Time is just as precious as money. Time and money management go hand in hand so you will find a person who struggles to do one also has immense problems with the other.
Fact: everyone wastes both some time and some money, what differs between individuals is the degree to which we waste. My very first lessons on not wasting pertained to food waste. If I left food on my plate I got reproached for it and either had to finish it there and then or keep it for later. My father and mother both argued that if I had dished the food myself I had made the decision of how much I wanted to eat and so I had to finish it. “You've made your bed now lie in it,” as it were. I learnt that my eyes were bigger than my stomach so I started putting less food on my plate. This is one thing many kids around the globe do and most parents take the stance. It may seem like such a simple thing but it helps a child appreciate that resources are limited and that you can’t afford to waste them. I’m not saying force your children to finish their food, no, what I am suggesting is that you monitor how your children waste and explain why wastage is bad. Time wasters If your child spends the whole day playing and they’re too tired to do their homework properly later explain why it’s better to do their homework before going out to play. That’s a time management lesson. They learn to prioritise and there is a transferrable lesson on managing money. I didn’t think about it then but when I was in secondary school the same people consistently loitered around. You’ve got to wonder why I felt the pressure to work hard to manage my time wisely and they didn’t. I had a study timetable that ran from the very beginning of term to the end. My dad never failed to emphasize that he had to make sacrifices to afford the school fees so I felt the obligation to at least try. On a weekly basis I managed to stick to my timetable 70% to 80% of the time and that was okay; but why didn’t everyone else feel the need to honour their parents in the same way? I can only assume it was because they had been indulged by their parents and thought they were entitled to fun and enjoyment. I had been taught that there is a time for everything. When my dad thought I was working too hard, he told me, he wanted me to be a balanced child. The road to success is paved with good time management To move up in the workplace requires supreme time management. Getting to work on time, meeting deadlines, taking on more and more volumes of work. Being smart at school does not necessarily mean you will do well in the work place; however, those that managed their time well in school are the same people that do well at work. Some people genuinely find school difficult but they still try very hard at it and manage their time wisely. These people are set up for workplace success. Those that are effortlessly smart and don’t have to try hard at school will tend to have more trouble in the workplace. Teach your kids to manage their time and you’ll also be teaching them to manage money. “I believe every human has a finite number of heartbeats. I don't intend to waste any of mine.” Neil Armstrong
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I dashed into a shop to buy whatever it is my dad had sent me to get. Upon my return he asked, "So where is the receipt?" "Oh, I forgot!" I said, annoyed with myself for I so hate to disappoint my father. "You forgot? Business people don't forget. If you forget to ask for receipts you won't make a very good business person, my girl!" I was only seven years-old. I sat in the back of the car dejected at the prospect of my pending doom as a businesswoman. You might be thinking I was made money-aware at too young an age but I'm glad I was. Bad habits form early and once a bad habit has been etched into your persona it is very hard to give up. When you are very young and impressionable you absorb and accept things much more easily. Receipts are important. That's what I learnt that day. If you start a business you'll need receipts to offset against tax but even if you are not running a business, receipts are your only barometer for how much money you are spending. Learning the Habit of Asking for Receipts I have a challenge for you to carry out over the next week. Get an envelope. Put it into your handbag and every time you buy something, ask for the receipt then make a note of what you bought on it. At the end of the week lay out your receipts and note down everything you bought and how much it cost you on paper or, even better, in a spreadsheet. I can almost guarantee that a) you will be surprised by how much you spent over the course of just one week and b) you will realise that you didn't need to buy some of the things you did. Do I always remember to ask for a receipt? Not always but 95% of the time I do and this practice has served me well. I recently started my own business and when it was time to get my annual tax return sorted out I didn't struggle to find my receipts. They were all saved in one folder and any receipt that had been received via email was already stored in a specific folder on my computer. Receipts received via email are ALWAYS immediately saved to a unique folder as a PDF in the format:YYYYMMDD {Amount} {Item}. This makes them supremely easy to find. So, for instance, the receipt for the artwork of my recently published book, "Chichewa 101", is saved as: 20120619 MWK9000 Chichewa 101 Artwork. This way, when you need to summarise your receipts in a spreadsheet you won't even have to waste time opening the PDF document because it's there in the filename. What does all this mean for your personal wealth goals? The sooner you get used to keeping receipts the better you will get at understanding what you spend your money on and the easier life will be if you one day start your own business. Running a business alongside your regular job is the best way to boost your income but you need to have business habits before you decide to start a business. "Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure nineteen six, result happiness. Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure twenty pounds ought and six, result misery." - Charles Dickens |
For 2 years until early 2014 I wrote a weekly personal finance and business column for Malawi's leading media house, The Times Group. The target is middle-class, working African women.
This is a reproduction of the articles that appeared in the weekend edition of Malawi News. Categories
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May 2014
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