Time: Spare more, grow wealth

By Sylvia Juuko

Every minute counts. And when it comes to money, any time wasted could be translated into lost opportunities to increase your wealth.

You might be too swamped by the daily grind of the rat race to focus on wealth creation efforts.

However, if there are any lessons to learn from successful entrepreneurs, it’s their ability to utilise their time efficiently. Imagine for a moment that you were the CEO of a conglomerate.

There are only 24 hours in a day yet a CEO has to juggle numerous things.

These include attending meetings, going through the cash flow, taking care of emergencies, drilling the management team, delivering talks, managing family, travel, mentoring etc.

Depending on the systems in their firms and the management team, they manage a seamless operation. Even things that go wrong are managed decisively.

Compare this to your schedule as an employee or an SME owner. You probably need to make some changes if you are to get the desired results.

Remember, it’s never too late to make a fresh start. There are several things you can do to deliberately devote a higher percentage of your time to activities that increase your financial intelligence. This will in turn earn you the skills to spot opportunities that can translate into wealth creation.

The habit of waking up early

Early risers have time to pray, meditate and plan their day. You can use some of this time to read a few chapters or listen to an audio related to wealth creation.

It’s important to note that there is a direct correlation between investment planning and wealth accumulation. If you are not an early riser, you can consider adopting this habit.

Create money days

You could put in place ‘money days’ in which specific days in a month are set aside time to concentrate on wealth creation, money tasks and reviewing your wealth creation goals and brushing up your money management skills.

If your attitude towards this method is to find excuses that favour not having time to spare amid your demanding job, business and family, you can never get ahead financially.

However, attaining financial freedom is probably the best incentive for allocation of time to wealth creation goals; after all you can manage your time better if you achieve these goals.

Keep records

One other way of efficiently using your time to create wealth is making a weekly or monthly record, depending on what suits you, to review the benefits realised and the stumbling blocks you have met within that period.

Some of the issues to consider for review include: what investment opportunities you have spotted and taken advantage of, the savings and investment milestones met, the books or resources you have read, workshops or training on investment attended, mentors talked to as well as the challenges to wealth creation etc.

With this kind of diligence, the results will be obvious.

Once you acquire financial knowledge, you will be able to make better money choices, ask the right questions and assess opportunities to make money. This will be time well spent.

Do not buy things to impress

On the other hand, the things to avoid are spending time judging people depending on the type of car they drive, what they wear or where they hang out.

If you fall in this category, you will spend time and money in pursuit of purchasing products to look superior but suffer from inferior economic achievement.

Instead, assess your net worth (assets minus liabilities) and work out ways of how to close the gap between your current financial status and where you want to be.

However, remember that allocating time to wealth creation should not be sacrificed for family and other social engagements as well as rewarding yourself for the milestones because these give meaning to life.

The writer works with Bank of Uganda