Savings

little drops of water........................................................................

The spirit of saving is one important discipline that a parent can instil in themselves and their children. Having money and doing humanitarian activities is good, but without savings, it is a very irresponsible practice that could have grave consequences.

Imagine what will happen to the rich philanthropist who is all along engaged in humanitarian activities but saves nothing for the future, and all of a sudden collapsed and  failed to get back to his feet again or passed away?

Death is a journey we cannot run away from. As some people die at a very young age, others live to their old age, whiles others die at birth.

In any case our scriptures have stated that: it is appointed on to man to die once, and after death there will be judgement. In other verses, it stated that “Each soul shall taste death”. One thing we must therefore keep remembering is the fact that death does not sound warning when it is coming.

One doesn’t really need to be sick before death visits him or her. It is a matter of death visiting you when it is your time, not adding a minute more or less. It could happen through accidents, sicknesses or just when you retire to bed.

As to how ready you are to meet your maker is between you and Him. But how have you prepared your children to meet the challenges of the unknown future is a question that all parents must ask themselves often. As long as they live, it is a core duty of good parents to prepare their children for a better future.

Some of these kids are orphaned while they are just foetus in the womb of their mothers, whiles others get lucky to enjoy parental warmth and care for some years. But with death lurking around, waiting to pounce on us at any time, the legitimate question to ask here is if we have indeed planned for our children.

We cannot say that some of our mothers are financially sound to take up the sole responsibility of looking after their children. This is because most of our fathers keep some of our mothers as “housewives”, thus not allowing them to work so as to help with the upkeep of the family. Only few men see the importance of giving their wives capital to start small businesses of their own so as to become financially stable, or even to give their daughters education to help them have better future.

Even in the scenario I have just mentioned above, death could lay its cold hands on both parents, leaving their offspring as orphans. How they live the remaining of their life is left in the hands of their Creator.

Some orphans get lucky to be taken care of by their maternal or paternal family members, who take this responsibility in addition to their own responsibilities of caring for their nuclear family, in spite of the harsh economic situation of our world today. Although most of them can hardly keep up with the new additional responsibilities they have taken, they struggle to do their best under the circumstances. But in the cases where some parents have insured the lives of their children, it eases the burden on the one taking such a huge responsibility.

Great men have fallen, leaving their off-springs to suffer to make ends meet in their day to day lives. This is because they only lived for today, forgetting that life must also include the future. Some of the children they leave behind end up in different kinds of vices, not really what every parent might have foreseen for their children.

It isn’t all orphans who get lucky to be adopted by benevolent spirits. Some of these persons (fathers’ friends or relatives) come to the funeral grounds and make a lot of promises to the dead, but once they are lowered into the graves the kids are left to their fate. What they do with their lives is literally nobody’s business.

I have never attended any funeral in my life, but this time around, my own class mate and brother lost his dad and I promised I will be there. Indeed I was able to keep my promise because I got there very early and took my seat among the mourners. No sooner had the ceremony began. The pastor gave his sermons and reminded the people of death as an ending for each one of us. It was time for people to pay their last respect to the dead and everyone in the congregation went and came back crying. I was still seated and kept watching. The collection of offertory was done, and after that, the pastor called the man’s three children, and lined them up. He told the people gathered there that the man was gone, and had left the three innocent kids, who have no idea of what to expect in life. He spoke at length and was able to convince the people there to each donate money for the upkeep of the children, at least, until their mother completed widowhood period. But one thing the man did that made me so happy and proud was even before his death, he had built a house for his family. So I said to myself: These lucky kids have a place to sleep. What is left is their school fees and feeding fee.

These issues have made me very emotional, especially when it involves kids who become orphans by fate. When one loses a parent and has no one to fall unto, the path ahead becomes gloomy and murky, full of uncertainty. Most orphans have ended up in alleys of vices of prostitution, armed robbery, drugs and many others. If life hasn’t been so harsh on make them orphans, their parents would have given them a better life for them to be useful to their nation and people.

