Aggrey Jonathan K Bett

The two primary reasons for saving and investing are to create income streams to support current living income and to create cash or income-generating assets for retirement income. We also save to make money, riches and wealth for comfortable present and future living and to leave an inheritance for our children. In summary, the reasons for saving include multiplying and growing money, protecting money's value against inflation, creating multiple streams of income, having peace of mind, creating an emergency fund, buying an asset and household goods, creating an education fund, creating a fund for more significant investments, create retirement income and leaving an inheritance for children. Below is a rundown of the primary purposes of saving and investing:

Creating an effective personal financial plan involves steps you must follow. Define the kind of life you want to lead in the short, medium, long term, and retirement. It would help if you considered matters like career, family, financial and wealth, education, attitude, character, friendships, public service, enjoyment and relationship with God. It would be best to consider where and how you want to live in retirement. Once you have defined your vision, you assess your current financial status to see how to improve income and contain expenses, establish goals to attain, prepare a spending budget, select savings and investment options, prepare and follow a plan (roadmap), monitor and evaluate progress regularly and consult financial planning experts where you are unsure. Below is a rundown of the steps: Creating an effective personal financial plan involves steps you must follow. Define the kind of life you want to lead in the short, medium, long term, and retirement. It would help if you considered matters like career, family, financial and wealth, education, attitude, character, friendships, public service, enjoyment and relationship with God. It would be best to consider where and how you want to live in retirement. Once you have defined your vision, you assess your current financial status to see how to improve income and contain expenses, establish goals to attain, prepare a spending budget, select savings and investment options, prepare and follow a plan (roadmap), monitor and evaluate progress regularly and consult financial planning experts where you are unsure. Below is a rundown of the steps:

Personal financial planning is an exercise an individual or a household performs regularly to manage their income, spending, savings, and investments to attain specific desired goals, including income for daily living now and in the future. This exercise helps you create wealth during your working life and allocate it prudently after you retire and your death. A plan allows you to consider and have a clear view of your financial situation, and with the assessment, you can make a plan. The plan creates a roadmap and discipline, which helps you steer through daily and unforeseen events without wavering until you achieve the goals. The ultimate purpose of financial planning is to develop saving and investment steps to generate financial self-sufficiency in your current and retirement living. Personal financial planning ensures you think through your dreams and have a financial and action roadmap; with a roadmap, you are more likely to have goals and steps to implement them.

One of the tools management accountants use to analyze budget variances is flexing the budget. Budget variances are the differences between parameters like actual sales and expenses and their budgets in a period like a quarter. Variance analysis is a very effective tool for monitoring and evaluating the progress of financial plans to take corrective actions. The standard way of computing variances in, for example, the statement of comprehensive income (Profit and Loss Account) is to compare actual sales with its budget and the related expenses with their original budgets, whether or not the sales figure was lower or higher than its budget. However, variances calculated in this manner reveal only part of the story. A better way to compute and interrogate variances is to flex the budget when determining deviations. The exercise of flexing the budget is uncommon in many organizations but is helpful to do so.

The Tipping Point by Malcolm Gladwell is a book about tipping point concepts and how to apply the concepts to change people's behaviour, including selling a product. The book defines the tipping point as that dramatic moment in an epidemic when everything changes simultaneously, tipping in one direction or another. Gladwell compares tipping points to thresholds in systems, where a small change can lead to significant, often irreversible, outcomes. While epidemics typically refer to the spread of disease, Gladwell extends the term to describe any widespread phenomenon that disperses quickly through contagion, often starting with a slight change.

The book sets out to answer two primary questions:

1. Why do some ideas, behaviours, or products trigger epidemics while others don't?
2. What can we do to create and control positive epidemics deliberately?

