What did you take away from the American election?

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

Empty pockets never held anyone back, only empty hearts and heads do — Dr Norman Vincent Peale 

It would be an understatement to say that the keenly fought battle between Vice President Kamala Harris and President-elect Donald Trump captured the minds of the global village. Make no mistake about it, we got sucked in for good reasons, including tens of thousands of those of us without even the right to cast votes.

Not surprising, though. The United States isn’t the most powerful country on planet earth just on paper. What the Head of the Table there does has a trickle down effect on many economies and livelihood.

By the way, thumbs up for Harris and her team for their efforts. There were loads of takeaways from the election for her and hopefully, she’ll have the opportunity of a second chance when the race for 2029 comes around. But hang on a minute, let’s not even get ahead of ourselves as the jury’s still even to be selected for that. But best wishes with her ambition and that is if she wants a second shot at being the Commander -in-Chief.

Anyway, let’s get personal and cut through the chase. If I may ask, what did you take away from the battle to become the 47th President of the United States?

You may be thinking what has the US Presidential election got to do with personal finance? But wait for it. A lot, actually. There’s something there and that’s the ‘why?’ of this piece. For those with political ambition, especially anyone eyeing either the Aso Rock Villa in 2027 or the Government House in Agodi, and those lining up to succeed Governor Babajide Sanwo-Olu, there’re plenty of takeaways for them, obviously. But back to here.

The one all important thing that jumped out for me was that nobody’s going to hand over anything to you for free. You have to work for it in order to earn it. Tell you what? Harris and Trump didn’t sit in the comfort of their campaign offices and expect voters to jump into the polling centres on Election Day. Despite even the endorsements of their allies, both went out to work for the right to succeed Joe Biden. They gave it their best shots and that’s what you and I have to do to make our 2024 financial goals become realities.

Folks, let’s take savings, for instance, and assume part of your financial goals was to put twenty thousand naira there from January. Let’s go ahead and assume you haven’t been able to bank that for the past six months.

Here’s the thing. Like Harris and Trump, who campaigned and were out working till the very last day, find anything you can do to meet that target. Remember, we still have November and December remaining this year. Do you think Harris and Trump went to sleep with two months to Election Day? I doubt it. That’s the takeaway for me. Perhaps you’ve already achieved all of your financial goals for the year, well done. You can let your hair down.

But if, like me, you still have some boxes to tick, let’s give it more effort. So, if part of your goal was to own an additional 1000 units of Fidelity Bank shares, for instance, and perhaps you haven’t, you can still get out there and see how you can make that happen. Like Harris and Trump, put yourself out there for work or business opportunities. Take the same approach if you’re still having to rely on salary advance to get through to pay day. So, think of how you can stem the tide in the last month of the year.

Are you a First Bank or UBA shareholder: Do you own a tiny piece of either First Bank or UBA? Perhaps, it’s just a thousand units of their shares. It could be more or less. Irrespective of the number, please pop inside your nearest branch or get on the phone to your stockbroker. They’ll have news to excite you.

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