A few weeks ago twitter was on fire. Well not on fire but you know what I mean. A question was posed. “What’s the single worst financial decision you’ve ever made?” and the answers were hilarious, to say the least. Hilarious but also educative. I would like to learn about your money mistakes in the comment section below.
Far from that let’s go through some of the money mistakes made by Kenyans. Before we go on, I have to mention this. A wise man once said that it is wise to learn from other people’s mistakes.
On to the mistakes.
1. Money mistake number one :Having an extravagant lifestyle.
In other words, living a life, you cannot afford.
In one response to the tweet, a young person confessed to living in a house where he was paying ksh.11,000. This is despite him earning a meager ksh.13,000.
Talk about living beyond your means. Don’t get me wrong. I’m not judging.
Most people, don’t know how to budget. If you’d like to learn how to budget click here
2. Lending money to family and friends without a proper repayment plan.
Now lending to your friends and relatives is not a bad thing.
However, the lack of a proper repayment plan is.
If you can’t discuss the repayment with the borrower, then you’d rather give them the amount as a gift. Forget about ever getting your money back.
This will save your relationship from a lot of heartaches.
One expert advised that we should treat anyone we lend money to as a business partner.
Leave any emotional attachment aside when dealing with money.
3. Starting a business without investing in knowledge first.
In your youth, we are advised to start 200 companies if you have to.
But investing your hard-earned money in something without doing research first is a rookie mistake. One that many Kenyans pay with money.
In one such response to the tweet. A person confessed to having invested in a piece of land that only one out of the three business partners knew its location.
Yet the person continued to pump money into the venture. As fate would have it, the investment went down south. (failed) flushing down the whole amount invested.
4. Opening a joint account with the significant other.
How many of us are guilty of this? One too many if you ask me.
Now I’m not saying that all partnerships of the like end up in flames. No.
some do work out. Especially when there are trust and commitment to the partner’s goals.
5. Losing money in scams.
Scams are no new evil in the world of money.
They have been around and will continue to be around for a long time. As long as people will still be confused about money.
Warren Buffet once said that you must never lose money. Yet so many Kenyans continue to lose money is pyramid schemes and Ponzi schemes.
6.Gambling and betting.
This is another money pit. One that millions of Kenyans are trapped in. Both the young and old are addicted to gambling and betting. Very sad.
7.Purchasing items to impress others.
Many Kenyans in the tweet confessed to buying cars both new and old to impress people. This decision led to the loss of money. Especially in the case of old cars. Where these people had to invest even more money to repair the old cars.
Someone also confessed to having lost more than ksh.100,000 on phones. Phones which he did not get to use. Because they got stolen as soon as he had purchased them.
here’s a link to that tweet
In conclusion, let’s learn from these and many other financial mistakes. Yes, we might make mistakes on our own. But we should not let them dampen our spirits. For to fail means the first attempt at learning. Cliché I know. Hehe
Let me know which money mistakes you’ve made.