Make use of the feel good factor

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

During the Sunday of the Notting Hill Carnival a few years ago, the atmosphere around the city was party like and trust Londoners, we all go into overdrive whenever Monday is a Bank holiday. It was against that backdrop that yours truly bumped into a lady while inside the Oxford Circus underground. Will come back to that.

But here’s the thing. As this year continues racing steadily to its finale, it brings along a unique set of opportunities, as well as challenges.

As many know, what to splash out on family and loved ones can be tricky and the temptation of wanting to break the bank cannot be ignored. If you are lucky enough to have a lot of names in the family and friends folder and coupled with your own immediate crew, you’re likely to take a hit in your cash reserves during this period. If you factor in the much publicised cost of living crisis, you wouldn’t mind getting a delivery from Santa and perhaps a credit alert from chief Mike Adenuga Jr.

Here’s the good news. Amidst needing to not break the bank for Christmas is also hidden a unique opportunity that we rarely take note of. As mentioned in the opening, there was a feel-good atmosphere during the Notting Hill Carnival. The lady referenced was very chatty and when asked what she was up to, she said it was to go catch up with friends and enjoy herself for the night. Like the festival period, there’s equally and always a good atmosphere during Christmas.

We can tap into this and leverage it to make just a scratch on one of the items on our financial goals. It might mean tucking or shoving only five thousand Naira in your savings account or opening one if you don’t have any.

Perhaps you want to use this feel-good atmosphere as a motivation to have a much better Christmas in 2025. Even if your personal finance is on ground zero and you’re raising money from your bank to live on, decide to not be in this situation next time around. Whatever you can muster to still achieve any of your outstanding financial goals, don’t hold back.

A Doctor Son From Hell

As the old biblical saying goes, godliness with contentment is great gain, especially if you’re a medical doctor — general practitioner or simply, GP. Your income and lifestyle is the stuff that many wouldn’t mind swapping an arm to get.

The Metro newspaper report of November 7, “Disguised GP in poison plot gets 31 years in jail” (p.9), is a story I’d followed since the trial started a couple of weeks earlier. But let’s hear it from the newspaper. According to it, “a GP who disguised himself as a nurse and poisoned his mother’s partner with a false Covid jab in a murder plot has been jailed for more than 31 years.”

The paper continued, “Dr Thomas Kwan who had a morbid obsession with toxins tried to kill Patrick O’hara, 72, to ensure he inherited his mother, Jenny Leung’s estate.” Surgeons “had to cut away part of O’hara’s arm to save his life.

Prior to carrying out his deadly act in Newcastle in January, the 53-year old doctor had installed spyware on his mother’s laptop to “keep track of her finances.” Kwan, who has a strained relationship with his mother, came up with his plot after “learning she had made a will that allowed Mr O’hara to stay in her home should she die before him.”

Tell you what? Hopefully, the GP will be able to offer correct medical advice to fellow inmates at whichever of His Majesty’s Prison he’s now cooling off at.

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