Young, Fabulous and FLAT BROKE

The allure of youth is a fabulous thing. High energy, zest for life and the unconquerable feeling that you can walk through a brick wall all by your sheer will and determination! Till this day my mother calls me ‘Miss Independent’. I earned that nick name because of my can do attitude. There is hardly a thing I set my heart on that I will not strive to achieve, regardless of who agrees with me on the matter or not. This is what the foolishness of youth does to you. It makes you feel invincible, like there is nothing you cannot achieve and no one that can stop you. However after a few years on planet earth you begin to learn that what your elders see sitting down you cannot even begin to imagine standing on a hill. You make your mistakes and learn your own path to wisdom. Wisdom, this is a tricky thing. Some people are wise by default, possibly, after learning from experience. While others repeat the same mistakes over and over again and for one reason or the other never learn the salient lesson from their mistakes. Personally, I have learnt the hard way to live within my means. Days of over spending on credit cards only to find that Loui and Gucci cannot pay my food and light bill. So, today, if I see something I cannot afford, I just say to myself “one day, Glory, one day” and move along. But this was not a lesson I learnt easily. Not at all. There was a time when I would spend all my weekly earning in three days and live the remaining four days feeling miserable, vowing to be smarter the following week only to repeat the same mistake in record time! So you can image how awkward I feel when I meet people whose financial outlook differs widely from mine. I remember during my previous birthday in Lagos, I was unemployed at the time so I warned all my friends before hand that they would have to pay for their own food. A lot of people thought I was crazy! Someone even suggested that I borrow money to celebrate my birthday in grand style or use the financial gifts I was given to throw some lavish soiree. I couldn’t understand the logic behind their advice, why would someone who is currently unemployed loan money off people just to throw a party, surely if I needed cash it would be for other important things. But apparently ‘keeping up with the joneses’ regardless of your financial standing is the order of the day for most young people today. It still amazes me how people can pay five, even six or seven times for a pair of shoes or for a weave! Like really, are you kidding me? A friend of mine who sells clothes and hair is constantly complaining about how she has to chase people all round the 37 States (including FCT) of Nigeria to collect her cash. According to her, it is the so called ‘socialites’ that are the worst culprits. She recently told me about a particular customer of hers who is notorious for buying goods and disappearing for months on end. Recently, this customer bought a pair of shoes for N150,000 and told her she would send her driver the next day with the cash. True to her word, the driver arrived the very next day but instead came with a cheque for half the amount post dated for 6 months!

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