The Journey of a Thousand Years Begins not with a Step, but with a step taken. — Dr Olumide Emmanuel, real estate mogul
Sometime last month, a prominent member of the Nigerian community in the United Kingdom and I were talking on the phone. Until this conversation, I didn’t know him to be a savvy investor.
During the conversation, he disclosed that he invested in the shares of Guaranty Trust Bank ( Guaranty Trust Holding Company) more than a decade ago. According to him, the dividends he gets annually are worth their weight in gold.
I wished someone told me about such a thing as investing in the shares of the bank then. Perhaps it wasn’t just because the folks in one’s network didn’t know any better, I don’t remember even hearing anyone preaching about it the way yours truly has been doing through this weekly column. I wished that I could sue people in my circle for not knowing.
As we step into this second half of the year, plan to kickstart your own investment journey. If only I’d started mine when my dear friend began his, yours truly might have been on a boat cruise now. Perhaps, this piece could have been crafted while having a good time on the boat.
Now, jokes apart, there’s nothing as leaving it too late to start when it comes to investing. So, the challenge is to ask yourself when am I starting?
If you’re wondering where to begin, you may want to start by shoving just three thousand naira away in a savings account each month from the end of this July. That is enough to earn you tiny interest.
Walking puts milk in our kitchen
On several occasions when returning from work, when I got off the train, rather than jump on the bus for the last leg of the journey home, yours truly tasks his legs with doing the job.
It’s just a ten to fifteen minutes maximum stroll, though. But the pay off is that the fare that I would have paid on the bus ends up putting milk in our kitchen.
As I’m walking home, I usually stop over at the nearby Sainsburys and pick up three tins of evaporated milk. Anytime I do that twice a week, we get six tins of milk in the house.
There are many different little ways to make those savings, manage your money, and to keep and not lose money. Just think about it.
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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
When will you start your investment journey?