By Ofwono Opondo
You are broke and your bank account is empty yet. You don’t have to watch too much television because you are wasting your life.
It’s December, that festive season when, especially in Uganda the most broke people spend the highest percentage of their year’s earnings in gluttonous consumption to impress family, peers, neighbours and whoever else may cross their paths.
This weekend, most village savings groups will open their boxes to share ‘dividends’ that will wholly be spent on the short-term luxuries.
As for the government officials, expensive cards and office parties are flying around to congratulate and wishing each other Merry Christmas, and a Happy New year in keeping with an archaic tradition even where they know that they hold grudges against one another.
Most of the broke people are going to obey some of the unreasonable demands from their church leaders to donate beyond their means after which they go begging menacingly from relatives and politicians, or return home with false hopes that God will give them blessings just because priests or pastors said so.
In January and February, they will be crying loud in desperation that life is so hard they are unable to send back children for beginning of the school academic year.
In these circumstances, it would be prudent to pay tuition and purchase critical scholastic items before the lavish festive spending, but unfortunately common sense it not that common.
If you are broke therefore, you don’t have to waste time watching television, subscribing every month paying DSTV, StarTimes and GoTv, to watch and discuss Arsenal, ManU, Liverpool, Man City, Barcelona, Real Madrid, Juventus, their respective players and how expensive they are, after which you return to your empty homes yawning.
Some of you broke people are even members of those fan clubs and you know in detail how much they earn, their net worth, the luxury cars they own, drive and houses they live in, while you carry poverty in your stomachs and heads. You have so much time to argue about these footballers who are pound sterling millionaires although you will never even come close to them. Often, you even stake financial baits as to who of them plays better football, a hero, legend, even engage in bust-ups and fistfights at pubs.
You cry that you are financially very broke but have too much time to watch Telemundo, Bollywood and Telenovela. You keep this junk information in your head and in doing so you live a junk life without knowing.
So if you want to change your life for the better in 2025 you need to reduce or stop altogether watching these foreign football matches, discussing their games and players like crazy. Don’t do things that will most likely not add value to your life. Instead, discuss, learn and acquire a new profitable skill that will help change your life for the better.
It should be a skill you can exchange for money because everything you achieve has to do with the content in your mind and body, and it is what will determine the size of your pocket or bank account.
If your mind is always empty, your pocket or bank account to will always be empty. You have to learn how to make money every day, week, and month because you spend money in each of those days.
Don’t do things to impress those around you because after all people don’t think much about you anyway as you may think.
Learn to say no, to friends, family members and to yourself so that you don’t upend your financial ability for that one-day 25 December. Let’s make 2025 and beyond more productive and shared prosperity for Ugandans.
