Written by Romeo Michael Moyo.
Young people have a really hard time defining the term investment. In fact this is a foreign language among young people. Things that dominate our conversations on the streets are short cuts to anything and everything. Unfortunately such thinking brings with it short life span or meaningless lifestyle.
Come to think of it, investment has many meanings to it; but today I want to focus on financial investment.
Investing financially means putting your money either in a business or a bank in return you will be expecting your investment to make more money for you through interest and profit. This is a very interesting way to accumulate wealth especially for us young people. Instead of going to that event why not open a tax free savings account? Imagine saving R300 then after a month it grows to R400? For a school kid this ain’t that bad because the interest keeps on compounding monthly. So my question is why most young people don’t think this way? I believe that poverty will not end by us depending on government grants and few food parcels, which in fact create more poverty and dependency.
Start early
Imagine investing your pocket money while in Grade 8? Meaning you sacrifice fun now for becoming financially able at a later stage. You might be able to pay for your own University fees, buy your first car and who knows what else. There are plenty investment opportunities for the youth, from property investment to buying shares. I mean we are able to convince our parents to buy us that latest phone or those expensive sneakers; isn’t time we convince them to fund our investment endeavors?
Believing that you can make it gives you strength to make it through a slump, I mean your shares can lose value today but then gain twice as much the next day who wins the guy that gave up yesterday or the one that was strong enough to withstand the slump? There is a song that I wish everybody could listen to but then our tastes in music may be different. Listen to The Story of OJ by JaY-Z. The song opens our minds in terms of things like investments today a piece of Art costs R1million tomorrow it gains value and sells for R2million. I encourage the youth to open their minds and think beyond the now, think beyond those latest sneakers which eventually lose value and start thinking about tomorrow, start thinking investment, we are not too young to think like that but we are smart.