What is your fallback position?
By Dickson Tumuramye,
As a staff of Uganda Christian
University (UCU), I enjoy the comfort of my pay cheque every end of the month.
It sounds nice to walk to my bank and I am there chatting with the ATM on how
much I need to withdraw. The choice to press which figures falls into my fingers
to choose rightly.
Sometimes I have walked out of
the ATM to the nearest mobile money agent with a full list of who to clear.
That is a pain. By the time I reach home, it’s like I am not from the bank or
my employer has not yet paid me at all. There are times when I have opened all
my pockets and wallet but can’t find any coin even when my list clearly tells
me I sent this amount to so and so.
Last month my friend opened his
mailbox and the first email read “delay of salary” and he immediately screamed
“again?!” It is then that I realized I was not alone in this fixation. It seems
we are many only that it is hard to tell. Only time will tell when the unexpected
happens and we face reality. In the corporate world, most employees depend
purely on their monthly pay cheque. It doesn’t matter how much it is as long as
something comes on his/her account, everything seems okay.
We get into a comfortable zone
with is salary and we forget about planning for it well. We fail to save and
not even remember that one day this job may be no more. What then can I do if I
have not saved? People say plan for your exit immediately you get a job. It’s worse to have an exit plan at the time
when you have just entered into this new office before you feel how sweet the
chair is. But the fact is, one day you will leave this job. One day you will
retire or have no energy to work. You may never see yourself leaving your
current employer especially people in civil service or academia. Therefore, you
may never be bothered about the “loss” of a job.
Have you at some point thought
about eventualities/uncertainties like accidents, illnesses, etc. that can
incapacitate you? Have you ever sat down to plan for life without a formal job?
If it so happened, what is your fallback position? How have you used your
little resources and meager earned salary to invest for eventualities or a better
future?
How best can someone survive outside
a formal job? It is high time we jotted our notice down and prepare for a
fallback position. I like some UCU security guards and drivers. When they are
not at work, they are riding bodabodas. The majority will tell you that they have managed
to pay fees for their children and built houses in the village. To them, the UCU salary
can’t sustain all their needs. But do you know that there are people who laugh
at them and despise them as people who lack focus? How can I work in UCU and
ride a boda or do a taxi? How many of us despise some jobs yet we are languishing
in loans from one bank to another or USSTA, from Peter to John, Mary to Joan
and the debt chain continues?
How best can you plan for the future?
Plan for your retirement now
Whether you see it in 20 years
from now or not, start now. At one point, you will not be energetic enough to
do perfectly what you did then. You must start saving to invest in something
that will give you side income to make your retirement easy not a dead end.
Plan your exit
Much as all employers envy you
for your expertise, you are not the first or the last they have had. Whether
you are there or not, the business will always go on normally. That is why the
terms and conditions are clear; anyone can terminate this contract anytime (though
they add in lieu of one month). That may never stop the employer to dismiss you
when it is due. You can be laid down any time any day before your contract
expires. Plan well of how you will exit honorably regardless of the
circumstances and what value you will have added to yourself from the
employer’s monthly pay cheques, the reason why you need to save and invest.
To students, when you write your
last exam paper with a job offer in your hands, never be reminded to save and
invest. Start even with your pocket money and save as little as you can. One-by-one
makes a bundle.
Invest wisely
Don’t put your eggs in one
basket. Don’t invest in any business because you have heard that it is so lucrative.
Make your own research, follow your heart or childhood dream and read about
your investment a lot. Put money where you will never regret after a month –
strategic investment that will put you in charge of your source of income.
Carry out a financial leakage
assessment
You need to check and see where
you spend unnecessarily. You may discover that some of your expenses can be
minimized and you can save little-by-little. Instead of sleeping in a rental of
UGX 500,000= when you earn UGX 1m, you can plan well to look for another place
where you can spend less and save the rest. If you spend on a car’s fuel in a
distance you can once in a while use a boda or walk, do it now.
The writer is a child advocate
and a parenting coach.
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