Business
5 reasons you should add death to your financial plans
The important retirement surprises and how not to be wise too late (Part 1)
Before my landlord died, the farm manager who was in charge of his cocoa plantation was gradually taking over the farm. Baba could barely walk, talk or take any decision himself.
All his children were in the city busy chasing money. There was little Baba’s wife could do to salvage the situation. She knew little about the farm, the manager, or the terms of the agreement.
When a financial member of a family dies suddenly, the bereaved not only cry because he or she will be greatly missed, but also because of the negative financial consequences it will cause.
Have you ever thought about your death? I know you do not like to think or talk about it. I know that it feels very uncomfortable to read about a financial topic like this.
No matter how loud you shout “God forbid!”, death is a debt you must pay. Your prayers and healthy living may delay your death; it cannot stop it.
If death comes knocking today, how prepared are you financially? What happens to all the money and assets you have acquired when you die? How do you ensure a smooth transfer of your investments to your survivors?
Thinking about your death is not taboo; it is financial wisdom. Death is a reminder that you are a human being.
Every day draws you nearer to your grave. Death does not come with a siren. Death does not care about your financial goals and financial status.
As much as you wish to live long, death may come knocking faster than you planned. At any time, your final whistle may be blown. Life is so short.
If you live in a country ravaged by insecurity, you are one second away from dying. If you have an underlying health challenge, your chances of packing up anytime are higher.
Those who lost a financial member of the family during the COVID-19 pandemic understand the financial reality death can cause to one’s survivors.
No matter how much you invest in your children’s education, it is easier for them to rise financially when you transfer wealth to them.
No rule says that your children and loved ones must suffer so much to build wealth too when you already have every resource they need.
It is easier to build generational wealth when you consciously add wealth transfer to your financial plans. Donald Trump’s wealth has everything to do with his father’s inheritance. $413million is not a joke.
There are 5 reasons to add death to your financial plans today;
1. What happens to your loved ones after your death?
In most African cultures, some siblings of the deceased may show up from nowhere to claim their ‘rights’ and lay hold of the deceased properties. This should not happen to you.
Your exit should not bring about disputes and hardship to your innocent loved ones. Some families lost everything and went back to the trenches at the demise of a financial member.
There are situations where parents leave their children behind without appointing a suitable guardian or allocating the finances to cater for them and their education. This implies that the children’s fate is left to chance.
It is unfortunate that most spouses are clueless about the financial dealings and are left in the dark if their partner passes away.
It is hard for a widow(er) to raise 3 children conveniently and it is harder when a spouse dies with significant assets that cannot be accessed by anyone.
That your spouse may become a widow(er) is beyond your control. That your children may become orphans may not be your fault. Life happens.
But if your spouse and children become poorer and your loved ones or aged parents become beggars and laughing stocks in the street after your passing away (despite your assets), it is all your fault.
The angels at the gate should wipe you cord on your neck for acting foolishly. Don’t make that costly mistake.
2. What happens to your properties after your death?
When thinking about what may happen when you die, writing a legal will is the starting point.
A will is a clear instruction or written document that states how you want your assets to be distributed. It designates who gets any assets you own. A will makes your wishes formal.
It names the person who carries out your wish after you die.
Anyone within or outside your family can also benefit from a will. No rule states that your female children are not entitled to your inheritance.
A partner from a divorce or second marriage can be a beneficiary. Your stepchildren and lifelong friends can also be a beneficiary.
Writing a will is not only for the rich. Even if all you have is a 2005 Toyota Corolla car, you can write a will. Writing a will is not only for polygamous families.
A will can be printed or hand-written and the information of each asset should be explicitly stated. Some companies offer online services for drafting a digital will.
For the will to be legally binding, it has to be signed by at least 2 witnesses who are not beneficiaries listed on the will. The will can be kept in a probate registry, a personal safe deposit box, a trusted friend or relative, or a deposit box at a bank.
It is mythical to believe that you should only write a will when you are ready to die.
You are not too young to write a will. Anyone of legal age and required mental capacity makes have a will. As soon as you start to acquire assets, you can begin to make a will.
You can change your will after making it due to prevailing changes in circumstances.
A blind, deaf or illiterate can make a will in as much as the content of the will is communicated to them in a known language before witnesses. A married woman is legally fit to make a will.
If you want your property to be given out over some time, rather than as a lump sum, a trust can make that possible. A trust is a legal arrangement that offers control over your property after you die.
If you truly value your loved ones, don’t die without leaving a will. If you truly want to REST IN PEACE tomorrow, you need to leave a will.
