This Week in The Khuta – Choose to be wise

Has any of you noticed the acronyms being used these days? Am I the only one that finds all these acronyms silly? We seem to be turning into an acronymic world, and that can’t be good. How lazy can we get? Instead of actually laughing, someone would just say LOLUSA (Laughing out Loud Until my Sides Ache) or ROFLMBO (Rolling On the Floor Laughing My Butt Off). I was actually fond of using LOL myself, until a friend politely asked me not to use it anymore. We’ve even gone as far as wearing brands made up of thousands of letters that do not make sense put together but confuse the young ones in the process of learning the alphabet. This’ just insane! Anyhow, this’ a topic for another day.
I almost could not believe it when I realised how close we are to parting ways with 2012. Just three more months to go and we’ll be waving good-bye to the year. We are indeed racing against time. And as much as I would like to rejoice and set the table for 2013 already, I’ve got to admit that I’m far from prepared to do so. I wish I could go on my knees and beg for more time, to give 2012 a warm deserving goodbye, because there is so much that I have vowed to achieve before the year is over but have not yet.
We all, or at least most of us, go crazy with setting resolutions at the beginning of the year. Things we want to achieve throughout the year. But only a very few of us really stick to these plans and achieve our goals. Not because the rest are not wise enough to fulfil them, but mostly due to idleness, and before we realise it, the year is gone. And so we push the same resolutions to the following year and the cycle is repeated year in year out. But what we sometimes shut our eyes to, are the effects these things have on our lives. I’ve been planning to get my driver’s licence for the past two years now and I’ve lost out on good opportunities just because I don’t have that paper.
The other thing we are fond of doing is failing to prioritise. I’m so sure that some of you have probably already started planning where and how Christmas is going to be spent. Not that there’s anything wrong with it, it is of course very wise and advisable to plan well in advance, but as long as we do all these without putting our priorities last. Someone could be planning a Christmas party to the coast but has not yet decided on his/her children’s school for next year, nor set aside the enrolment money.
We all know that from this time of the year until December, it is weddings season in Namibia, especially in the northern areas, and we tend to go crazy and overspend, mostly to impress the next girl/guy or onlooker, forgetting that the dry month January is around the corner. And what do we do when January hits us; we run to cash loans and nag the banks for overdrafts after exhausting our money-wise friends’ lending accounts. As for school enrolment, we start camping outside school gates and fill the waiting lists, when all these could have been avoided by doing the right thing at the right time.
What I’m trying to say here is that we should learn from our mistakes and choose to be wiser, especially with finance. We go through the same dilemmas every year yet we do not want to learn. If you are going to make resolutions, stick to them. And don’t forget to always draw up a budget, it makes your spending so much easier and saves you money that you would have spent on impulse buying. And prioritise! I’ve learned my lesson, though it had to be the hard way. To this season’s wedding fever couples, nayitye ngo waka!