Global Money Week 2024

Money, finance, currency, cash, coin or whatever you call it, so many names referring to the same thing depending on the context in which it appears. Everyone has money, we all come across money at some point in our lives and even on a daily basis we come into contact with and even spend money, but after all this is the big question that remains is, how much of it remains with us after a day, a week or a year? How much do we actually get to keep?

Adding on to this, according to the World Bank,

"The world's population of young people between the ages of 15 and 24 is estimated at 1.2 billion, with the vast majority living in poor countries".

As we all know, in poor countries there are poor opportunities. These facts suggest that all these young people will probably have a hard time achieving financial well-being if nothing is done about it. Fortunately, the GMW initiative was launched to address this very issue.

The Global Money Week (GMW) is a global awareness-raising campaign that is done annually. This campaign is focused on the goal of ensuring that young people, become financially aware, and gradually acquire knowledge, skills, attitudes and habits necessary for making sound financial decisions, ultimately achieving financial well-being and resilience.

This initiative is very important in combating poverty because by educating young adults and youth we ensure higher standards of living for generations to come.

Benefits of saving and wise investment

Saving and investing are the cornerstones of all financial well-being whether it be for a country, household or just personal finance. To put this into context, saving allows you to accumulate large sums of money which can then be employed as capital injection in a new business venture or investment. Saving money allows one to actually plan for projects that require financial capital, and it also means that you are always ready if a financial rainy day comes your way.

But then again, only saving is not enough, by having only a savings strategy is like playing a soccer match with only defenders on your team, this is not a winning strategy. Saving only ensures that you are able to maintain your position, for a short while not forever. In order to cover for this strategy gap, we have investing, this is the act of employing money, putting it to work so that it potentially gives us some profit. The keyword on this is “potentially”, by this we mean that not all investments are created equal some of them can be quite detrimental to your financial well-being to a point where they can cause devastating damage to your wallet. Sports betting is one example of a practice that’s considered an investment by most financially uneducated people.

The point being made here is that after saving, the investment phase should follow, putting the money to work. This stage now should be done with a very high degree of discretion and due diligence in verifying the potential and risk of an investment opportunity. The practice of doing this is called intelligent investing, basically putting money in an investment that you actually know about in depth.

Risks of losing money and prevention techniques

Every single day, large amounts of money are lost through a lot of means, ranging from bad investments all the way to armed robberies and cybercrime. Financial loss is a very real an ever-present danger that can happen to anyone, from individuals, small companies and even up to the biggest corporations in the world.

The thing to note however, is that all these financial losses do not happen in the same way, they can be a result of things such as bad investments or actual robbery. For robbery and fraud, perpetrators employ a vast array of techniques and strategies to execute the heists and they are constantly improving and coming up with new ones. The most targeted for financial crimes are the big companies and the affluent people within societies.

Prevention techniques can include any of the following:

• Minimizing posting of your wealthy lifestyle via social media
• Dealing with regulated financial institutions in investment or payments
• Using documentation and receipts in transactions
• Doing proper due diligence and research before investing

Protecting your money from identity theft and cyberattacks

In this digital economy where the world of finance is largely intertwined with technology, a new threat has emerged, and it is the cyber-attacks and identity theft. Attackers have been taking advantage of people's weak security practices when using their phones, computers or whatever devices they use to access their banking services. After they gain access, they proceed to collect data such as credentials which they then use to initiate transactions on behalf of the account holder and steal their funds.

This is indeed a horrifying reality, imagine waking up one morning and finding your entire life savings gone. This possibility calls for serious measures to protect against such a nuisance so here are a few ways you can avoid becoming one of the statistics.

• Use secure passwords for your devices
• Make sure all your devices have some kind of security
• Ensure that you have 2 factor authentication if it is available
• Don't share account credentials with unverified callers

Finances are a very serious part of everyone’s livelihood, the average individual literally works 5 days or more every week. All this work is an effort to ensure that at least finances will be in order, and we are able to afford sustenance, shelter and comfortable lifestyle. That being said, we should all ensure that we take a proactive stance towards protecting and growing our finances. For a start, you go through the list of precautions and tactics we talked about, compare these with your current practices, if there are any gaps adjust accordingly and make a habit of remaining consistent.