The month of January is often regarded as being long. This is due to the hardship that people, mostly salary earners go through in the month.
It is common that a lot of civil servants spend their December salary in the course of celebrating Christmas and New Year, thereby leaving them with little or nothing to cope with the demands of January.
But this kind of situation can easily be tackled if those involved have adequate financial wisdom that will enable them spend prudently.
As workers are preparing to receive their first salary in the year 2022, these are the major financial decisions and conducts to adopt in order to enjoy boom this year and subsequently overcome the economic hardship that comes with the Month of January.
1. Join contribution if you are a salary earner. This is the best way for salary earners to save. Contribution involves a group of workers agreeing to contribute a certain amount of money which is handed to a member at the end of each month. This continues till everyone receives.
2. Avoid unnecessary expenses because things may slow down for the next two months.
3. Negotiate for something moderate. Don’t copy others who pay heavily for same quality and quantity. No competition in life.
4 Understand the economy and plan ahead of time because you can’t predict another economic meltdown in a country.
5. Resist the temptation of patronizing sex workers. Also cut down on the number of friends and even relatives whose only mission is to collect from you without offering you any benefits.
6. Excessive consumption of alcoholic drinks especially beer is a major addiction that depletes resources. Drastically cut down on this habit. Avoid associations that lead to drinking.
7. Reduce the number of days you fuel your generating set. You and your family members will not die if you stay in the dark for some days in the month. It is what the majority of Nigerians go through on daily basis. Generating set is a major cause of expenditure for people who can’t stay without electricity.
8. You should be wise and stop incessant collection of loans. There are lots of online financial platforms that offer instant loans and their target is Civil servants. More loans is a gradual move to poverty.Lean to be contented with what you have and stop indiscriminate collection of loans.
9. Be more prudent in using mobile phones. Browsing on social media platforms namely WhatsApp, Facebook, Twitter and Instagram to name but a few, as well as phone calls has become a major addiction liquidating people’s earnings. If you can track your spending on phones, you will realise that a chunk of resources is unfortunately going there.
Even charging the phone battery is not a small expense. With epileptic power supply, someone can spend up to five thousand naira for phone charging alone.
An investigation conducted by a media outfit showed that subscribers to mobile telecommunications services in Nigeria likely spent an estimated 348.75 billion naira in April 2020 alone. This is quite a huge amount of money.
A major way to cut expenses on phone is by minimizing usage. Also, go for options that will enable you buy heavier data at affordable cost. For instance ,MTN offers up to 1.5 GB volume of data at #200 for a period of two weeks. This can be accesses by dialing *121# and following the directions. There are lots of other affordable data options like that for virtually all networks.
10. Take your family members to heath centres for a routine medical check-up and give them drugs to prevent common sickness like malaria. Don’t wait until your family members fall sick. Once in a while, administer malaria drugs to them ,but under the directive of a physician. This saves you a lot of money than when they are admitted in hospital after falling sick.
11. Enrol your children and wards in affordable schools. Don’t bow to pressure to send your children to expensive private schools. Most of these private schools can’t offer what is obtainable in public schools. Most of the rich and influential people today were products of public schools. There are a lot of public schools that deliver qualitative education , far more than some public schools. Use your brain
12. Live a spiritual life and avoid worldliness. If you are genuinely Born Again, you will avoid most of the worldly activities that not only lead to sin, but also waste your resource.
