FINANCIAL RESPONSIBILITY

To me, financial responsibility is not just about meeting your financial obligations, but rather, it is about being conscientious with your money.

That means not only managing your money correctly, but also creating systems that produce excess/abundance. Without abundance, how can one expand their space or kingdom?

Anyone who knows anything about the journey to the top, knows that the road to success is a result of the compound effect, or as the Swahili say, ‘haba na haba hujaza kibaba’ (put in a little at a time and you will eventually fill the piggy bank). There are very few people who will be lucky enough to win the lottery, and out of that even fewer will be able to make something lasting out of such luck, like they say, easy come, easy go. Learn to live on less. Many of us also know, that in today’s world, unless you are running a very successful business, or an employee of a very generous company, you cannot afford not to have multiple streams of income, unless your luck is divine, but let’s leave that in the statistical anomaly category. Now, the part that most people are not aware of, is how their psychology also plays a big role in managing and protecting them from financial risk. I am talking about emotional intelligence and impulse control.

Impulse control is managed by the prefrontal cortex in the frontal lobe, a part of the brain which finishes developing at the age of 25 years. This is why children and adolescents seem out of control, they haven’t finished developing the mechanisms that control their impulsive behaviors. And why it is also important to have responsible caregivers who can help them develop this part of the brain by showing them ways of the world and help them think things through that are outside their awareness. You are not an adult until you are 25. Psychologists know this, you are a child, then an adolescent, then when you turn 18 you are considered an EMERGING ADULT, and when you finally turn 25, then you are a true adult.

The reason the development of impulse control is very important in order to be financially responsible, one, imagine someone who acts on all their impulses i.e. Substance use and thrill seeking (let’s put clubbing and other financially demanding habits here) these can be very expensive endeavors, and if you have no control over when you act on these impulses, how can you ever expect to save your money for future investments?
  

        Ask any stock or Crypto trader, you can’t trade emotionally. As the markets go up and down, you need to be in control of your impulses and emotions to avoid panic trading.

              With that being said, it doesn’t mean you can’t teach children, adolescents and EA how to be financially responsible, they may just not be as good at it as they would when they finish developing.

                 This brings us to suffering. Like I tell anyone who cares to know, in life there is a guarantee of two things, death and suffering. However, if you can learn to accept this, you may come to the realization that you can choose your suffering. Would you rather endure the financial discipline and frugality, which may also be accompanied by sneers from the flashy boujee/bourgeois, who consider you unremarkable because of your modesty, or would you rather do away with the safety net of financial responsibility just to prove that you fit in, only to suffer the impact of the unpredictable curve balls life throws at us, that could leave us devastated beyond recovery?

                Now, some of you might scoff at all this, thinking ‘how boring’ while chewing on the idea of frugality and stoicism, but hear me out. Generational wealth. Children don’t do what we say, they do what we do. And for as long as one doesn’t choose to learn how to be financially responsible, you are placing a huge generational burden on those that will come from you. As a disclaimer, with any statistic there are always exceptions, however we deal with the rule because that information is certainly useful.

              Creating of generational wealth is a marathon, a long and winding journey that is hard to run. It’s a journey that will separate the worthy from the unworthy (of course I say this knowing there are people who have been disadvantaged in a way that was not in their control, but for the purpose of argument, let’s focus on those who choose to play this game). Every generation will have their work cut out for them, so it is up to each and every one of us to learn the principals of financial responsibility, if we ever hope to bath in that warm sense of security and possibility.

By – Simon Karanja