Whether your dreams include buying a home, starting a business, or traveling the world, sound financial management is the key to turning these dreams into reality.

Personal finance is the comprehensive practice of managing your money in a way that aligns with your financial aspirations and goals.

This multifaceted discipline includes a variety of activities such as budgeting, saving, investing, and planning for retirement. Each of these components plays a crucial role in ensuring your financial stability and growth.

Budgeting in personal finance is the process of creating a plan to manage your income, expenses, and savings. It involves deciding in advance how you will allocate your money to cover various needs and goals.

Here are some key points about budgeting, Income and Expenses, Spending Control, Savings. Creating a budget can give you more control over your finances and help you achieve both short-term and long-term financial stability. Do you have any specific goals or areas you’d like to focus on in your budget?

Savings refers to the portion of your income that you set aside and do not spend immediately. This money is typically reserved for future use, such as emergencies, large purchases, or long-term goals like buying a house or retirement. cash idling in a savings account becomes wasteful because it loses purchasing power to inflation over time.

Instead, cash not tied up in an emergency should be placed in something that will help it maintain its value or grow, such as investments.

Investing is the act of allocating money into financial assets or ventures with the expectation of generating a profit or income over time. Investing can be a powerful tool for growing your wealth, but it’s important to understand the risks and do thorough research or consult with a financial advisor.

Planning for retirement in personal finance involves preparing financially for the period in your life when you will no longer be working full-time.

The goal is to ensure you have enough money saved and invested to maintain your desired lifestyle after you stop working. It’s never too early to start planning and seeking advice from a financial advisor can be very helpful.

Keep in mind that managing personal finances is an ongoing journey, not a single destination. The financial landscape is always evolving, and it’s crucial to stay informed and adaptable.

Continuously educating yourself about new financial strategies and adapting to changing circumstances will help you navigate this journey successfully. By doing so, you can ensure that your financial decisions are well-informed and aligned with your long-term goals.

Here are few steps to aid your journey into sound personal finance management.

1. Access your Financial Health

Financial health refers to the overall condition of your financial situation, encompassing all actions that impact your monetary affairs. It’s important to recognize that everyone’s circumstances are unique, so it’s essential to tailor your assessment to your personal needs and goals. Financial health includes various aspects, such as:

• Cash Balance: A growing cash balance indicates positive financial health.
• Expenses and Debt: Monitor your expenses and debt, such as credit cards, mortgages, and loans. Aim for minimal fluctuations in expenses.
• Savings and Net Worth: Assess your net worth—whether it’s positive or negative. Consider your savings, investments, and assets available for current or future use.
• Investment Returns: Strong returns on investments contribute to financial health. Diversify your investments for stability.

To improve your financial health:

• Assess your net worth                                          Pay down your debts
• Create a budget you can stick to                         Build an emergency fund

2. Understanding Investment basics

An investment involves using capital in the present to increase an asset’s value over time. It’s the act of allocating resources (usually money) with the expectation of generating income, profit, or gains.

When making an investment decision, an individual must consider some key factors; investment objective, risk and return, liquidity need and investment duration.

• Investment Objective

An investment objective is a set of financial goals that guide an investor’s decisions regarding their investment. The objective of the investment defines the goal of an investment.

It could be Increasing the value of your investment over time (Growth), generating regular income from the investment (Income), Protecting the initial investment from loss or a combination of more than one.

Understanding your investment objective helps in creating a tailored investment strategy that aligns with your personal finance goal.

• Risk and Returns

In personal finance, risk refers to the potential for losing some or all your investment. When considering risk, it’s important to understand both your willingness and ability to take risks. These two concepts help determine your overall risk tolerance.

Willingness to Take Risk

This is your personal comfort level with taking risks. It reflects your attitude and emotional response to potential losses and gains.

Some people are naturally more risk-averse, preferring safer investments, while others are more risk-tolerant and comfortable with the possibility of higher losses for the chance of higher returns.

The recent study titled “Excitement, Superstition, and Great Insecurity – How Global Consumers Engage with the Digital World” reveals that 61% of consumers surveyed in the Middle East, Turkiye, and Africa (META) region believe the identities of the deceased are particularly vulnerable to identity theft.

As for the recreation of ones’ online presence using artificial intelligence (AI), 37% of respondents in the META region find it acceptable, while another 37% actively disagrees, highlighting the unresolved issues of privacy and respect in the digital realm.

According to the “Digital 2024 Global Overview Report” conducted by Kepios, 95% of Internet users now use social media every month, with 282 million new identities joining between July 2023 and July 2024.

