TAKING CONTROL OF YOUR FINANCES AS A WOMAN

Hello,

Welcome to another significant for your success series, for this one I have pulled out my accountant and finance hat and topped it with my research belt laced with some experience. There are going to also be 10 (ten) posts geared towards giving you control of your finances.

 From accounting we understand that in order to maximize finance we need to make the most profit. In order to make more profit than we already are making, we would need to drive down cost and increase income. At the end of these blog post series, we will be able to effectively take control of our finance.

Beyond this, we will talk about wealth creation, wealth management and wealth preservation in different ways. We start tomorrow.

If you missed the ‘how to succeed as a woman series’, please take the time to read them now. Do your friends the favor of sharing and asking them to subscribe to these blog posts.

PEARL

PLAN, PLAN, PLAN

Touchdown! Yipee!

What if I told you that your time is not maximally spent? Would you agree with me or disagree?

If I also said half of your time is not spent on activities that will ensure you succeed, will my claim be speculation or truth?

I had created a chart to upload for self assessment as a way to validate my claims but I am having problems uploading so I will add that on later. In the stead, you can create a time sheet for your self assessment by writing out the 24 hours in a day, beside each hour write out what you spent that time for and lastly tick beside the activity if it is productive.

I would need you to honestly assess yourself, tick the third box only if that time was productively spent. please do this for a minimum of a week, start with yesterday.
Bear in mind that traffic for those who reside in Lagos or Port harcourt  is not a productive activity, if you are not driving you are in control of that time and if you are driving in the traffic, you have access to the radio (catch up on the news for the day or tune in to a station you can learn something fun). You may only take a few minutes to cool down from work stress. Better still, it could be your low cost stress relief time (refer to part 7- the seventh post after the introductory post on 'How to succeed as a woman'). Please honestly assess yourself and time management.

Read part one to ten of this series again (this is part ten, read your way back to one) and feel free to engage me in the comments section or by mail. I look forward to hearing from you.

I will make two requests of you,
1.) Subscribe to my blog posts, visit and read regularly
2.) Share accross social media with friend's and family, if you find it interesting, so would they. Thank you

PEARL

HOW TO MAKE FAMILY CHEER LEADING SQUAD ONE

Hello,

A successful woman remembers that she would prefer the presence of both her parents and her partner's attention at all times and know it is the same way (or to a different degree) her kids, wards and partner will prefer to have her time, input and attention in their lives. It is often better to have your family (Nuclear and extended to some degree) satisfied and prevent them from turning into clogs in your wheel of progress.

Do I really have a vice?

Hello,

Make no mistake about this, it has taken me weeks to get this together and years to get together this strategies from being curious about what made successful people thick. These are proven strategies I have been sharing for the last seven posts and we have yet two more to go in the series. If I were you, I would go back and see previous posts.

Why do I bother to share? Women (and everyone who reads the blog posts) need to be empowered in these economic times and find out what may have prevented the success which we all crave. 

List your top 5 vices.

I really do mean what I said, List your top 5 vices

Now lets get to it, do not get defensive or spiritual on me like this story of a person who went for a job interview and was asked what his weakness was and answered 'following the lord'. How is that a weakness? I think the candidate would have been more truthful saying 'lack of discipline in christian activities'. 

When we make our vice seem positive or excusable, we do not acknowledge it for the damage the vice/weakness does so please drop the self righteousness and critically examine yourself because success is what we are concerned with. If you need some examples of what vices are, here goes:

1. A shopaholic who cannot resist a 'good deal' or Always compelled to buy aso ebi every week

2. Lack of discipline with food

3. A talkative who does not have a limit to what they say and may pass on information to their competitors (also a proud, boastful attitude)

4. Drama queen or king

5. Mrs Emotional, overly sensitive... the list goes on, basically anything you find hard to put in check.

Let me pull a shocker and make this blog post short.

TAKE CONTROL OF YOUR VICE. With success, discipline is not optional.

Let me throw in a bonus, women also need to learn how to save ( blog posts about this coming up subsequently).
Remember we have two more posts on the how to succeed as a woman series. Do me a favor, leave me your comments, like, share on your social media platforms and subscribe to my blog posts. Thank you.

PEARL

HOW EXPENSIVE IS STRESS RELIEF?

Hello,

This is the seventh post on the how to succeed as a woman series and we are almost at touch down. If you have missed the previous posts from lastweek, go HERE, HERE, HERE, HERE and HERE.

