Ants can teach you a lot about money. Despite not having leaders they accomplish fairly complex tasks such as food storage, garbage collection, nest preparation, security, and even going to war. Ants may be small, but they build huge anthills and nests. They work tirelessly, going repeatedly to and fro without distraction. What does this have to do with money, and savings in particular? Let us take it one lesson at a time. Embrace delayed gratification. You will never see an ant carrying a crumb stopping by the roadside to take a bite of the crumb or try to eat it all. They have a purpose for that crumb and they are going to carry it until they get to their destination. In other words, ants have embraced the concept of delayed gratification. They know what the crumb is for and they are not going to start consuming it midway. Many of us have become slaves of instant gratification. Our lives are a mess and we are in horrible debt because of our inability to wait and achieve the bigger picture. We have convinced ourselves that we must have that item today. Stop recklessly eating into your crumb if you want it to become more than just a crumb. If you cannot put away Sh5,000 today it will never become Sh1 million, and you will not create wealth. Because they work with the principle of delayed gratification, ants also never go hungry in winter. In the summer they stock up on food that can carry them through the cold season. Do you have enough money for a cold season? How long would you survive in your current lifestyle if you lost your income today? Not putting money aside for a rainy day is simply reckless behaviour. Start where you are. When an ant finds a crumb it picks it up and starts the journey. It does not wait around hoping a bigger crumb will fall off a table. You should also work with what you have instead of procrastinating because of what you do not have. I cannot count the number of people I meet who are waiting for the magical Sh100,000 or Sh500,000 or Sh1 million to start. You will not get anywhere by waiting. The effect of putting the small amounts away regularly adds up. You are the CEO of your money. Despite not having a general, ants do their work diligently. They do not laze around or take naps on top of the anthill. Wealth creation assumes you are going to be responsible enough to be the CEO. You may have conditioned yourself to be reliant on someone else giving you instructions at work, but you will not get away with it when trying to create your own wealth. Your employer is not going to create wealth for you. As I have said many times before in this column, even that pension fund is not going to fund your retirement. To create wealth you have take responsibility for your decisions, the timing of your actions, and the result. It is not the responsibility of your employer, client, spouse, and children to achieve your goals for you. Many people like to make statements such as, “The stockbroker lost my money.” That is wrong; you are trying to pass your CEO responsibility to someone else. You are the one who did not take time to understand what you were buying into, so it is your fault. When you take responsibility, it empowers you because you then know what to correct next time. Do not wait for someone or something (in terms of a circumstance such as job loss) to force you to start dealing with your money. Working for survival only keeps you surviving. An ant carries a load three times it size and builds anthills much bigger than itself. If your whole life is spent focusing on getting by, all you will do is get by. To stop just surviving, something has to change in your actions (not anybody else’s). People who have accomplished great things never knew how they were going to happen, they just had a vision and worked towards that, one day at a time. Setting a goal you know you can achieve is beneath your potential as a human being. Yes, you will not know how it is going to happen but like the crumb, start with the small step you can take today. It could just be that Sh5,000 saving or it could even be research on a business idea you have. Keep the vision in mind and start with actions that align to that vision even if you have no idea how it will add up to what you want. As you stay focused, your mind will open up to new ideas and you will see things you would not even have noticed had you not started with the small steps. “Go to the ant, consider her ways and be wise. Without any chief, officer or ruler she prepares her food in the summer and gathers her sustenance in the harvest.” Proverbs 6:6-8
Posted on: Mon, 22 Jul 2013 09:13:40 +0000
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