Times Of Swaziland: GLOBAL FINANCIAL LANDSCAPE HAS CHANGED

GLOBAL FINANCIAL LANDSCAPE HAS CHANGED
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Editor on 09/02/2022 07:56:00


Sir,
How do you convince this generation that education is the key to success when
there are rich criminals, but poor graduates? How do you convince a student to
remain humble when they know more than the master? How do you convince a
Christian of the riches in tithing when the non-religious remain wealthier? How
do you convince a gamer to employ the same strategies when the variables of the
game have changed? All these are random thought questions where the element of
individual choice reduces the value relevance of any argument made, simply
because they are highly opinionated.
Fail
Sometimes we fail to take the best advice we can ever get because it is opposed
to our personal opinions. I feel that these, however, pale in comparison to our
failure to heed the best advice we could ever receive about our financial lives.
 It is safe to say that as a generation of youth, we have learned about money,
if we ever did at all, from people who turn out not to know any more than we do.
From the coin bottles and piggy banks, all these were not entirely new. They
mean well, and perfectly embody financial awareness which is central to
financial health. I could hazard a guess and say that the younger ones are still
taught to take a similar path. However, I would have supposed that the one
takeaway from the times we are living in would have been conformity.
Value
There is a time for everything to have a novelty value. Again, there is a time
for the novelty to wear off. The global financial landscape has changed; the
same skills cannot demand the same pay cheque forever. Times like these should
have shown that the only way forward to have all that we hold near and dear is
through sustainable practises, in every discipline. It is no longer about making
money now, but the crux is on value creation and sustainability for your means
of making money. This plays into a larger narrative that sustainable practices
are the vehicle to a better life. We ought to ask ourselves if the same skills
from university are still productive and a sustainable means to a pay cheque?
Mindset
If the same piggy bank mentality is sustainable? If it bears us value beyond
what we have put in? There is a need to change our mindset, and learn conforming
to global standards of skills and career development. We live under a
competitive atmosphere in the jobs and skills market, a single pay cheque and
un-nurtured skills are almost no longer enough. We have the ingredients to
better financial lives. We need to learn to take advice without letting personal
opinions become an impediment to the best advice we could ever get.