NO! I did not suggest a massage. Please read below to know more about the topic.
As you aim to succeed, it means you may not have idle time especially at the onset when you set out to achieving. Personally, I think success is not an idle man's friend so you may never really have idle time, you may find you need to consciously create the time to rest or do anything.

Seeing that you are going to get very busy

learning, planning, doing, why not think of the best way to relieve stress ahead of time so you do not lose time to stress.

It is important to plan consciously creating time rest but every now and then, there is the tendency to schedule work and lose track of time and soon we are burnt out and stressed.

How do you relieve stress? It is important to know the things that take stress off you. For some people it is a massage, for others, it is a holiday. For me, it is all of these and more but since I do not have the luxury of taking holidays frequently, I have found my lowest cost stress relief method.

My method goes back to studying, I had times when I was beyond stressed. I remember walking down the rows of products at Sainsbury, Morrison et al. They were close to my house in Fishponds and immediately feeling better. I also do the same in Nigeria here.

I have also found that taking walks help also but I favour walking round supermarkets, malls and shopping centers because for that time, my focus is on the beautiful row of products before me which means NO TIME FOR THINKING ABOUT WORK.

I encourage you to find your low cost stress relief before you get stressed. you cannot afford long, frequent breaks to 'clear your head' when you are focused on succeeding and retirement is still far away.

Enough said! Find your low cost stress relief method if being efficient and successful is important to you.

Do not be selfish about these strategies, share accross your social media platforms and subscribe to my blog posts. Please leave your comments below also, Thank you.
PEARL

HOW DO I NOT FEEL LIKE A FAILURE? NO JOB! NO PARTNER!

Hello,

If you have made it thus far, Congratulations, it shows you are benefiting from this series, remember this is part six of a ten part series so stick with me. If you have not read the past five posts, please do so.

You may say I have no job, how do I cope or start succeeding? Or I have a little education (or a lot of it), I have removed all stereotypes from my mind, I have even tried planning e.t.c. but I have also been searching for a job without success.



The unemployment rate in Nigeria is very high and most people who find work are not suitably placed, their capacity for performance is being underutilised. It is tough but remember tough times hardly outlive tough people. Remember Part 4 where you were advised to play with work/ work with play?. While you are applying to jobs, you may as well.
Remember Part 1 where we said get a little education (If you did not read it, you cannot understand it), it also comes in handy here. It is important to be busy while applying to Jobs.

Scan your environment, if no one will employ you, you have to employ yourself (Entrepreneurship). A mentor advised me never to look at myself as too big or educated to do any job or business including travelling to villages to buy from farmers and package for sale. While I did not do that exactly, I went to learn how to bake and would sell to my neighbours who had shops thus making money in hundreds (Did I mention I have an international M.Sc Finance?) while still blogging and play-earning with the radio. If you cannot get a job and still insist on working in a 9am-5pm, volunteer for free at an organisation and improve both your curriculum vitae and chances of getting employment.

It is also easy to feel like a failure when you do not have a partner in our society especially when you are approaching your mid 30's. Society seems to rubbish whatever achievement we have and think we got them by some preposterous and loose means. this is where Part 2 comes in handy for us.

Firstly, remember no other person holds the key to your happiness but yourself and you deserve a pat on the back for not accepting any 'Tobi' as your partner just yet.
Disabuse your mind of the stereotypes and do not get desperate, just be findable.

More important, read Part 2 : you are not a failure because you have not found a suitable pair, there is still more to life. most people find when they stop bothering themselves about it and focus on working on themselves to be better versions, they get positive result.

Lastly, We should not derive a value for ourselves from the number of relationships that did not work out for us. The reason I bother with these is because it is important to let the extra weight of worry go so you can focus on achieving.
FAILURE IS THE LAST BUSSTOP OF LIFE, THERE IS NO REASON TO FEEL LIKE YOU HAVE REACHED IT BEFORE YOUR LIFE IS OVER - PEARL

PEARL.

YOU NEED HELP, ASK FOR IT

Hello,

This is perhaps one of the really important blog posts for women who want to succeed because many women are constantly being overwhelmed with work due to traditional roles or profiling. In these days when both man and woman are expected to both contribute to family earnings, it is becoming accepted that women are in the work place but society has not adjusted it stance on domestic chores and raising the family.
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