Plan for different scenarios

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

Yours truly was watching a programme on Channels TV on the last Saturday of September, when a notable Nigerian disclosed to the anchors that Shell Petroleum Development Company, SPDC, or Shell, as we all know it, started planning for the future in 1959. That means the company didn’t just settle in ‘Eldorado.’ They projected into the future.

He went on and said the oil giant did this by assembling some of the brainiest minds in the organisation to do the exercise.That disclosure made an impression and so, here we are. From a personal finance standpoint, it actually made a ton of sense.

Before telling you who that fellow Nigerian is, have you ever, and do you sometimes engage in scenario or strategic planning? As a minimum, do you imagine or plan for a situation when your employer couldn’t pay you at the end of the month.

Here’s the thing, assuming in your current situation, you’re banking just ten thousand Naira in a savings account and another ten separately in an investment account each and every month, what will things look like for you in 2030?

By the way, Daystar Christian Centre founder, Dr Sam Adeyemi, was the one Alero and Ayo had on the sofa during that segment of the Sunrise programme on Channels TV on the last Saturday of September. So, thank you pastor Adeyemi for providing the idea for this piece.

Back to the drift. You may be thinking that I’m neither Shell nor a corporate organisation and so don’t need to do strategic planning. In the eternal words of tennis legend, John McEnroe, you cannot be serious. You and I need to.

Let’s even flip the coin back to six years ago in 2018. Did you know that the current state of your personal finance is as a result of the scenario planning you didn’t do then. It hurts when yours truly looks back at that. I’m thinking, I wished I was snapping up bargain shares from the market or Aradel Oil every quarter from then, or had half a piece of land to develop.

As it turns out, none of us can change the past. However, we do have a say in what the shape of our personal finance could look like in 2030.

Peter Fregene deserved a well befitting life

Very saddened by the helplessness of the late Peter Fregene that was shown on Arise News a day before his recent passing.

Here was a man who kept the goal for Nigeria and brought us honour being abandoned on a hospital bed in the twilight of his life. Our sports administrators ought to have done the needful by providing him with the funding he needed to look after his health prior to then. They should be doing scenario planning and thinking of athletes and sports people who may need support in the last quarter of their lives.

Yours truly got to know the ‘Flying Cat’ in the mid-seventies while in primary school. He was with NEPA then and the team used to train at a field around Oke-ira, somewhere near the Nigerian Railway Corporation in Ebute-metta. On the way to the trade centre, we’ll stop and watch their practice. Imagine a primary school kid seeing an agile goalkeeper and the rest of the team. We saw them at close range almost once a week when going to the centre.

Sleep well, Mr Fregene.

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