Time to set forth at dawn

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

On the eighth of July 2007, yours truly was among the crowd at the Royal Festival Hall at the South Bank, when Africa’s first Nobel Prize winner, professor Wole Soyinka presented his memoir, “You Must Set Forth at Dawn.”

Since then, not only have I embraced and used the title in motivating myself, I’ve equally used it several times in urging people to make an early start of whatever they want to go for. As a matter of fact, one has since realised that it makes a tonne of sense to start early.

So, if you’ve embraced and owned the previous two pieces and have set financial goals that tick the smart boxes, you need to now set forth at dawn.

Eleven and a half months is a long time to go and if you intend to achieve the goals you’ve pencilled down, it’s time to roll up your sleeves and get started. Whether you’ve got ten items or nineteen on your list, you must set forth at dawn. Making an early start gives you the opportunity to start figuring out how to turn your financial goals into reality.

Over a week ago, I was watching an expert – I can’t remember whether it was on Arise News or Channels TV – analysing the 2024 budget that President Bola Tinubu presented to the National Assembly. Among the things that struck me from his analysis was that what the government expects as revenue is not some piles of Naira or dollar notes already sitting somewhere in the strong room of the Central Bank of Nigeria.

He went on to say that having set the revenue projection, the president, by default, gives marching orders to his troops to go get the money in. Not surprisingly, the Debt Management Office, DMO, came out last week to announce the issuance of federal government bonds. In other words, the DMO has taken the cue from the “head of the table” and set forth at dawn. Here’s the thing, investors’ money will form part of the revenue the government will generate to meet the obligations captured in the budget.

If that arm of the federal government has gone to work quite early, then we can’t afford to not set forth at dawn. If you’re hoping to be putting that ten thousand or fifteen thousand Naira away in an investment account every month, take it from here, you’ll need to kickstart your intentions by firstly, earning the money.

The same applies if you’ve listed doubling or tripling the number of shares you have in your portfolio. Set forth at dawn so that you can start putting down the marker by the end of this month.

That actually reminds me of a message that I received from an associate a few days ago. It was a reminder that funds were needed for an ongoing project. That message alone was enough motivation to keep heading to work in order to continue earning and thus, make the funds available.

• business a.m. commits to publishing a diversity of views, opinions and comments. It, therefore, welcomes your reaction to this and any of our articles via email: comment@businessamlive.com