Do you really calculate? I mean, calculate your actions.
Sometime in October 2024, I was pointed to a store opposite where we were standing by an acquaintance I was chatting with. He said to me, pointing at the store, ‘This store was rented at N300,000.00 per annum (which I knew). The fridge/deep freezer was a giant type, and you know what it means, the shop dividers were 4, each was N100,000.
He attested that he had built one of such dividers recently for his wife, who was doing a more massive business. As he talked, I imagined what the shop owner is selling in a N300,000 store, 4 dividers of N100,000 for one, and a giant deep freezer of about N350,000.00, among other things like a cabinet desk, chairs, electricity bills, sanitation fees, and yard services. She was selling Sachet Ovaltine, Milo, and Peak milk, and sachet tomatoes (Retail, not wholesale). Not only that, every yard in such a neighbourhood has the same kiosk or shop selling the same stuff, some yards have up to 3 shop owners, or persons selling the same sachet stuff. I imagined that as we talked, do people calculate expenses and income when issues of business, entrepreneurship, or start-ups hit their minds? Must they pay for anything example, space, etc?
Every morning where I live, I watch under 2years being packaged for schools in uniforms, hire Keke NAPEP, or taxi, or driven to school by idle mothers who will return home to a private store, shop, shade, or home to sleep, do some home chores, sometimes it can be idle fathers, etc.
These children’s school fees, entertainment fees, party fees, weekly toilet tissue papers, soaps, etc, are not up to the income the woman or the man makes in a month, yet the child is muzzled into those, playgroup, crèche, pre-nursery, nursery, pre-primary, and then primary.
The question is do parents calculate their expenses and income? Do they calculate their actions, activities, decisions, and consequences?
Do they imagine what they spend, whether they realize it? Is Under-2 years of school age? Has an under-2-year-old developed a learning acumen? Since the mother or father is not sufficiently employed, can’t the unemployed or less employed party provide the playgroup the child needs in which they can pay for by sending the child to a playgroup, creche, pre-nursery, nursery, and pre-primary?
Do parents calculate who they are sending their child? To a minder, they paid N20,000 monthly?
With your school fees of N50,000 and extra expenses of uniform, books, parties, entertainment, and sanitaries of over N60,000? Most parents cannot employ the minders who mind their child from 7 am to 3 pm in their own house, yet they send their children to be cultured and educated by the same underemployed minders. Such parents return from work or an outing at night when children have already slept. The next morning, everyone goes out. The circle continues. Tell me, who is the true trainer? The true educator?
Parents abscond from their duty of child-training to minders & preparatory schools.
Do Gen Z parents do calculations?
People hardly calculate. They do things because they see others are doing same. I know of a lady whose salary earnings is not up to N30,000 but is paying over 20,000 on school fees, excluding rents, food, only to be supported by ‘you know’.
They want education, maybe, knows it is good [you will argue now] but why didn’t they taste it, get it first. While do they start early but later fizzle out later.
Follow me intently.
My candid opinion is not that those parents see advantage…if they do, it would have reflected on the priority they give to education if throughout their own lives, not necessarily through their children. You would argue this but I’m right. The reason you see this abracadabra is because;
- One, most people don’t calculate; like the store owner and the parents.
- Two, most people do things by imitating others. They have not program of theirs.
For you,
- Do you ever calculate your actions and expenses/cost associated with it before embarking on it?
- Do you ever study consequence of your decisions not just deciding, consequences of your decisions weighs more than the decisions?
- Do you calculate your expenses, incomes, your revenues, expenses, TPs, Airtime, Foods etc?
If your rent is 50% of your income, you’re playing the fool or in fool paradise. Sure, you know?
What of your feeding, dressing, medicine, transportation, education, and development? Calculate the ability to renew any rentage or maintain any economic/social lifestyle. Social life? Were you born to pay rent to landlords for stores, offices, and houses? Are you living your life for rent?
Do you calculate?
Take time to calculate on your activities cum actions.
Mike Ihezuo can be reached via the CONTACT.
