People have a lot of unsolicited advice to give. They are quick to pass judgments where they are not invited to do so. It is their nature to do this. Before you condemn them, can I remind you that you might have done this without noticing; passing judgments and conclusions in your head without understanding other people’s circumstances? If you haven’t, well done.
People think they know what’s best for you:
People are quick to offer advice without understanding your reasons for doing something. In most cases, they offer advice without you asking for it. It can be something like, “if you are not going to buy another car soon, what is going to happen to your social standing and getting new clients for your business?”
The issue for me is people offering advice about something where they are not invited to do so. What is even worse is that most of them are people who are not your friends, mentors or relatives. They are people asking to find out more information to use for gossip or more judgements. I have now learned to ignore them.
He is broke:
Nothing is as hard as deciding to sell during COVID-19. The immediate assumption from many is you are selling because you are broke. Potential buyers also make this assumption to negotiate for a lower price. Unfortunately for them, this was not the case with me. I knew how much I wanted for my car. I stood my ground until the right buyer came along.
“Government is the biggest printer of fake money:”
There is this movie on Netflix called Coming from Insanity. It is a movie about a guy who becomes rich from printing fake United States Dollars in Nigeria. He printed his fake notes at home and sold them on the “black market.” In one of the scenes, he exclaims, “Did you know that the government is the largest printer of fake money!”
Part of the proceeds from selling my car was cash notes, the rest was deposited directly into the bank. Now here I was sitting with some cash in the bank and some cash in hand. It felt like I exchanged my asset for some fake notes.
Think about it this way, when I had a car, I had some value stored in the car and I could exchange that value for some notes. But here I was now holding “papers” in my hand without any asset backing them up. Those notes in my had felt like useless pieces of papers. Unless I convert these papers back to an asset that generates income for me, I was going to be losing some of it to inflation. Sad, but true story. Cash, as much as you want to believe is it king, is useless without any underlying asset backing it.
The aftereffects:
Of course, the best way to manage your expenses is to increase your income. But if you want to make a big difference to your budget, through cutting down on expenses, do not focus on small expenses line items. You need to focus on the expenses that take a bigger portion of your income.
This is exactly what selling my car did to my budget. Suddenly, I was able to free a bigger part of my budget. Imagine no longer having to pay for things like insurance, petrol, vehicle finance instalment, repairs, maintenance, premium service costs at BM, speeding traffic fines, and license disks. It felt as if I huge burden had been lifted off my shoulders.
I still do travel around from time to time. But I have noticed that even when I user Uber, I still save a lot. I am nowhere close to being called a cheapskate. But I recently learned how to use My City buses and have noticed that I can save even much further on transport.
I no longer feel like I am holding pieces of paper in my hand because I poured the proceeds into a project that is already starting to pay off. The rest of the money went into clearing my overdraft. Oh, It felt really good having a positive balance after some long while.
What I what to hear from you is whether you have mentors or if you just listen to every voice that comes your way. How do you take criticism from your mentors if you have any?
