NOTES FROM THE NSAWAM STREET: Forgotten Laws of Saving Money in Ghana

FOURTH article of the series “NOTES FROM THE NSAWAM STREET”, paying tribute to my childhood hood and reflecting on the past and today we looking at savings,

Reflecting upon this topic,Reminds me of an an awesome vacation period  somewhere last year, I asked  my Grandpa a simple question and the question was "How do I become rich?" he smiled and said "I got to think about the important but forgotten laws of saving money. Because these are the same laws of saving that allowed us to save up for our wedding fund. These laws are actually common sense but seem to have been forgotten by most people – so they never get to save money. Once you know these principles, these laws of saving money, it will be very easy for YOU to save money as well and become rich", he smiled at me and gave me some old pamphlet to read and this is what I learnt from the pamphlet, I’m sure you’re getting excited, so lets get started:

Law #1: Remember the Reason WHY You're Saving

Saving money is NEVER about the money. Rather it's your ability to forego the ordinary for what you find to be extra ordinary. 

So when you are saving money, NEVER EVER feel bad for yourself, or think that you’re so "chisel" or "p3p33". Because it just means you’re saying no to things that are forgettable, in order to experience the things that are unforgettable in life!

So before you even start saving money, you need to ask yourself:

“What exactly am I saving for? What is that unforgettable, extraordinary, goal that I will spend the money on later on?”

Law #2: You Have to Segment or Separate Your Money 

This means that the place, be it the bank account or the physical location where you keep your money, must be completely separated from where your spending money is kept.

So for anyone who wants to save, having a separate account just for your savings is a MUST. Otherwise,  it would be too difficult to do it mentally. Your payroll and ATM account must be entirely different from your savings account. Again, this is very basic and very simple, but it goes a long way when you’re trying to save money.

Law #3: Every pessewa counts! 

If you want to save ghc,000,000 – then it just means you have to save ghc, 1,000,000 times! Or save ghc10, 100,000 times!

What happens most of the time is that people get obsessed over the amount they have. And right of the bat, they say, “Oh no ghc000,000 or ghc,000,000 – I can’t save that, it’s too high!” And immediately they give up and don’t save anything at all!

But that’s not the case, if you can save 1p. You can save any amount you want to. The process is the same! The things you have to do to save 10p are the same things you have to do to save 100p and are the same for what you have to do to save 1,000p and so on!

Every pessewa counts. Every piece of candy, every movie ticket, every meal at a restaurant, every pair of shoes, every time you say “minsan lang naman”… all of those moments count towards your savings goal.

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NOTES FROM THE NSAWAM STREET: The Four Wives of Man

Third article of the series “NOTES FROM THE NSAWAM STREET”  I was having a chat with a great friend tonight ( time was around 23:20 at Mampong Akuapem) and I found our conversation greatly cool enough to be added to the NOTES FROM THE NSAWAM STREET. Its figurative for the four pillars of every man.As narrated by friend below;

"What about my fourth wife being family and friends.My third wealth and status My second being my wisdom, knowledge and intellect.Then my 1st wife being my good deed. All Man, every man has these four wives. Friends and family we love and cherish, lavishing on them all the goodies we have. But in death, they shall desert us. Our wealth and status, the most lovely of wives whom we always desire to show off. In our dressing, speech, manners and association with others we do not stop to flaunt her telling the world, how much we love her. Oh what a romantic man we become with her, constant show and public display of affection towards her. How gentle we treat her. Thinking her our best companion for life. But alas oh my poor soul, at the sight of death she deserts me and leaves I  shattered and broken. Walking only with nothing but lingering fondness of her in my heart.My second wife, oh that virtuous of women. So witty and cunning, advising I and helping me escape my most daring of challenges. She is called Mrs Wisdom Knowlegeson. Once you may think or have thought this wife of mine, no of ours could have talked death out of taking us. Alas my soul, she leaveth me for another right there even before I could have walked away with death.But in all these, our ever dutiful, loyal and loving caring wife, good deed says to us, she calls at us, in her emaciated and malnourished state, ' I would go with you'.  Oh my most blessed creatured wife. Most kind hearted and queenly of all. My only companion in the after world, how bad I have left and neglected you all these while.  I wish but there was an act of penance, strong enough to purge I off all the wrong I have done you.Do I send cowries to the widows for prayers to be said upon my soul in my stead or do I send slaves to the osofo at asonee to atone for all that which I have done to wrong thee. Come my dear,  come my most ill treated of wives, come look me in the face and declare that which you desire off me. Alas I forget myself, I have nothing, nothing is left of me, save my remorse."

After he said that, I thought its one of the normal stuff we have been talking about and making fun of but then something unusual stroked me so I asked him if its a fiction or real life story, first I must admit I was confused. I did not understand him so I asked him to explain and this  how it was explained to me and this is what I learnt.

In reality we all have them. Though we do not love them all same. 

The fourth wife of man are relations (family and friends) we love them a lot and brag about them. That is why very soon all man wants to show you who they know and whom they are related to. We love this wife a lot.

The third wife is wealth. we love this particular woman a lot and take her around wherever we go. Don't forget she is our symbol of status. hence our position in life. We love her real good and carry her everywhere we go. I have not seen a man that did not love this woman more.  Even those that do not have her envision her and use her to disturb our ears.

