Building wealth in todays world as a young man takes a lot of sacrifice, perseverance and focus. As for me, 2020 was a rough year financially even for everyone including households, govt and everyday people, we had to imbibe the habit of living prudently and only attending to what was important financially while saving for the future. As a millennial living in Lagos, there are a thousand and one distractions happening here and there that wants you to do away with your disposable income and keep up as a socialite but if you are too drowned into this lifestyle quick you would wake up one day regretting why you failed to save for tomorrow.

I pride myself to be a minimalist and live a rather spartan lifestyle even though i lived life as a middle class Nigerian, went to good private schools and met people with influence in todays society, but i have come to a realization that one of the biggest distraction as a young men when it comes to building wealth is "Consumerism". The need to always buy, buy and buy what isn't exactly important just to be able to keep up with the Joneses. The American industrial complex have developed a way to hack into the human mind to get you to buy, buy and buy and God forbid you be the odd one out in your circle who doesn't have the new iPhone 19 or Samsung Galaxy F1, you are almost seen as if you are not important or someone without substance. I have been reading a lot of personal finance lately on forums like Reddit and you get to hear white boys draw up a 20year plan on how they plan to save xyz amount of money before they reach 40 and retire. For folks who reside in British West Africa, you get to ask yourself wait, a 20year old white boy charting up a plan he wants to follow judiciously on saving and retiring in his 40s how is that even f**king possible. Just early this year, a lot of white boys who had Robinhood accounts were showing screenshots of how much they made with the Netflix, AMC and Gamestock stock boom and some that i saw ran into millions of dollars, so imagine a young boy 28years old having $1.1m in stock value he can decide to invest a large chunk of it and his generation is set for life.


The second threat to financial success for young people today is the influence of Pop culture. Mainstream media in conjunction with Global industrial complex have perfected a way to get young people hooked on a certain lifestyle, product or service. They handpick someone who they think it's best for their brainwashing campaign and get them to pitch a certain product or service to young people which get's them to loose their damn minds and the inability to critique if this product or service is beneficial to me or not.

Like the popular saying goes money for hand back for ground, dating in modern day Nigeria is too transactional and it's a case of what can you do for me before you can get my attention. This has left a lot of young men to do away with dating in itself before it damages your pocket worse than you came. But how did we get here. Nigeria from the Fons et origo has always been a conservative society and slightly egalitarian in nature, we do everything as a family unit rather than an individualistic mindset, so things like "group economics" and pooling resources for the greater good of the family was the code that we lived by. In America folks who are dating combine monies together to pay rent, and share resources amongst each other even amongst couples the man can be responsible for paying mortgage and the wife other household bills, in few years down the line they have one or two prosperities to pass down as generational wealth that can x10 in value as against the amount it was paid for initially. Nollywood has influenced a nouveau rich wealthy class narrative where guy who has to bear the brunt of breaking out financially paying the black tax, taking care of himself and family and also investing in his future and you wonder why a lot of men don't live long among us. I like the fact that today's men are challenging the status quo by demanding the woman to also split the bill when it comes to romantic dates and contribute their quota to family upkeep because it isn't easy for one person to stomach all the responsibility of raising a family all by himself while his wife exist just for the sake of looking pretty. Even today's young men don't want to get married to women from families where they are not well to do or the girl in question doesn't have a job or in cases where the girl's family has too many poor dependents. We have come to challenge the status quo that Nollywood has fed us that the rich guy is coming to the village to come and marry the poor beautiful girl from the village just because she is a virgin and looks beautiful.


The most important thing in life is a plan, the richest people in the world today didn't have the money to fund their business empire but they sure had a plan, sometimes the the most important thing you need in not not money just yet but a "Plan". We owe it as a duty to map out a 10-20 year plan on how we intend to achieve goals we have set for ourselves, we should set these goes to be high with a target even if we don't met 80% and we end up doing 41% we would be proud of ourselves that we made tremendous effort.


Nigeria has a large population of young people, i reside in Lagos and i can tell you for a fact that there are a thousand and one people who do they same thing you do, have the same qualification as you do, and maybe even reside in the same district where you stay so it make living in Nigeria today aside the fact that we have a large population very competitive. You have to do something exceptional before you can be able to achieve success, but what if we are approaching this the wrong way, what if the way to attain success is if we can practice group economics combines skills, resources and effort together be a part of a cause. This could be a better strategy rather than moving as a lone wolf.


Covid has sure taken a hit into everyone's finances, and its more complex when you have dependents who need xyz amount of cash so they can pay a bill or need money to buy groceries, pay for hospital bills and so on. While i very much appreciate the close knit family system in Nigeria that is available to lend a helping hand to family members in help, these monies also come from people's savings stash and inconvenience them further even when it is painstakingly hard to say "NO". Just from 2020 up until now, i have had request from people who i least expect who want to lend xyz amount of cash to do this or that, while some i have offered my token to help in the situation some have borrowed and chosen not to pay back and what can you do? Life is hard one everyone i understand but you cut yourself in half trying to please the world, sometimes cut yourself some slack because you deserve it.