Popular fiancé expert, Bayo Adeyinka has of recent shared lesson every salary earner needs to read about personal finance.
Bayo who is also a blogger in the story he shared said despite his huge salary, he never own a house but his driver who earns forty thousand naira monthly has his own house.
According to him, one can be earning huge amount and lack the knowledge of investing wisely.
READ ALSO: Dear School Teachers: Here Are 20 Businesses You Can Start With Less Than N20,000
Taking to his official Twitter handle on Wednesday, he wrote:
“Personal Finance: Lessons My Driver Taught Me Mr “Biliaminu Lawal was one of the pool drivers in the bank I worked for circa 2005. He was humble to a fault and always called everyone, ‘Oga mi’ (my boss)
“He was a widower and had 3 grown up children. On a certain day, I was on a sales call and Lawal was on the wheels. Like I used to do at that time, I sat at the ‘owner’s corner’ in the pool car. It was in Ibadan and we were on our way to Akobo- Ojurin
“Lawal normally minds his business as he leaves you to your thoughts. But on that day, as he drove past a particular junction, he pointed at a house down the road, cleared his throat and said, ‘Oga mi, that’s my house down the street’.
“Your house?’, I asked. He replied in the affirmative. I thought I didn’t hear correctly. ‘Rented or owned?’, I asked again. Lawal smiled. He replied with a tinge of confidence in his voice that the house belongs to him. He added ‘By the grace of God’. I couldn’t believe it.
“I looked closely at Lawal. His salary at that time was not up to N40,000 monthly. How could he have built a house on that salary? How did he raise 3 children on that salary? I entered into a mournful mood. I started considering my financial status.
“I earned multiples of what Lawal earned but I didn’t even own a plot of land at that time. That was one of the longest rides of my life. I realized that though I didn’t consider Lawal literate, he was by far more financially literate than I was.
“I also learnt that you can earn a million monthly and be poor while another can earn a hundred thousand naira monthly and still be better off.
“The next morning when I got to the office, Lawal stooped and greeted me in his usual manner, ‘Good morning, Oga mi’. I looked at him and told him matter-of factly, ‘Mr Lawal, you are my Oga’. Yes, he was the real boss.
“There were things he knew about personal finance that I needed to know. From that day, I decided to pay more attention to him. I studied his habits. I observed his actions. And I drew so many lessons from him that helped me to reconsider my approach to personal finance
“But I had to make a commitment to a particular personal change. I stopped sitting at the ‘owner’s corner’ and started sitting on the passenger’s side in front when I’m being chauffeured. Till today, I don’t sit at the ‘owner’s corner’. Lawal humbled me.
Mr Lawal taught me that money is a limited resource. In other words, one can never have enough to meet all of one’s needs. That’s why the rich want more money. The poor think that if they can just have N1m, all their problems will be solved.
“But it’s not true. I learnt from him that money can flow towards a direction or flow away from a direction. There are certain things you do that makes money flow to you or flow away from you.
“I observed that Mr Lawal was a compulsive saver. If you give him a tip, he would thank you profusely and keep it. If you want to buy him lunch, he would prefer it is monetized and he would save the money. Throughout all our years of working together, I never saw Mr Lawal eat out
“|He always brought food from home. It was cheaper for him and helped him save money. It was then I realized that it is not how much you make but how much you keep that determines your financial future.
“The true measure of how well you’re doing is not how much you earn but how much you keep. Mr Lawal lived a simple life
“His first daughter at that time was in a College of Education and he paid for her education. Abstaining from what wasn’t necessary helped him to keep a grip on his finances. He was able to differentiate between a want and a need”
