How To Become Financially Free

By Fola Daniel Adelesi Some people think it is hard to make money but they say it is easy to spend it. My response to that in this present time is that we have a society that does not understand financial culture, though we all have it. For any society to succeed it must understand that it has a financial culture that it has either neglected or is not paying attention to at all. All the nations that prospered have a great culture and it is not just a culture that explains the way the people live. After all you cannot explain the way a group of people live without talking about how they spend money or how they make money. It used to be a great thing to talk to young people about money and allow them understands how money is made. Today in every home the leaders talk about money but the unfortunate thing is that some people will grow up leaning the wrong lessons about money and only very few will learn the right lessons about money. The reason we have a society where people in government mismanage money is because some of them grew up in homes where they learnt the wrong lessons about money. Imagine the mindset of a young man or woman whose father or mother is a spendthrift! What do you expect from that person when you are discussing money or when money gets into their hands? Many homes unknowingly thought their children how to spend and to wait for another money to come if it ever comes from someone else who seems to have the right to be blessed and be rich. There are only a few homes where the parents ‘teach and show’ their children what it means to have money and to multiply money. We have so many things that have gone wrong in our financial system because we already have a defective financial culture. A few examples will include:

1. A lot of people think everybody cannot be an entrepreneur because they are asking who will be the co-workers? Before the industrialization age was everybody not an entrepreneur? You either owned a farm or something else that produced what other people needed and you were simply paid for your service rather than being paid to slave out for someone else. If you didn’t own any tangible substance for exchange you still were not slaving out for someone else because you were going to negotiate with someone who wanted to engage your time for that day and you could go somewhere else the following day.
2. The belief that money must be spent is killing the society because people make money and the first thing they are looking at is what to spend the money on and not what to invest the money in. we are beginning to have a poor investment culture in the mist of hundreds of ‘seemingly worthwhile’ ventures. What this does is that the majority of the society that spends will keep sending money into the hands of a few who do not think about spending a lone. At the end of the day those few will be controlling the society because they are custodians of more than 80 percent of the society’s wealth.
3. More than 80 percent of the society is thinking about where to get (looking for job) rather than thinking about what to create. As much as it is not wrong to think about where to work, it is important to note that you can work for someone and still be your own boss by creating leverages where you find yourself. There are people who see challenges everyday and all they do is lament because of a poor financial mindset. In a system where the financial culture is strong the people will always think about leveraging on challenges to create a financial future for the people.
4. So long as we have people who want to live in houses they cannot afford and drive cars that they cannot afford the financial culture of the society will still be weak. I have seen people who will in houses where their annual rent is enough to build a house for them at their level. There are people who do not own houses but drive cars that can build a house for them. There are people whose wardrobes can start the companies they have been craving to start. I know about bus conductors whose chains can register a company and make them entrepreneurs. All these things get me crazy because I see people who keep trying to impress others that are not paying attention to them!
5. Only a few people can explain how the money they make leaves their hands. This is about the worst thing in our financial culture. People know when money comes but do not know when it finally exits. The reason they know when the money comes but do not know when it finally leaves is because they are always thinking spending rather than thinking multiplying. This is why they will buy something before realizing it will cost them more money now that they have it. They have to spend more than the cost price of the goods bought trying to maintain it.
6. Most of these people who know next to nothing about money and just think about how to spend rather than how to multiply are the people who move into the government of our countries. We have spendthrifts and a host of others who do not have a financial vision in government and you expect that nations will prosper.
7. The financial culture and only be built when we begin with a conscious observation of how we spend and pay attention to little things like how much we spend in a day and why we spent that amount in a day.

To build a strong financial culture some of the questions we need to start asking and answering include:

1. Is there a way I could have spent less to achieve more result?
2. Is it wise to have cut cost and have inferior products that will warrant losing more money at the end of the day?
3. How much were we earning and how much are we earning?
4. What’s the difference in the earning today and what justifies the difference?
5. Do I have an improved skill to earn more or will my experience earn more?
6. How much of my earnings are my multiplying?
7. Do I always buy things I will soon forget about or things I can see for a long time?
8. Why do I always get broke?
9. What else can I put money into that will bring more money WHEN I need it?
10. Do I really have a banking culture or I just take money to the bank?
11. Do I have a rapport with my bankers or I just talk to them when I go over the counter to drop some cash.

With all these questions we can begin to build a strong financial culture and put things right in our society. Don’t just earn money! Multiply money! Fola Daniel Adelesi, (ASM) is a business, motivational and leadership development expert with over 15 years of Public Speaking experience in different places to different people. You can find him at www.foladaniel.com

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This article was first published on 8th October 2010 and updated on January 18th, 2016 at 8:13 pm

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