“As more people interact online and their digital footprints expand, the concerns over privacy, legacy, and the ethical use of digital identities become increasingly relevant.

Based on Kaspersky’s new study, the majority (61%) of consumers surveyed in the META region believe the identities of the deceased are particularly vulnerable to identity theft, as there is often no one left to monitor what happens to the information posted online.

More than half of the respondents in the META region (59%) agree that the online presence of people who have passed away could be recreated using AI.

The attitude to it varies, with 37% of respondents believing it is acceptable to create a digital identity of someone no longer alive through photos, videos, or other mementos, while another 37% disagrees.

Interestingly, most people (67%) are sure seeing images, or stories, about people who have passed away can be upsetting to those who were close to them.

However, 47% of consumers are confident there is no time limit to find every image, video, or voice recording ever published online relating to a specific person.

As probably the only measure consumers can take to control their digital footprint after death is to include instructions in their testament, 66% agree anyone with an online presence should specify in their will what is to be done with their data and social accounts.

“The issue of managing one’s digital footprint is often overlooked in daily online activities. However, the survey results underscore a critical point: a significant number of respondents are aware of the potential for stolen identities to cause immense personal trouble for users, or their loved ones.

Given these risks, it is prudent to adopt proactive measures that enhance privacy and safeguard digital identities. By doing so, individuals can ensure that their online presence remains secure and respectful, no matter what,” comments Anna Larkina, web content analysis expert at Kaspersky.

Mrs Tola Odeyemi, postmaster general of the federation and chief executive officer, Nigerian Postal Service (NIPOST), has said the agency plans to generate N10 billion in revenues this year.

She said the present leadership of NIPOST has taken steps to change the narratives of the agency by ensuring that the company adds values to the activities of government and impacts positively on the lives of ordinary Nigerians.

Odeyemi said NIPOST has signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with the Small and Medium scale Enterprises (SMEDAN) to ensure that the cost of moving goods/services through NIPOST for 22 million businesses that registered with SMEDAN is reduced by 15 percent. This, she said, would boost the economy and improve productivity across all sectors of the national economy.

The postmaster general made the remarks at the opening ceremony of a three-day Strategic Management Retreat for the Management staff of NIPOST, Directors, and Postal Managers from the 36 states and the FCT. The retreat took place at DRACC Aco Estate, Lugbe, Abuja.

She said the retreat had the theme “Empower, Innovate, Shape: Nigerian Post, optimised for Excellence “noted that it was targeted at “ensuring alignments of all our day-to-day activities so that they would be in tandem with the vision and mission of the present leadership.”

“We want to explore opportunities for efficiency, and energise NIPOST base across all the 774 local government areas.  It has become necessary that we must deliver the minimum level of service that is expected from NIPOST,” she said.

Odeyemi said NIPOST would upgrade its technology architecture to improve on its mail delivery systems and build public trust and confidence in the agency, stating that complaints reaching the management on missing mails are due to human errors.

“Yes we are aware of the compliant about missing mails. We are going to upgrade our technology with end-to-end tracking system. This enables us know where things go wrong because this is a human system, so you experience some errors. But we will address the errors through improved technology, “ Odeyemi said.

The NIPOST boss said efforts have also reached advance stage for NIPOST to restart its e-commerce,  financial services, NIN enrolment and registration using its facilities in all the 774 local governments of the country.

Odeyemi said:”There is a lot of work being done with little resources that NIPOST has. One of the things I want to change is that I want to increase revenue, for revenue generation we are starting last man delivery of some government services and NIN registration. It will be available in all our locations.

“We are restarting our financial services, meaning that one can be able to do simple financial transactions, like bills payments, utilities payments, cash in cash out, at any NIPOST location.

“We are also increasing our presence in e-commerce and logistics, haulage services using all our locations for the good of Nigeria.

“Under the Renewed Hope Agenda one of the things that we have done is our partnership with SMEDAN. They have a mandate to ensure that across Nigeria, NANO, Micro small and medium enterprises function properly.

“One of the key aspects of this industry is the ability to move their goods from production to end-users or customers. This is one of the areas we want to participate in the diversification of the economy.

“ It’s to enable people to move goods at a reduced cost, and we just signed an MoU with SMEDAN and we are reducing prices by 15 % for the over 22 million businesses that register with SMEDAN.

“So we want to be the enabling platform to improve trade and commerce in the country.

“We will also have agro logistics products, we are in agrarian states where you have excess capacity for agricultural production. This we will do to help farmers move their produce to either the aggregator or to the table. It could be from the farm to the table or from farm to business.”