Hepa Msoto Mapema

There’s something many young people like me don’t realize. Life has always been biased in our favor. Younger athletes are preferred over their older counterparts while successful young entrepreneurs such as Mark Zuckerberg and Evan Spiegel are more adored than the seventy year old billionaires. Even intellectually stimulating games that require focus and experience such as Chess seem to favor younger competitors than grandmasters.

Now add financial planning to that growing list and we have a crucial issue to discuss. The general perception is that financial planning is something that should be reserved for older adults who are probably in their 40s – adults who have had real experience with money. Such an assumption is misguided and it couldn’t be any further from the truth. In fact, thinking about financial planning only when you are in your 40s or 50s is akin to wanting to learn and play professional soccer at that age and still be as good as Ronaldo and Aguerro. You could try, but there’s a guarantee that you will lose to the younger guys.

That’s why we need to plan ourselves now. Kitu Ni Kuckachora

Why we don’t plan on our finances when we are young

Jipange sai ndio usisote. The reason is quite simple. In our 20s, a lot of us do not have much financial worries – especially if we have cushy jobs paying not more than 50K.

The thought of managing your finances might have come across your mind, but that seldom goes beyond the superficial budgeting for a Mashujaa holiday weekend, or to afford the latest smartphone. That shouldn’t the case.

Why we only care about our finances when we are older

The older you get, the better you generally manage your finances. However, that arises from the need to, and not because we want to.

Between getting married, buying a house, having a child or two, realizing that your parents and having to pay off tons of electricity, water and health bills at the end of each month ), you might start to realize that your meager pay rise of between 3-5% annually is insufficient to cope with both inflation and all these additional expenses.

Somewhere during the process, we are forced to learn how to manage our finances better.

Kachore – Panga pesa zako mapema

Financial planning needs to be done when you are young. If you start young, you can end up doing better than someone who started later, despite putting in lesser effort and earn less money.The bottom line is that saving and investing when you are young is not only easier, but also more rewarding.