Many families have been torn apart because of this negligence. Can you proudly say that you have lived a good and fulfilled life when your families are killing themselves over your inheritance?
It is not enough to transfer your assets to your loved one, transfer your good name too. Even if you do not have any assets, your good name is an asset.
3. What happens to the debts you owe after your death?
Many people will be shocked when they eventually discover that their late parents or spouse used their house as collateral in the bank.
You need to list out all your debts so that your siblings can keep paying them for you.
Knowing that you are not leaving any mess behind for your loved ones gives them the peace to let go. This can make a significant difference to the people that you care about.
4. What happens to your bank account after your death?
If you wish to support a surviving spouse or family members who depend on your income, you need to add death to your financial plans.
There is a type of bank account that you should set up before your passing to make things easy after your death. You can add Payable On Death (POD) or Transfer On Death (TOD) beneficiaries to your bank account.
This is the cheapest and simplest way to ensure that your survivors have easy access to your bank account after your passing. The beneficiaries will not be able to access your bank account directly until you pass.
After your demise, all they need to show is a copy of your death certificate and a valid government ID. Make sure that the names of beneficiaries correspond to the name in the official identity.
You can also add joint account holders with rights of survivorship. That is, your bank account is transferred to your survivors when you pass on.
5. What happens to your digital assets after your death?
For me, apart from my assets, I want my loved ones to keep making money from my published books long after I am gone.
If you do online transactions or use a digital bank or have digital assets, make sure that you write out your account numbers, relevant contact lists, emails, login details, and passwords and keep this information where it can be accessible after your demise.
Don’t just store these details online, have physical copies of every relevant document. Some digital platforms have built-in features that allow you to transfer this information to your survivors.
For the sake of your loved ones, ensure to put your house in order. Life should not be difficult for your loved ones after your passing.
Consult a lawyer for specific guidelines.
Unarguably one of the most exceptionally unique amazons ever produced by the African continent, the story of Ibukunoluwa Abiodun Awosika is intriguing in many ways. Despite being raised in a male-dominated society, she shines as a star, defying all barriers to become a global force in banking, entrepreneurship, and mentorship.
The Founder of The Chair Centre Group, former Chairperson of First Bank of Nigeria, co-founder and past chairperson of Women in Management, Business and Public Service (WIMBIZ), Awosika, is a trailblazer and an outstanding motivation to the African girl child that no barrier exists where there is a will. With a net worth of over $18.6 million, according to estimates from Forbes Africa as of 2012, the 61-year-old is worth more than her monetary value, especially when measured by the impact she’s made as an author and motivational speaker.
Awosika, a recipient of many awards from reputable global brands, was a guest on Channels Television’s Amazing Africans programme, during which she shared her journey from ordinary to extraordinary.
Enjoy some excerpts from this interesting interview!
In The Beginning…
I’m very proud of my entire experience at Methodist Girls High School. First, it was a school that had a lot of culture and a lot of values and sought in many ways to influence our minds in an all-round way. I was very active in sports. I was in the school’s relay team from my second year in school. I was pretty fast, as my friends used to call me ‘The Rabbit’. I was very involved in school plays and I used to debate to represent my school in debates and all of that. So, you had a full life; all the other things to do were fun and we were mixed backgrounds so it wasn’t just an elitist school. It was girls from every kind of home but we all got into the class because we were smart and so you learned from each other so it was a good community.
I have a quote here: ‘Seeing my drive as a young entrepreneur, my father used to say I have given birth to this one and if anything happened, he was always present to assist me even if it meant selling his house to pay up any debts’. He never discouraged you and I’m sure that had a great influence on what you felt you were capable of doing when you don’t have to go against your parents you have their full support.
I am a daddy’s girl, no doubts and no apologies. In many ways I think I had a special relationship with my dad, my siblings always say that he was a hardworking man, he believed in the value of working hard but he was also a very simple man in many ways. My father was in many ways the epitome of contentment. A man who worked hard, and pursued his goals but was happy with his estate in life and was comfortable sitting with the President and can sit the next day with the mechanic and have a gist and talk about it.
When we were young if my father’s driver was driving us to school or somewhere, you didn’t have the right to say, ‘My driver’, because you would get told: ‘You don’t have a driver. My driver doesn’t belong to you’. My dad will tell you: ‘He is my driver and you just have the privilege of being driven’.
