Be ready to grab opportunities

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 (WhatsApponly); E-mail: tu5oyed@gmail.com

The morning after Liverpool manhandled Tottenham with a 4-0 victory to book the ticket for the March 16th CARABAO Cup final against Newcastle, yours truly was in the office on that first Friday of this month glued to the BBC breakfast show. Then the sports update came up shortly after half seven.

During the slot, they showed a post-match press conference featuring Tottenham manager, Ange Postecoglou. Looking understandably bearish, he lamented that: “we didn’t take our opportunities,” among other reasons. That really caught my attention. In football, teams get punished and dumped out by their opponents if they don’t grab the opportunities by the collar when they come round.

Paying for missed opportunities is not actually the exclusivity of football, though. It’s the same in many other sports and obviously in life. That surely includes money matters. Coupled with that is the fact that most opportunities don’t always announce their arrival or give advance notices. Thankfully, some opportunities do let you know when they’ll be in town.

For those in the know, opportunities will always make themselves available in life, just as they did for Tottenham on the night. Missing the chances they had to put the ball into their opponents net cost them next month’s trip to Wembley. That’ll be particularly telling when Liverpool file out of the dug out to take on Eddie Howe’s troops at the world’s very famous stadium.

As hurtful as that’ll be, the good news is that more opportunities will come their way in the premier league and there’re still plenty of matches to play for between now and the end of the season in May.

As with sports and other areas of life and in our context, personal finance, the way to grab opportunities when they land on your doorstep is to make yourself ready. One way of doing this is to ensure you not only keep earning, but to be chipping something away every month for the purpose of investing.

As severally mentioned, the five thousand Naira that you tuck into your savings account each and every month may look insignificant, but just keep at it. You’re positioning yourself. If you did that all through last year, massive congratulations. Hopefully, that’s part of your financial goals for this year too.

That sixty thousand grand that you already had to your name at the beginning of this year may be useful when a piece of equipment or tool becomes available for sale. It might even make you the proud owner of a second computer or well functioning used phone.

If, like Tottenham, you’ve already missed some opportunities, don’t pull your hair off. Many more will definitely come up as we journey down the year. Yours truly himself missed one earlier this month. The little quantity of hair I leave on my head is still there. But seriously, don’t cry over spilled milk. Be ready for the opportunities that are still ahead.

Location matters even in small things

If you’ve been around people in property, you would have heard them say, location, location and location. They say it matters.

It turns out that it matters also when shopping for drinks. Having once bought a bottle of coke to appease one’s dry throat while at a particular station, I picked up a bottle of the same drink at another store close to the office.

Yours truly also patronised a familiar newsagent on the way home another time. Having bought the world’s most famous soft drink at three different stores close to the office, I’ve come to realise that location matters not just in big stuff like when looking to rent. You’ll probably save up to 50p when shopping for what to drink as well. It’s not the amount, though, but “the principle”- as an accountant recently noted during an argument.

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