C’mon! Create something! 

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

Late last month while taking a routine early morning glance at my Halifax bank account, I noticed that the body that looks after authors in His Majesty’s domain had wired the yearly bit of royalty into it.

Guess what? I had to make a little noise and that caused two of my colleagues at my bread and butter job in West London to be curious. One of them, a fellow Nigerian asked if “it had dropped,” while the other Dominican Republic gentleman wanted to know if the thing that caused the excitement was personal. I gave them a hint, but didn’t reveal anything. Now to the back story of how the royalty payment came about.

It actually started when, about twenty years ago, while stationed at a North West London Delivery office of the Royal Mail, yours truly juggled his day job of being a postman with crafting a novel. Got it published and was naturally over the moon to have become an author.

Here’s the thing. While crafting the fictional work, I wasn’t thinking about money. One was only using events happening in London at the time in tasking his creative juices. Little did I know that about two decades later, the novel will be putting something in the bank.

While the annual royalty payment may be tiny and by no means what to live on, “every little helps,” as Tesco’s mantra goes. What’s exciting about creating something is that you work once and get paid more than once. Of course, yours truly can’t live happily ever after, on it. Nevertheless, the joy of creating something that brings in money every year is satisfying.

So, whether you fancy being the next Funke Akindele or a Jim Ovia, just try putting something together and create something. You never know whether it will be putting money in your pocket twenty years from now just as yours truly didn’t know when I crafted the novel about two decades ago. So, get that barbershop off the ground.

Beware of ITT: when the late legendary Fela Anikulapo Kuti sang “International Thief, Thief, ITT”, the blows were landing on the then General Olusegun Obasanjo and Chief Moshood Kashimawo Abiola – now of blessed memory.

He called them out, “… like Obasanjo and Abiola, International Thief, Thief, ITT, ..” As it turns out ITT still exists.

Over a month ago, yours truly had to ring his credit card company to report on ITT. The international streaming provider had my card details, which perhaps was due to a previous subscription. I’ve not had any dealings with them for over a year. But then, they dipped their hands into the account and took something out late last year.

Seeing that yours truly didn’t do anything, they came and took another in February. Though it’s just under a fiver, (£5), since I no longer subscribed to their services, I had to get on the phone to the card provider to ask them to stop the ITT.

So, beware of ITT and even their local affiliates. Don’t pay for any service you no longer use.

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