I didn’t understand when people asked me later in my 20s: ‘Oh you did something, weren’t you afraid it wasn’t a thing that a girl could do? I didn’t understand it because I grew up in a home where we were mainly girls. My dad had mainly girls. Well, they had three boys in their lifetime and one passed and so I have two brothers and there were five girls. So, we were mainly girls and my dad never told us there was something we couldn’t do. Rather, it was about that we could do anything we wanted to do and we got all the support and encouragement to do that.
My mother was the same in many ways. She had left her Cameroonian home at a very young age, she was about 18 when she left to marry the guy she had met. I think my dad had gone on some Man O’ War thing to Cameroon and they met. She had been betrothed to another king or something; her father was the king of their community. She came to Nigeria and they got married. My dad went to England to further his education and my mom was pregnant with me. She had my brother, she was pregnant with me and was waiting to have me when my dad left for school in England and so she waited, had me, and after I think barely a year, she left my brother and myself with my grandmother and she went to join her husband in England.
You’ve described your father as ‘non-traditional’ in more ways than one. He’s also non-traditional when it comes to maybe even viewing women would you say?
In many ways. I had the liberty of expression, that’s the word I would use and I think that went for myself and all my siblings. My dad was strict in terms of values. He was strict especially because we were mainly girls but as he was strict in terms of making sure he kept us on the straight and narrow path, he was a very supportive, liberated parent in terms of expressing ourselves.
It’s not only your parents who passed on some important life lessons, your grandmother also has played a significant role in your life. Could you let us know how she also lent herself to your trajectory and success?
Well, I think my grandmother had the most influence in nurturing my early years because my grandmother was responsible for me until my parents came back from England by the end of ‘68, early ’69, when I was about 6 or 7 years old or thereabouts. So, the early years of my life were my grandmother’s to nurture. They used to call her by my name ‘cos she had only boys and I was the girl she raised. She had a little shop in our family compound area in Ibadan. My family is from the capital of Oyo State in Ibadan and my grandmother used to sell salt. She had this little shop where she used to sell salt and little things. I think maybe my first exposure to business was sitting in my grandmother’s little store and joyfully handing over products to customers.
I had things figured out so when you follow the trail, you will see just how much the hand of God played in my life you know. When I was in secondary school, I thought I wanted to become a doctor and then I found out that Medical School involved working with real dead bodies and I quickly changed my mind. It was that simple for me, I couldn’t imagine myself playing around with dead bodies so I gave up on being a doctor. Then I thought I wanted to be an architect. Anyway, I ended up in the university to study Chemistry but by the end of my first year in Chemistry, I realised I didn’t love it. I could pass Sciences but it wasn’t a love for me and I wasn’t enjoying it. So, I then thought okay I’d like to be a lawyer because everybody thought I’d make a great lawyer. After all, I used to debate so well and I thought they might just be right. I remember going to sit outside the office of the Dean of Law every day for many days until his secretary said to the man: ‘Look you have seen this young lady, she’s been coming here every day’. And then, this elderly professor, he is dead now. He asked me to come in and asked me: ‘What can I do for you young lady?’ And I said: ‘Sir, I’d like to transfer to law next session.’ The man looked at me and had a good laugh and thought: ‘I like your guts. You know if I only take one person next session it will be you but you must pass very well’. I said, ‘Yes sir’. However, that would be my problem because once you pass very well my department will never release me to him and if I didn’t pass well enough, he wouldn’t take me. I had a Catch 99 Situation. Anyway, I resolved the situation myself because by the end of the session, I changed my mind about wanting to be a lawyer. I now decided I would like to be a Chartered Accountant so I could go and work in a bank.
During my youth service, I was a very rich corper because I was very busy; I was presenting a programme on CTV in Kano. They had some commercial programmes that I used to present. I was doing voiceover and commercials. I was running aerobics classes for private clients because I was an athlete even up to my university level. So I was doing everything to open up myself and I was making money doing that.
From Auditing To Furniture-Making
When I decided I didn’t want to do the audit anymore, I came back home and when I came back I didn’t want to sit down. I had been making my own money and now I didn’t want to go back to my parents to start asking for allowances or anything so I wanted any job I could find first. So, the first job I could get was in a Furniture Company, one week after I came back from Youth Service. Now, I just wanted something to kill time I still had my eyes on going to work in the bank and I only lasted three and a half months in that company. First, I realised whilst there why I had thought about studying Architecture ‘cos all the creative part of me came alive and I realized I was in my element in terms of what I was doing there but I didn’t like the value system of the company and the way they did their business.
