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Sir,

How do you convince this generation that education is the key to success when there are rich criminals, but poor graduates? How do you convince a student to remain humble when they know more than the master?

How do you convince a Christian of the riches in tithing when the non-religious remain wealthier? How do you convince a gamer to employ the same strategies when the variables of the game have changed?

All these are random thought questions, where the element of individual choice reduces the value relevance of any argument made, simply because they are highly opinionated.

Fail

Sometimes we fail to take the best advice we can ever get because it is opposed to our personal opinions. I feel that these, however, pale in comparison to our failure to heed the best advice we could ever receive about our financial lives.

It is safe to say that as a generation of youth we have learnt about money, if we ever did at all, from people who turn out not to know any more than we do.

From the coin bottles and piggy banks, all these were not entirely new. They mean well, and perfectly embody financial awareness which is central to financial health.

Taught

I could hazard a guess and say that the younger ones are still taught to take a similar path. However, I would have supposed that the one takeaway from the times we are living in would have been conformity.

There is a time for everything to have a novelty value. Again, there is a time for the novelty to wear off. The global financial landscape has changed; the same skills cannot demand the same pay cheque forever. Times like these should have shown that the only way forward to have all that we hold near and dear is through sustainable practises, in every discipline. It is no longer about making money now, but the crux is on value creation and sustainability for your means of making money. This plays into a larger narrative that sustainable practices are the vehicle to a better life.

Skills

We ought to ask ourselves if the same skills from university are still productive and a sustainable means to a pay cheque? If the same piggy bank mentality is sustainable? If it bears us value beyond what we have put in? There is a need to change our mindset, and learn conforming to global standards of skills and career development. We live under a competitive atmosphere in the jobs and skills market, a single pay cheque and un-nurtured skills are almost no longer enough. We have the ingredients to better financial lives. We need to learn to take advice without letting personal opinions being an impediment to the best advice we could ever get.

Thabani AK Banda