That is why I’m pleading with parents and urging them to take seriously the issue of saving money and insuring their children educationally. It is very important to learn to insure the lives of these kids we bring forth to the world right from the beginning. Perhaps this must begin as early as at the time you even decide to start a family by saving to ensure the life of your kids. Insuring the lives of our children with as small amount of just 20 Ghana Cedi a month will not take anything significant from our monthly earnings, although its effect would be very huge advantage in the unforeseeable future, as insurance for the children, unto which they can fall for their education and upbringing.

Some of our parents might think that they have enough properties that can take care of their children once the unfortunate happens. What we do not realise or failed to understand is when we die and we are no more around to make sure our families are treated well.

Let me try here to draw a scenario of what some families go through after their bread winners are dead.

Your wife and children are thrown out of the house you proudly owned after years of toiling and struggling to build it during your lifetime. More painfully, the little money they might be living on is also taken away from them. Some uneducated or less educated mothers who do not know their rights will not seek redress, neither at the police nor at the court of law. Those who know their rights may not have money for the court. Even if they do, they’ll have to use all or most of it to pay for the services of a lawyer only to be frustrated by the bureaucracy of receiving justice in our country.

In situations where they are able to retrieve what is rightfully theirs, the family members might have stolen or misappropriated a chunk of the property if not all almost all of it. This means there will be nothing substantial left to be able to cater for them for the kind of future they would have wished for themselves. They will have to struggle throughout life to develop themselves into successful individuals, and this rarely happens to only the lucky ones.

These are just some few instances that one should expect his family to face when he is dead in our society. There is nothing one can do, absolutely nothing, in these circumstances, to defend your children and wife. But with good savings of money in the names of these children in the form of insurance, coupled with the spirit of responsibility one instils in them, one can be assured of a good life for his/her children in the future.

Because of my Islamic religious background, I’d like to refer here to the principle of inheritance according to the teachings of my religion. The inheritance procedure reserves for the deceased’s living spouse, children and parents greater portion of his/her properties and wealth. Although some of the family members of this faith respect the law stated above, others do not. You would surprisingly hear some of the latter group sarcastically saying they are ready to take the worst from God on the judgement day.

Like the Muslim faith, Christianity also promotes a will so relatives and children can have what is rightfully theirs. But only few from the followers of these two great heavenly religions adhere strictly to have their will written before they die. For soon after death has laid its cold hands on the family head or breadwinner, you see a hitherto very happy nuclear family later shattered and dispersed into oblivion because of this negligence not having a written will, forcing the children of the deceased to become a shadow of their past.

Suffering from deep grief of losing a dear spouse, coupled with the harsh treatment being meted out to the widow and her children who have been “robbed” of any valuable thing that would have sustained them in their long road to survival, the widows eat their heart away in grief and sorrow, gradually dying from this heartache and leaving their children totally orphaned with grim future.

Therefore, it is my humble plea that parents upholds the culture of saving for their children and also instil this culture in their off-springs.

Below are two pathetic stories about how death can bring misery to a happy family. Once upon a time, a man lived a life of affluence. He was always there for his family and community. His belief was that education was very important and therefore takes the initiative of educating his children well, supporting those who are interested in higher education to go as high as they can, while assisting those who are less interested in education to learn a vocation.

He acquired vast properties, but as human as we are, death is not one of our shortest term goal. No one actually plans for death, so when the elephant falls, everyone at the scene gets a sharp knife to cut a share of the huge flesh.

Another story is about a young woman who lost her husband. Shocking, the relatives of the husband asked her to pack and go back to her father’s house because her mission is accomplished after the stipulated period of mourning her dead husband. 

I plead with all parents to embrace and adopt the culture of saving, not just for their own sake but for also the sake of their children. My mum always has this to say: “Death has no age. It comes for everyone irrespective of age, and when it is coming it doesn’t sound the alarm bell. The Holy Scriptures say: Like a thief, death comes to steal what we hold very dear to our hearts.

Let us learn to save

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