Suddenly your job's been classified as non-essential

When we were in school, we were taught to work hard, get a good job and enjoy a comfortable life. In the real world, we discovered that there are four classes of people. Those who live in luxury, those who lead a comfortable life, those who are poor and those who are on charity. Chances are that if you live in luxury you have inherited your wealth, you have worked hard or are engaged in a dubious trade to afford the luxuries in life. If you have a job or run a profitable business, you are leading a comfortable life. Lose that job or business opportunity and you descend to the ranks of the poor. The abject poor depend on charity and get used to it, developing a dependency on charitable people or philanthropists.

Loss of income becomes a risk more so in uncertain economic times brought about by war (including bio-terrorism), famine, globalization and the intrusion of information technology. Artificial intelligence and Machine learning had already led to the downsizing of several companies and indeed the closure of many of them, after only a few years in operation. Now the COVID 19 pandemic has reached us with a bang. Maybe you are working from home, maybe you have taken a salary cut, maybe your savings are being eaten up. We have the luxury of time to sit back and plan.

What should we have done to mitigate the effects of a job loss and/or the loss of income as much as we had embraced a fashionable lifestyle driven by conspicuous consumption? The solution lay in saving and investing for precisely this outcome. Several avenues for structured saving exist. We have Money Market funds, Wealth Management Solutions, Unit Linked Life Insurance Policies as well as Life insurance policies designed to protect your income in case you lost a job or business line. This is good saving, investment and risk management strategy. Nothing much has changed.

In School we had Teachers specialized in specific subjects. In life too, one cannot be a Jack-Of-All-Trades. In the real world, we don’t cut and style our own hair. We go to experts. Do what you know best and consult experts in savings, investment and risk management so that the future you is cushioned against the economic, political and social vagaries that are part of life.

Maybe it is time to have a chat (maintaining social distance of course) to learn  what options you have as you ponder a world of work which has changed radically. Email me on melvindlima1@gmail and I will set up a pro-bono mentoring session on Zoom for you.