Take the aerodynamics approach

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

While on the way back from Kigali in the early hours of penultimate Saturday, the pilot came on air at around 5.30 am, and after pleasantries, announced: “We’ll start our descent to Heathrow in about ten minutes.” Truly, not long after, he came back to inform us, ladies and gentlemen: “We’re starting our descent to London Heathrow now.”

Having been in the air for about seven hours since taking off from the Rwandan capital at around midnight (local time there), one was more than happy that we were nearing landing. But beyond that, the idea of gradually descending from our flying height of over 20,000 feet above sea level actually struck a note for me. Of course, he could have made an aggressive dive down from the sky, that would probably have resulted in disaster.

Tell you what? It was actually the same aerodynamics principle of not attempting too much in so little a time that was at play a week earlier when we were flying out of the same Terminal 4. As a matter of fact, the pilot on that flight did also speak directly to passengers, before gradually ascending into the air, he made two significant preparations.

Aside from announcing the altitude we’ll be flying at, another thing he did was that he started a gradual increment of his speed on the runway. Like the inbound pilot, he also told the cabin crew to get seated for “take off.” In fact from my vantage position of having a window seat, I noticed the change in speed as he was about to leave the tarmac. Others too must have felt it. Here’s the thing, imagine if the pilot had not made the preparation and taken off gradually. Assume he wanted to go from ground level to start flying at five thousand feet above sea level immediately. It would have ended badly too.

That’s what many try to do with their personal finance. They want to hit the million naira mark at the snap of a finger. A lot of people want magical returns on their investments within a short period of perhaps a year. Folks, that may happen for shrewd investors, but for ordinary people, it often ends in tears. That has been the lot of many crypto or fintech wannabes who thought they could double their investments in a few months.

As it turns out, you need to do the groundwork and get your hand dirty with the often annoying and slow stage of preparation. That’s why I often talk of starting with as little as five thousand naira in savings. If you did that throughout this year and were only able to either grab a few shares of AccessCorps when they had their public offer a few months ago, you would have made a tiny amount when their results were recently announced. The same goes for the mundane task of going to work or building that online business. Returns often come in trickles.

To be honest about it, you’re not going to become the manager or a six-figure earning employee overnight. You have to prepare and gradually make your moves. It could be by planning to upscale your skills by enrolling for one or two courses per year, or starting a rent to own accommodation. Don’t expect to transition from employee to employer overnight, either.

So, never forget the aerodynamics principle that pilots live by as mentioned in this piece. Though we all love driving the fanciest cars in town and wearing the trendiest of clothes, it’s just that we can’t achieve that aggressively.

It’s also worth noting that people don’t descend to ground zero suddenly. They often have no financial goals to push them.

A conversation with a Crypto trader: while in Kigali and catching up with the guys, it somehow drifted towards investing.

I can’t remember how we got there, but when we did, yours truly was surprised to hear one of us say he had made money from online trading. What really got me was when he told us it was the profit he made that he used to come for our reunion. I wanted to hear the how, but we didn’t have much time then as there were other talking points that mattered to our other colleagues.

But a couple of days later, the trader and I met up and it was then he explained that those who don’t take the time to learn from the market are often the losers. He went as far as saying that anyone now jumping on the bandwagon with a view of making quick profits in the crypto market may end up losing their money.

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