Then comes our second wife, Knowledge. She is the daughter of wisdom and her mother in law is our most trusted ally in all situations. She is able to talk us out of our most foolish acts and advice us good. We do not particular love this woman as we love our second wife. But we tolerate her a fair deal and are good to her. If we mess up with her, we could not know a lot of things as she would withhold valuable information from us and her mother would not teach us what to say when we fall into trouble. So you see hers is a marriage of convenience but we sure do love her. Some men truly love her but these are in the minority.

For the first wife good deed. We dont really know she exists. We dont give a damn about her. We only married her when we were young and growing up. You see she is more like an akongua yere. Stool wife, we don't love her but cant leave her. We have our other three wives due to her. We wish she died but no she would not. We maltreat her and abuse her much often,  but she is our most dutiful and loyal of them all. We realize her love and notice her too late. When we are about travelling the land of the fathers.

The narrative was Inspired by the Play Every man and my friend is Okine kwaffo akoto Appiah known in the writing world as beautifulnonse.

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NOTES FROM THE NSAWAM STREET: DIVIDED PASSIONS

Second article of the series “NOTES FROM THE NSAWAM STREET” this series of articles is about having flashbacks and using them positively, I remember we use to go to 7 times a week instead of the normal 5 times which is 5 days, my school was called “nsawam university”, I loved my school, Nana Osae Djan School was and is a good school by all standards we were going to school as if schooling was a cult and a religion we practiced just because my friends and I thought school was all, forgetting that school was not  education. Education is the process of facilitating learning and inspiring our minds not filling our heads and pouring it on exams sheets and not following our passion but certificates! This article is not about the system, I don’t have to write about it for us to know there is problem with our system, this article is   about passion, dividing it for your own good. 

Yes, we can divide our passion

“You have to be burning with an idea, or a problem, a wrong that you want to right. If you are not passionate from the start you will never stick it out” this is lovely quote from someone who was passionate enough to change the world of computing and several industries, Steve Jobs, co-founder of apple.

What is divided passions?

This is simply having more than one thing you love to do and chasing them at once, someone as me “so Ikay you do everything in technology, from ui/ux designs to programming to blogging to online marketing are you a jack of all trades?” Then these words from my gradma kept ringing in my head; “ jack of trades is a master of none” So I felt cold and I replied “ I just love computers”  I sat down I created my own term called “divided passions, I told know if my meaning if same as what I saw when I googled it. I think divided passion if having a strong passion and under that same passion you have passions. One big tree with branches. 

You can also have different main passions, 

I have love for computers and music, art and writing. This is where the thing gets interesting and very fascinating, when something like this happen to you do not know what to do since the dot will not connect easily for you to win, what you would have to do is to intersect the passions to create a great dream, a personal example is computers/internet and writing, I like using a the internet and I like writing what is on my mind so I started blogging not earn anything but to push my passion, I have a friend whose mom is a seamstress and she loved modeling and selling stuff online, she  created a website and wore  some of the clothes by her mom, took picture, uploaded them and she started  selling online.

Sometimes our passions look crazy especially when your passion is not the usual teaching, law, medicine, the known jobs or stuff we all use to fancy 10 years ago, or its more of love than money, passions like modelling, photography, drawing, being a musician are really cool put it really don’t pay in our part of the world and you may be discouraged as soon as you mention them to your parents or even friends but just don’t the noise of other people, drawn out your inner voice, listen to your heart, sleep less and dream big, passion is all we got. 

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Notes from the Nsawam Street: The Pain of Time

Starting a new series called "Notes from the Nsawam Street", I have no reason, I think I just love my Childhood days in Nsawam. The experience was remarkable and great in a very rare form that science could not capture, I loved it and much more I stumbled into it I felt I should have a flashback on it anytime, since its impact is intangible.

I have been spending a lot of time these days thinking about my past and future and how things have gone so far with me in life, and I realized sometimes we overlook some things and we end up struggling in life as a result. And one Prominent thing is TIME I read it somewhere that the only thing we have as young people right now in life is the time for us and I thought the person was kind of joking until I experienced it. This statement is true and we cannot overlook it.

You can’t Cheat Time. God created the sun and the moon for us so that us entities on earth we can have time or else we would end up wasting our life on earth. You can’t stop the moon from appearing at night when it’s his time, or the sun to come when he is supposed to come, so as you can’t pause time, this is why I think the whole idea of time machines and backdating stuff is an illusion and its not real. If the time is past its past, you can’t get today again. So as entrepreneurs and Dreamers we have to use our time very well or else we will lose. Time is important Time is an important commodity, is you don’t know just be late at your work place for a whole week and you will see your salary…lol; Time is always equated to money which reveals how precious it is. Let’s not waste time. Time is will leave you Behind. Yes, he will leave he doesn’t wait for sluggish people, time moves faster than Usain Bolt, the fastest man, we all have only 24hrs in a day, 3651/4 days’ blah blah you know what it shows, it show that it moves fast. Yesterday was January first what is today’s date? You see. As Dreamers, we can capitalize on this and create something out of time, something cool, something great and something we will never forget, we the young people we have all the time to make mistakes, I learnt something from Mark Zuckerberg, he made most of his mistakes in the early time of Facebook, privacy issues, ownership issues and even the idea, you can read on it on the internet or watch this movie, ”The Social Network”, He learnt from his early time mistakes and he is now a great guy changing the world to a better place, Don’t feel sad if you have wasted your time just push the mistakes somewhere out of your mind and create something out of it, Cornell Sanders The creator of King Tuckey fried Chicken known as KFC, created KFC at the later time in his life and KFC is still a powerful brand up to now, Keep your head up and create something out of nothing, the biggest investment you have to make is to invest in your time.

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