How did you do in the first half?

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

Time, like water, which the late Afrobeats legend, Fela Anikulapo Kuti, said, “no get enemy” – doesn’t have an enemy – has no enemy as well. As you can’t but make use of water, so is time. You also need time to achieve whatever it is you want to.

As evidence that “e no get enemy”- it has no enemy- it waits for no man. That’s also why you set financial goals at the beginning of each and every single year. The reason being that you want to be able to measure your performance.

As you might know, yours truly doesn’t fancy being the bearer of bad news. But here’s the thing. We’re well into the second half of the year.

Like in football, where the manager and his coaching crew get the opportunity to sit down with the players and check out how they performed in the first half, now is the time for you and I to look back and evaluate how we fared with our personal finances. You may have listed ten or twelve financial goals as recommended in a January piece, now is the time to check if you’re on track or just rooted to the same spot. Perhaps, you may even have ticked off some of those goals. It’s time you check out how you fared.

Why is it important to check how your half year result was? Firstly, it’s to give you the opportunity to know if you’re becoming more intelligent with your money or not. It’s never a bad idea to know whether the needle has moved or not.

Secondly, you may have performed well in the area of savings or perhaps, you didn’t get to put ten thousand Naira away from January to June. By checking out your half-year performance, you’ll probably know what to do to hit the savings target in the second half of this year of our Lord.

Let’s even say you’ve taken out salary advance or beefing up your living costs with overdraft for part or all of the first six months, you should now be in a position to figure out what and what to do and not do.

Grab a piece of Fidelity Bank

When my son and I accompanied Mrs O to a branch of Fidelity Bank on Allen Avenue on the last Thursday of June, it was primarily for her to sort out a few things. Thankfully, it didn’t take forever.

But prior to her being ushered to the front of one of their customer service staff members, I’d asked her to pick the form of their ongoing shares offer. The reason was that yours truly himself wanted a tiny slice of the bank. That’s why I mentioned taking “tiny steps “ in a previous piece.

Folks, if you, too, fancy a bite of the big cake, enter any branch of Fidelity Bank and ask for the form.

Buying the shares of the bank may not have been part of your financial goals for the year, but guess what? It won’t hurt you. Rather, you’ll have something to shout about when it’s time to check things out at the end of the year.

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