Driving too fast or too slow?

Last year, my wife and I drove to Mzuzu to condole a family friend who had lost a mother. May his mother’s soul rest in peace.

While driving back from there, some lessons emerged that are so relevant for many of us—in as far as wealth creation is concerned. We left Mzuzu around 1300hrs and had planned to be in Lilongwe by 1700hrs. So we had to determine the speed at which we needed to travel. I remembered my late primary school teacher’s basic arithmetic formula of finding speed i.e. distance divide by time. So we came to the conclusion that we needed to drive at anything between 100 to 120 km per hour.

We then started off on our journey. What was interesting was that every time I relaxed on my accelerator, as I normally do when I am talking while on the wheel, my wife would remind me I was below 100km/hr. So I would accelerate again. If I saw a vehicle in front and wanted to overtake it, my wife would remind me I should not bother because we were already driving at 120 km/hr. She would only allow me to overtake if the car in front of us was driving at a slower speed than 100km/hr. If some car was driving at over 120km/hr, we would allow it to pass and were never tempted to drive faster and catch up with it.

This may seem a simple tale of a couple driving. But it has lessons worth so much if you only heed what lies in it. You see, wealth creation is very much the same. I will give you two lessons that emerge from this: First, you don’t have to compete with others, but set your own financial and investment goals. Determine where you want to be financially by a certain age or period of time.

Don’t build houses just because others are building. Don’t buy top of the range Mercedes Benz just because your neighbour has a Lexus. Simply determine your financial and investment destiny and follow it through. Otherwise, you will land yourself in trouble. Big trouble, actually. Many people have ended up in jail or started huge investments which they could not complete because they were only mimicking others.

Second, you need to let those that will be part of your investment or financial plans to be fully consulted so they know what will be happening. In our driving example, my wife and I had agreed the speed at which we had to travel. She would then advise me on my speed because we both knew where we were going and when we wanted to be there. We then kept each other in check so that anything that could derail us from meeting this goal was quickly spotted and addressed.

This question I leave with you today: Are you not driving too fast or too slow? Watch out!