I realised working there that when they hired the carpenters, they came with their tools, and that the expensive machinery, there were smaller versions of them, and you could rent the use of those machines without even buying them and there are places where you go and do pay-as-you-go for them to process things for you. There were different factors of production available in this space and all I had to do was think of how to bring them together with three carpenters, two sprayers and two upholsters that was the team.
Building A Transgenerational Business
When I was 31 years old and going on 32, I had my second child. I decided then that I would like to build the business to the highest possible level but I wanted to have a life and in wanting to have a life, I made up my mind that the business must be able to survive without me and I wanted to do it in my lifetime and not when I’m dead so I decided that by 50 I was going to be out of running my business every day. By 48, I had a firm come in and consolidate all my businesses as they were into the Group and then picked people to manage the business in different levels. I have the title of CEO (but) right now I just tell them to refer to me as the founder because I don’t run the business. I have a COO who has the CEO responsibilities, running the entire business and she’ll get his title soon enough. For the past so many years now, I have kept my eye on the business. I’m responsible, I’m focused on helping them in terms of trying to identify the right strategy and if we want to get into new businesses but I’ve allowed the Group to try and find its way without me and I’ve always shunned any temptation to go back.
Why?
Because if you really want a business to outlive you it has to be able to live without you.
Bitcoin surpassed the $50,000 mark on Tuesday, marking its highest value in over two years.
Investor optimism surged as anticipation grew regarding broader trading approval in the US, with hopes riding high on potential green lights for cryptocurrency exchange-traded funds (ETFs).
Despite an initial dip following Washington’s approval signal last month, Bitcoin has rebounded impressively, boasting a 25 percent rally since January 22.
As of the latest data from Bloomberg, the cryptocurrency peaked at $50,328, underscoring the resilience and upward momentum in the crypto market, leaving observers optimistic about its future trajectory.
“Enthusiast buyers bring in more enthusiast buyers pushing prices further up,” Fadi Aboualfa, of Copper Technologies, said.
“The cryptocurrency has momentum on the back of several green weeks and has a large chance of going up further when markets see weekly movements upwards of 10 percent (as we saw last week).”
By 0330 GMT Tuesday, bitcoin had dropped slightly, to $49,950.
While Bitcoin has made an impressive recovery, currently standing above $50,000, it still lags significantly behind its peak value of nearly $69,000 in 2020. This rally signals a bounce-back for the cryptocurrency, which faced turbulent times marked by high-profile scandals and collapses within the crypto industry.
Last year, FTX, the world’s second-largest crypto exchange, suffered a dramatic downfall, with its CEO, Sam Bankman-Fried, now confronting potential consequences. Prosecutors have characterised the situation as “one of the biggest financial frauds in American history,” and Bankman-Fried faces the looming threat of up to 110 years in prison.
In November, Changpeng “CZ” Zhao resigned as CEO of Binance, the world’s largest crypto exchange, following both his and the company’s admission of guilt in extensive money laundering violations.
Bitcoin’s upward trajectory is further fueled by optimism surrounding potential interest rate cuts by the US Federal Reserve this year, as inflation appears to be easing. The cryptocurrency’s value is also influenced by an anticipated supply crunch next year, attributed to the recurring event known as “halving.”
Bitcoin, earned through intricate problem-solving by powerful computers in a process called “mining,” experiences a reduction in reward every four years. With the next “halving” scheduled for April, the limited supply dynamic continues to be a driving force behind Bitcoin’s value surge.
Microsoft joined Apple on Wednesday as a three trillion dollar company, as its big bet on artificial intelligence continued to impress Wall Street.
Now second to Apple as the world’s biggest company by market capitalization, Microsoft’s shares were up 1.31 percent at $404.
Apple remains narrowly in first place at $3.02 trillion after reaching the $3 trillion market capitalization mark for the first time in January 2022.
But it has fallen below the milestone, even briefly losing the pole position as biggest company on the markets when Microsoft briefly overtook the iPhone maker earlier this month.
Microsoft more than any other tech giant is riding the wave of excitement over AI.
The Redmond, Washington-based group has a major partnership with OpenAI, creator of ChatGPT, that is reportedly worth $13 billion.
Since the arrival of ChatGPT, Microsoft has launched several products enabling companies and individuals to use the capabilities of generative AI, notably via its Bing search engine and Copilot virtual assistant.
Since the launch of ChatGPT in early November 2022, Microsoft shares have gained some 67 percent, with Apple’s up by about 40 percent.
Microsoft publishes its results on January 30.
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