46 •
The Lion King
• January - March 2017
The Banker’s guide to
a stress-free life
By Sunday Onwuemele
should grow as your salary grows, and
since it is invested for you by a fund
manager, you earn income which is
also capitalized.
Cultivate a good savings
culture:
However hard it might be, save.
Saving requires serious discipline and
sacrifices. As long as the elementary
principle of insatiability of humanwants
in Economics is still valid, one’s wants
would always outweigh one’s income.
No one’s salary is enough. If your
salary is increased today, you would
only appreciate your management
that month. The second month, your
expenses would adjust in response to
the increase in your salary. However,
if your salary is slashed down, you will
still cope. It might take time but your
expenses would find a way of adjusting
to the decrease in the income.
So why don’t you further cut down
your salary by additional 20% and put
into your recurrent savings account.
Any increase in your salary should
never be viewed as an increase in
income, rather as an increase in
savings. Transfer such increase, if
possible, in entirety to your savings.
Avoid credit like a plague:
To the best of your ability, avoid
spending what you would have
tomorrow today. Do not make the
credit card your means of livelihood.
This is simply an indication that
you are living above your means.
Where future expectation fail, credit
obtained against them would put you
under pressure. If you must take loan,
credit card or any other form of credit,
use them for an income-generating
venture.
If a commercial bank is offering me
a personal loan at 23% per annum
and I have a secured investment
opportunity that would fetch me 5%
per month, it wouldn’t make sense
Plan exit at entry:
The day you take up a pay job should
be the day you sit down to plan
your exit from the job. By this, I mean
you should create your own personal
pension fund allowance. Do this by
discounting your proposed monthly
take-home pay by at least 10% (it
could be more). For instance, if your
monthly salary is N80,000 simply
assume that your take-home pay is
90% of N80,000.00 which is N72,000.
The balance of N8,000 (10%) should
be transferred to your personal
pension fund account on a monthly
basis.
Ensure the funds are not accessible
to you, and invest it with a long-term
fund manager. Your contribution
