Ayo Arowolo: How to set specific money goals

Hello TopNaijarians!

The responses to the introductory article in the series published last Monday were overwhelming. I appreciate those who responded to my note requesting for a copy of my welcome pack: How to Be Moneywise. In case you have not got yours, just follow the instructions at the end of this article. Please note that you are not expected to send the information to my email; you are to text it in the format indicated to the number stated there and the document will be yours in a matter of minutes. ABSOLUTELY FREE!

Let us now continue with the story of my encounter with my millionaire mentor.

Back in Nigeria after my encounter with my friend in South Africa, I quickly devoured the four books, which I had left to gather dust in my study for more than four years. I also listened, many times, to all the four audio-cassettes that accompanied the books. It was as if my brain was set on fire. I became agitated when it dawned on me that I had been sitting on a treasure without realising it.

I had to put a call through to my friend in desperation. I swallowed all my pride. After all, when that prodigal son in the Bible repented and went back to his father, he was received with a royal treat. Surprisingly, too, my friend welcomed me with open arms and asked me to see him the following Saturday at his Ikoyi residence, in Lagos.

THE JOURNEY OF A THOUSAND MILES

I was there punctually. After a light breakfast, he led me into his study where we started the personal tutorial sessions he had agreed to give me every month. From now on he was going to be my Financial Mentor. The sheer number of books in his study amazed me. It made my study, which I had always bragged about, pale into insignificance! There were about twelve large shelves filled with books and audio cassettes on a variety of subjects: money, marketing, mind and soul, management, space science, entrepreneurship, strategy, fiction, non-fiction and so on.

Where there are rules, order will be in place. He pulled out an electronically-controlled oval table with two chairs attached, facing each other, and asked me to sit. He flagged off the first lesson by asking me to note his rules in my notebook:

Rule 1: Subsequent lessons will hold only if there is evidence that I had put to practice what I learnt in the previous lesson.

Rule 2: I must not mention his name anywhere in connection with the Millionaire Capsules. (That is what he called the lessons he arranged to be giving me).

I did as instructed and assured him I would play by the rules.

His first questions jolted me a bit: “Are you serious about becoming a millionaire? What level of wealth are you looking at and when do you plan to realise it?” “Just some millions, enough to enable me to acquire the good things of life and assist those who are genuinely in need,” was my careless response after a brief hesitation.

Wealth is in the details. “There are quite a lot of gaps in your answer,” he said casually as he started the lesson proper with the title: Wealthy people always set specific money goals.

“My good friend, if you are really serious about acquiring wealth, your first task is to set clear and specific money goals. Wealthy people don’t set vague goals when it comes to the business of accumulating wealth. They are clear about the level of wealth they want to acquire, when they want to acquire it and what they would do to acquire the level of wealth they desire.

Money is like a spirit, a magnet actually, and it goes usually to the direction of those who know how much of it they want for themselves. You must set the goal to the minutest details so that when you hit the level of wealth you desire, it will be impossible for you to miss it. Your money goals must be so specific that they become almost real in your mind. This is when you can begin to translate your imagination into reality. The danger of not setting specific goals for the type of blessing you want is that when the blessing does come, you may not recognise it.

If you are serious about becoming a millionaire, you have to be clear about the level of wealth you desire to accumulate and how much everything boils down to daily, weekly, monthly and yearly. How much must you make in a day, a week, a month, and a year in order to get into the wealth bracket you want to be in ten years’ time. You have to practically create the financial future you want now, and work backwards from it with as much clarity as possible.

If your goal is just to become a millionaire, would you be comfortable, for instance, if you were able to accumulate N2 million, which is less than $20,000, let’s say, in three years? If you are comfortable at this level, then almost every senior banker in Nigeria is a multimillionaire of your standard because we have banks that pay their senior staff up to N10 million per annum. The mistake many people make is that they think that wealth is measured by the amount of money they have accumulated. Whereas, wealth, real wealth, is measured in the number of times your stream of passive income can comfortably take care of your expenses especially after your working years even if you choose not to work again for a single day the rest of your life. If you have N10 million in your bank account and your expenses gross N10 million, you are still, indeed, a poor person.

“Enough for today,” my Mentor said as he pulled out two books from his shelves and handed them over to me. “Take a few minutes and read the pages I marked and let me know your impression when I come back,” he said, as he dashed out of the study to attend to a waiting visitor.

Ambiguity is the greatest sin on the road to financial freedom. The first book he gave me is entitled: The Fourth Dimension, written by Dr. David Yongi Cho, the senior pastor of Yoldo Full Gospel Church, the world’s largest church based in South Seoul, Korea. It is a revolutionary book which I recommend to everybody who wants to speedily command material blessings from the spiritual realm. I have read it more than six times after this encounter with my Mentor, with fresh insights each time. The portion I read that day was in the first chapter of the book where Dr. Cho recounts his ordeal when he desperately wanted God to provide him with a chair, a desk, and a bicycle. Those things meant a lot to Dr. Cho who had to say this in desperation: “Father, why should a child of the King of kings and the Lord of lords live without a desk, chair and bed and also walk mile after mile everyday?”

Dr. Cho prayed fervently and ceaselessly for more than twelve months, but the items he requested from God did not come. It was a big embarrassment to him. Then, one day, exasperated, the missionary was on the verge of renouncing his faith when this great spiritual principle was berthed in his heart: “You and all my children beg me, demanding every kind of request, but you ask in vague terms and that is why I do not answer. Don’t you know there are dozens of kinds of desks, chairs and bicycles?”

The minister of God did as he was directed by the Spirit. He asked God for a desk made out of Philippine mahogany, a chair made by the Japanese Mitsubishi company, one with rollers on the legs; and a bicycle made in the United States with gear on the side. Few months later the specific things which Dr. Cho requested were mysteriously delivered to him.

I was still digesting the second book Retire Young Retire Rich by Robert Kiyosaki when my Mentor returned to the study and gave me two assignments to complete before the next session. His first assignment was that I should carefully determine what level of wealth I wanted in ten years’ time. The second one was to take inventory of all the assets I had no matter how small and determine their worth in monetary terms. In addition, he said I should put together my liabilities (what I owe) and put a price to them. Thereafter, I should subtract my liabilities from my assets (what I own). Whatever was left, according to him, was my net worth. He encouraged me to carry out the exercise in conjunction with my wife.

My Mentor gave me a gentle pat on the back as he accompanied me leisurely out of the study into the car. I bade him good-bye.

Catch ya next week!

Prosperously yours

Ayo Arowolo

TAKEAWAY

• Set a day aside with your spouse to take inventory of every asset you have in your possession.
• Take inventory of all the things that do not belong to you. It could be an item you bought by hire purchase
• Take the value of each class of assets
• Subtract the value of what you owe to a third party from the value of what you own.
• What is left is your net worth. How much are you worth now?
• Make a new commitment to increase your net worth on a continuous basis.