You have to choose your hard; making money or being poor – Financial Expert

A Financial Expert, Paul Mante, has advised workers to adjust their lifestyles and remain financially disciplined throughout the year 2022 and beyond.

Speaking on the Super Morning Show, he noted that although staying financially disciplined may be difficult, one can make this possible by preparing a budget and sticking to it.

“And the point about the discipline is that making money is hard and being poor and struggling with finances is hard but you have to choose your hard,” he said.

He made the comment during discussions on ‘money mistakes’ that workers should avoid in 2022.

Mr. Mante added that “one is better off having a budget and an emergency coming up and knowing how to deal with the emergency than not having a budget at all. At least you should have some guidelines on what is coming in and what’s going out [and] some expenditure must come up for you to be able to say that this is not in my budget,” he said.

For his part, Director-General of the Securities and Exchange Commission, Rev. Daniel Ogbarmey Tetteh, who was among the panelists, emphasised the importance of budgeting and advised listeners to as much as possible, resist impulse buying and other costs that do not fall within their budgets.  

“Budgeting is an important tool to be able to control the outflow,” he said.

However, the host of the show, Winston Amoah argued that sticking to a budget and staying financially disciplined is not easy. He contended that although one may have a budget, emergencies may occur and the contingency plan or miscellaneous budget may not be enough to deal with the situation. “And this may alter the initial budget” he said.

Other ‘money mistakes’ that were highlighted by the panelists during the show included; not having clearly stated financial goals, chasing returns without understanding the tradeoff between risk and returns, not setting up lifestyle funds, not having multiple streams of income, among others.

Source: Ghana News