My income was a big problem for me, which is what most people think. Only, the real problem was slightly less obvious to me, and maybe to you too.
My income made me feel comfortable, it made me feel safe and secure.
Truth is, I really was not safe and secure. Comfortable yes, but not safe and secure.
The letter from my husband’s company saying they were closing down his division was a rude awakening that I was not as safe and secure as I thought we were. We were comfortable but not secure.
You see, prior to my husband receiving this letter at work, I worked at a multinational and got some serious pay, as did my husband. In a sense, we were probably the lucky ‘Romeo and Juliet’, because we had money enough we were now comfortably paying off the mortgage and able to live a nice life. A life most people probably envied sef.
But when one of our income sources was threatened with the job loss, the rude awakening the reality began. How were we going to pay for our monthly mortgage payments? How were we going to meet other expenses? Were we going to slow down on plans to start having children? How would we continue to live our lifestyle without my husband’s income? I am more thankful now that it happened then and not in my 40s or 50s. It started my deliberate journey being to an Investor thereafter. I do hope it does not take an incident like this for your wakeup call.
If you took the Money Behaviour Quotient [MBQ] exercise and sent in your result, it is likely you found out if your lifestyle is helping you or hindering you from building wealth. You see, whether you admit it or not, you are taking certain ACTIONS with your MONEY that is giving you the RESULT you have now, and NOT the result you want. These actions have now become your money habits because you continuously respond to money the same way.
If these responses to money are not altered to more positive progressive actions, you may likely take a longer time to stop being broke or worse, take a longer time to have more than enough. And who does not want more than enough?
Which is why, the MBQ does a good job of getting you to think through what you are doing with your money and evaluate your result. Is it the result you want? In some instances, people select answers in the MBQ that is what they would like to be doing instead of what they are actually doing! Only they forget that behavior does not lie. What you say you do and the results you are getting will always align. If you say you have been investing consistently for 10 years, your result will show it. If you say you have been saving consistently for a year, your result will show it. And if you have been spending consistently for the same period, your debt profile might show it too! See what I mean?
The hardest lifestyle to acknowledge in the MBQ is that of a Mismanager. Like me, I was getting money from my job, enough to make ends meet and have a comfortable life. So, to tell me that I have a money problem would have been a hard sell. Like seriously? Look at me?! People wanted to be like me, possibly the same way people want to be like you too.
But my head soon reset when my financial world was shaken. If you think you do not have a money problem, try going without your income for one month, how well would you survive? Would your family live like nothing happened? Or would all hell break loose?!
At the Invest for Wealth Action Plan Consultation, one of the first things we do is to help you address your money behavior. Some people think their solution is, ‘just tell me what to invest in’! But maybe your experience or somebody’s else’s experience has shown you for example that, you can know that you should invest in real estate but how to do it is the problem, and often times, your money behavior is the reason you find it difficult to do so. It is not because you do not want to, it is because you do not know how to do so, you do not have the tools and the knowledge to execute your ‘plans’.
I hope you enroll for the Invest for Wealth Action Plan Consultation, so you can start your journey to having more than enough.
Tolu Dima-Okojie