I Turned 21. Then Lost 300k in A Sacco that went Down the Drain!
Sacco Loss
I was Shocked. I went through the stages of Grief in a flash. Denial. Anger. Bargaining. Depression. Acceptance. No! I never allowed myself to get depressed. What I did I accepted the situation real fast and immersed myself into understanding how Sacco’s work. Such that when I talk to Sacco’s, I am not just talking from a blank page. It’s always a Dejavu moment. I have been down this street!
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That was not just a 300k Loss! That was;
Memory
It has been some moons later but that memory doesn’t and isn’t poised to go away. It is what I will call a bitter sweet memory. It is a money memory that I will always live with. Sometimes I ask myself what would be the value of 300k now?
What would have happened if I didn’t lose that amount?
I was just putting myself out into the game. I was learning the ropes. Then I got to learn it the hard way first time. Do you think I am going to lose money in a Sacco another time? Hell No!
Life Time
Well. That time, that was all I had. It was a life time. It was sacrifice. Flashing back, at that moment, one would easily imagine the world would crash. It is the kind of feeling nations have when there is an economic meltdown. Maybe. Perhaps.
My teenage hood was wrapped around playing dice in the hood and navigating ways to tap a coin or two. From errands to Tips to bargain saves from groceries. Everything but a coin!
Well. And then I kept and sold pets. Puppies. Rabbits. Doves. I morphed into a Pablo Escobar of the pet world.
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Trust
In part, that loss injured my trust system. I started to imagine that we are all not safe. And that we are not protected. And that we can crash sooner than we expect.
The lose almost looked like I had just auctioned my teenage hood for nothing fair enough return. Come on as a sixteen, seventeen old, I’d perhaps imbibe on candies other than saving that cash to tuck it off in a Sacco saving account. An effort that would all drain down the sewer by my 21st Birthday!
Discipline
Why Discipline? That was money I had diligently saved weekly since when I had left high school at 16. Here is the cut; when I joined the Sacco, the unwritten law was meet once weekly and save 200/= at each session. But I gave myself a ceiling. I chose to commit to save 1250/= weekly diligently. I was the pace setter. I had the attention. Chaps in there would gather under my knees wanting to learn my ways. And then all that just went under the drain in a flash!
I lost the money. But I kept the discipline.
Lesson
I can proudly report that over that entire period; doing the Sacco and post the Sacco sinking, I picked tons of lessons. Lessons that to date guide my steps around money and the whole game of numbers. One day when it fails to rain, I will seat you all down in a Money lessons class!
Sometimes I feel like I didn’t really loose 300K. I feel like 300k was the price I paid to take finances seriously.
That perhaps I am your typical guinea pig for the BURNT TOAST THEORY; this theory tells that if you burn your toast (or if something challenging happens) the time that you spend making another toast may have saved you from something bad happening (A car accident for example) (Or losing a bigger fortune in a different scheme like in my case) So when something challenging happens or when you face a failure, just trust the process, because everything happens for a reason. It does!
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?TheBrandCoach?
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