Be intentional about your financial outcomes for 2025

TUNDE OYEDOYIN  

Tunde Oyedoyin is a London-based personal finance coach and founder of Money Intelligence Coaching Academy, a specialist academy of personal finance. He can be reached as follows: +447846089587 (WhatsApp only); E-mail: tu5oyed@gmail.com

The road to hell is littered with good intentions — St. Bernard of Clairvaux

What do you want your financial outcomes to look like at the end of 2025? Without claiming to be a prophet by any stretch of the imagination, I reckon many of us will be wishing that our personal finance will be in much better shape than what it is right now. It’s only natural to fancy that, just as every athlete eyeing the Los Angeles Olympics will be hoping to do better than how they fared in Paris.

As you may well know, yours truly hates to be the bearer of bad news. But here’s the thing. You’ll need to go beyond wishful thinking and start making your expectations take their cues from your plans. Reason being that wishes are not horses.

If you haven’t heard the saying in motivational circles that “the road to hell is littered with good intentions,” then take it from here. Folks, it is well.

By the way, in line with one’s policy of disclosure and giving credit to whom it’s due, thanks to Mr Charles Ojugbana, veteran broadcast sports journalist for providing me with the idea for this piece. Here’s how it panned out.

On Monday, 12th, the morning after the Olympics was rounded off in the French capital, yours truly was glued to the Morning Show on Arise News, when the former Nigerian Television Authority, NTA, presenter and Nigeria’s first individual Olympic gold medalist, Chioma Ajunwa, were brought on air to review the performance of Team Nigeria in Paris.

When, as he opened, Ojugbana reiterated the well known quote that those who fail to plan, are planning to fail, it caught my ear. He went further, stating that our people don’t realise that “sports is very intentional.” That too stayed with me. Juxtaposing his words into our context, you’ll need to be very intentional about the type of outcome you want for your personal finance in the year ahead. Someone might be saying that I’m still struggling to keep my head above water and you’re talking about 2025. Yeah, that’s the way it goes and the reason why you must be very intentional about what you hope for.

You may want to start rearranging the cost of your lifestyle and thus figure out what to take out or bring in. If taking on a farming project tickles you, please this is the time to start putting your intentions down. As Ojugbana noted in that edition of the Morning Show, plan for the outcome you want. That could be doubling your savings from January or tipping it with just five thousand naira each and every month.

The kindness of a taxi driver

After two nights staying at the Ibis Hotel in Wembley in April in order to attend a nearby programme, we were heading home after breakfast in a local cab when the driver offered to save me a tiny amount.

I’d planned to pay the forty quid fare with a card, which according to their policy was to incur a £2 charge. But the gentleman behind the wheel said he could stop at the nearest cash point so I could withdraw the fare. Though not quite keen, he was. The first one he saw required crossing a busy road and yours truly didn’t fancy doing that nor to walk back to the traffic light. So I said not to bother.

He offered to stop at another ATM that won’t require any of such hassles. Thank goodness, it wasn’t long before he found one. His kindness saved me two quid which was decent enough for grabbing a cup of tea elsewhere.

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