do any of them due to low energy. There are three things you can do with your energy:
Expend It: Moving around, productive talking, driving, making love, etc.
Invest It: Exercise, Travel, Read, etc.
Waste It: Fighting, Shouting, Arguing, Watching TV.
5. Your Health
The quote above by Maximillian Degenerez summarizes everything that can be said about health. According to Jim Rohn, “Take care of your body, it’s the only place you have to live”. Seeing that you cannot change any of your body parts easily, or without complications, you would agree that it is in your best interest to stay healthy. You cannot truly pursue wealth if you are not in good health.
6. Your Love
Very few things hurt more than wasted love. Unrequited love hurts deeply because when expressing love, you actually also give your time, resources, and may also make sacrifices and compromises you would ideally never make under different circumstances. While the issues of love are emotional and a thing of the heart, it is wise to add rationality and get the head too involved. Many people who realize they wasted their love usually struggle to become the person they were before they discovered they were wasting or had wasted their love. While there are no rules to guide how you love, you may want to consider looking out for warning signals or red flags very early in your love journey. Quick identification of these red flags can be the difference between a fulfilling or a regrettable experience.
7. Your Knowledge
When you break down the word knowledge, what you get is KNOW and EDGE. Knowledge is, therefore, the EDGE you get from applying what you KNOW. Fundamentally, you earn a living from what you do with what you know. The emphasis here is “what you do” with what you know. A doctor is able to practice medicine because he knows about medicine and is certified by a medical board to practice. A lawyer can defend you in court because he understands the law, has studied and is certified and licensed to practice it. The same thing applies to practically every professional endeavour. Imagine if as an unemployed young man, you knew how to play the piano, and there was a band around your location needing a pianist and were willing to pay handsomely for the services. You would be wasting your skill and knowledge if you kept on complaining about being unemployed when there is a job requiring your skillset. In the corporate space, there are many professionals who have the requisite skills to move up the corporate ladder but have not showcased these skills to get them noticed and promoted. They are simply wasting their skills. Often times, it is very easy to be blind to the skills we have, particularly if our day to day job is not related to this skill. More than ever, it is imperative that you apply your knowledge and monetize it. If there is something you must not waste anymore, it definitely is your knowledge.
8. Your Attention
Wasting your attention is the same as wasting your time and your emotions. It is possible to waste your attention on the wrong person, the wrong career, the wrong business, the wrong books. And whatever you pay attention to takes your money, your emotions, your energy, your skills, and everything that defines you. Many people spend a long portion of their productive years paying attention to the wrong things, only to realize much later that they have wasted their time, resources and emotions paying attention to the wrong things.
