Easy steps on how to make financial progress in 2020

0

Soon your timelines will be filled with the regular yearly recycled contents you must have come to get used to overtime. In a couple of days your friends, colleagues, neighbours will start updating their WhatsApp stories and other social media handles with their new year resolutions, cutting people off ideologies, “be a better me in the new year” texts and all that, some will even tell it to your face.

The second decade of the second millennium is gradually coming to an end. It’s exactly 22 Days to another year and what the year 2020 will be for you, your family, your career, your finances is totally on you! It goes beyond posting promises on social media and making verbal proclamations, hoping your faith will be more than enough to see you through and grant fruition.

While many are rejoicing and making merry as they recount the successes of 2019 and making plans for bigger success come 2020 some people are depressed and/or bankrupt or clueless as to what happened in 2019 and what will happen come 2020. The 2019 journey was a very eventful one, making ends meet and juggling to attend to several financial demands with very little means, I can assure you, for many, it wasn’t a pleasant experience. In the wake of the new year, the first day and month of the year, many including you might have planned on making the most of 2019, especially financially.

Now let’s take this out of the conventional promise and break system you have been doing over the years where you make several promises and resolutions to yourself on how you want to be a better person, make some sort of impact, achieve some mega goal and blah blah blah… and you still didn’t do it. Why? You can’t even explain it. Somehow, it was beyond you and you’re just glad 2019 is coming to an end and so you can start facing 2020… without a plan!

Great minds accomplish great things by applying a rare mix of dedication and discipline, its more than just spoken words or written on a piece of paper. Now, you don’t have to be Aliko Dangote, Jack Bezos or Warren Buffet to enjoy financial stability, security, and progress. It has nothing to do with making your first million naira, it is all about dedication and discipline as explained below.

Write your goals

A wise lady once said “a short biro is better than a long memory’’. The very first step to take is to keep your goals documented. Now that you have decided on what you want to change about yourself, what habits you will dump behind in 2019 and how you want to make financial prosperity, your benchmark for 2020. Start by penning it down, grab a notepad and make a deliberate list. Aim for the skies but don’t play yourself, make sure your goals are SMART.

S – Specific
M – Measurable
A – Achievable
R – Realistic
T – Time-bound

Adopting the SMART goal method helps keep your plan in check, that way you can identify goals that may not align with your capability/capacity.

Go one further by keeping a copy of your goals in a visible spot where you can see them every day. You can download sticky notes on your mobile device and keep a copy of your goals there, that way you can always go check from time to time to keep you in check.

DISCIPLINE

Discipline is a way of practice whereby people obey rules or a code of behaviour to be in accordance with a particular system or governance. Your plan is the code, it means you are in accordance with whatever will make achieving your goal a reality. you choose not to be distracted or neglect your code. You are being disciplined means you are sold out to your goal and determined to make it work regardless of how it swings during the course of the year. Discipline is a huge virtue and it is largely hinged on habits.

Habits can be defined as a routine of behaviour that is repeated regularly and tends to occur subconsciously. In simpler terms, it’s a settled or regular tendency or practises, especially one that is hard to give up. Being disciplined means you will master your habits and not cower to pressure (external or internal) because you have your mindset on a goal.

Certainly, there will be challenges and issues along the year as you set out to achieve your goals, your friends may even laugh at you for trying out these new things that will distinguish you over time but discipline will keep you on track, focusing on what really matters… your goal! You may falter sometimes, but your desire to stay strong and pursue your goal must keep you going till the objective has been achieved. That’s discipline.

DEDICATION

Freedom requires deliberate efforts; you must be ready and willing to motivate yourself to achieve your goals. Saving up for a new house, investing in a new business, stepping up to get a promotion at work, etc. Whatever your ambition for 2020 is, if you are not dedicated to it, it won’t happen. Being dedicated to a cause requires having single-minded loyalty or integrity. Make conscious efforts to be better, be devoted to your goals in totality. Until the desire to achieve consumes you, you will not be able to.

Regarding financial security, Tingg offers an online savings option called ‘’esusu’’ whereby app users and agents can save a fixed amount of money daily. The esusu savings platform was modelled after the local daily ajo system where traders save a daily sum but the collector owns the initial payment as part of the registration but esusu debits app users a pre-fixed amount daily and the first sum is still yours, you also have the option of withdrawing all or part of your money whenever you want to. This is a safe and systematic daily savings platform that helps you save and grow your earnings.

Finally, evaluate yourself from time to time. Do a self-evaluation of every quarter. If you don’t trust yourself to be true to your, get a trusted person to do an appraisal for you, that way you can keep up with your progress and cite where you are lagging as regards your ambition.

Achieving new goals always seem difficult until you make that first move, don’t be in a hurry to accomplish all your goals in the first/second quarter. As they say, Rome was not built in a day!

Culled from: Cellulant