WE MAY be geographically located in diverse regions but as long as you consume some product, there is no doubt that you will probably have your financial back to the wall if you have not proactively put your finances in order.

In many places, fuel has gone up by about 30% this year and this invariably filters through to most consumer product classes. If your income has not increased by a proportionate amount, then you are one of the millions of people who are at the mercy of global interdependence.

Trust the West to harangue the United Nations to try and support some war in high quality oil producing Libya with no clear end strategy on the horizon. You would expect them to do better with their oversized intelligence network, but history from Vietnam to Iraq would have taught us that is probably too much to expect.

They assumed the template was the same in Libya as it was in Tunisia and Egypt since they were all located in the same Afro-Arabic arena, but as our kids would say, duh! Looking at the razzmatazz rebel groups with no command cohesion hiding from artillery bombardment on TV, with a contingent of journalists on tow, does not inspire much confidence.

At a personal level, I would not shed too much tears for a tin-pot dictator like Muammar Gaddafi when he is eventually overthrown. More than 20 years ago, I read his Green Book and I was gob smacked. Now I believe no matter how eccentric and populist the “Dear Brother Leader” is, no-one should be allowed the sole right to hold a nation hostage for more than forty years. Each nation has sufficient leadership DNA content to procreate a continuous stream of fresh torch hearers. Any resemblance to a rulership scenario closer to home is clearly intended.

Unfortunately, the double standards of the West in this scenario and elsewhere, does not really help the situation. Just looking at the Arabic peninsula alone, you have them clamouring for democracy in one country and propping dictatorship in the next as long as the oil pipelines keep flowing. Ultimately, it will come back to bite global markets everywhere as the angry youths growing up in this medium will be amenable to future terrorist acts which will cause further instability.

There will always be external shock risks factors impacting on our finances. The key is to anticipate and manage their effect on your own financial plans. Focus on things that are in your locus of control. If external factors have hiked your cost base, you could still take charge of your situation.

In previous articles, I have looked at where our money goes once we have earned it. While making individual and corporate cuts to your expenditure patterns will aid you in your financial sustainability, there is a limit to its impact. I was taught early in life that one of the best forms of defence in any circumstance is attack. You have cut your expenditure to the bone but your deficit keeps increasing. Perhaps this is the time to launch that business idea you have been toying with for a long time?

Many of us just get gripped by the survivalist mindset. I strongly believe no one was just created to just keep a nose above the water. Some of us have had the chance during this extended period to go home and look at the opportunities our economy presents.

A number of you have excellent ideas of how you are going to get a portion of this economy. One day is not a date we can mark on a calendar. If you have an idea, give yourself a limited timeline by which you should have brought it to pass, otherwise it is just day dreaming. Start with what is possible and before long you could be extending into the impossible.  

If you are young, I encourage you to take greater risk. If you launch a business idea at the age of 24, and it is a monumental failure, after two years you can start all over again. Most people learn a lot through failure than success. As you proceed in the age continuum, we expect you to take more calculated risks.

You can imagine if you launch a new business idea at 60, then go ahead to lose everything. You could die an old broken individual with people using you as an excuse of not doing anything risky. The greatest thief of ideas and time is procrastination. There is never a better time to launch you idea than now. You just need to take into account all the inherent internal and external risk factors.

You may ask why I keep encouraging an increase and abundance mindset. I realise that you can hardly help anyone else if you are busy feeling sorry for yourself.

Early this year, we had a visit from people from Kwekwe who remarked that they thought we all had computers in toilets after our community here in South Africa donated computers in Zimbabwe last year. They were surprised to find that we were just ordinary working people.

My desire is to get more money into the hands of ordinary people to enable them to do extraordinary exploits. I trust that as you ponder the deep spiritual matters of the Easter period it gives you impetus to be doers and not hearers only.