Gladwell offers several key factors that he believes contribute to the spread of epidemics:

1. The Law of the Few refers to a small group of exceptional people in Society who play a disproportionate role in initiating and spreading information that reaches a tipping point. Gladwell calls them Connectors, Mavens, and Salesmen. Connectors are influential people with extensive networks. Mavens are influential, knowledgeable people who share valuable information without any vested interest. Salespeople are persuasive individuals who can convince others to adopt ideas or behaviours.
2. The Stickiness Factor: For an idea or product to reach a tipping point, it must be compelling enough to capture people's attention and motivate them to act.
3. The Power of Context: Gladwell uses the Broken Window Theory to explain how small environmental changes can influence people's behaviour.

I have written a book called How to Start and Run Your Own Business. Why did I write the book? I wrote it because self-employed people, startups and enterprises perform a noble duty in Society, providing employment, products, services, and government revenue for public goods and services. Yet, the failure rate for startups is very high. So, I wrote the book to provide information that can help reduce this failure rate. The book contains a full suite of what it takes to start and operate a business successfully. However, strategic planning is the starting point of creating a company, so I am sharing this article.

Strategic planning is a cornerstone of effective organizational development. This article outlines key ideas, emphasizing the concepts, purposes, and methods of strategic thinking, planning, and management for new and ongoing businesses.

Writing a business plan is essential to starting and running a business correctly. It creates a roadmap and document to clarify your vision, set goals, and state the necessary steps to implement the plan. A business plan confers the following benefits:

• Writing a plan encourages research and analysis of pertinent information for planning.
• Encourages strategic planning, a brainstorming exercise used to think and create clever ideas, concepts, methods, models, actions and strategies for starting and running a business competitively and profitably.
• You can use the document to attract investors, partners and employees.
• A business plan creates a roadmap which guides you in starting and running your business well.

Registering a company in Kenya is an online process that entails several steps, including choosing a company name, preparing and uploading the required documents, and submitting the application to the Business Registration Services. Registering a company is vital for a business that wants to operate legally, build a foundation and a brand and take advantage of many business opportunities available to a legally registered company. The main steps include:

1. Name selection, search and reservation

2. Assembling and preparing necessary documents

3. Completing forms online and submitting/uploading documents

4. Downloading, printing, signing, scanning and uploading for BN-2 form

5. Paying the necessary fees

6. Downloading the registration certificate

This article describes the registration of a business name for unlimited enterprises. Registration of a name for a limited enterprise is a separate process with its requirements. Typical unlimited businesses are sole proprietorships and unlimited partnerships, and you can register a business name in Kenya for one of these enterprises. A sole proprietorship is a business by one individual, while a partnership involves at least two people. However, the registration process for a sole proprietorship and unlimited partnership are similar except for partnership details. Sole proprietorships and partnerships are suitable for freelancers, consultancies, creatives, retailers, wholesalers and anyone who wants to try business in a small way before starting a company. The name registration process involves the following steps:

Step 1: Choose a business name and apply online to the Business Registration Services to reserve the name

Step 2: Assemble the requirements, including eCitizen account, Identity Card, KRA PIN, Photo, personal and business addresses, partnership deed, proposed business activities and form BN-2.

Step 3: Create an eCitizen account and log into it to complete the BN-2 form and upload the required documents

Step 4: Download the BN-2 form, print, sign, scan, upload and submit it

Step 5: Pay the necessary fees using the payment methods provided on the eCitizen portal

Step 6: Download the registration certificate when you get the approval notification in your email
 

How to Invest in Treasury Bills and Bonds (T-Bills and T-Bonds) in Kenya

Kenya government Treasury bills bonds (T-bills and T-bonds) are investment instruments auctioned weekly by the Central Bank of Kenya (CBK) on behalf of the Government. The Government uses the instruments to borrow money from the public to finance its activities. Therefore, the investors become lenders to the Government and in return, the Government pays them interest and returns the principal upon maturity. T-bills have tenures of 91,182 and 364 days, while the terms for T-bonds are two years or more. All citizen and non-citizen individuals and organizations can buy Kenya T-Bills and Bonds. Buying and selling the securities is an online process. To participate, you visit https://dhowcsd.centralbank.go.ke/ or download the DhowCSD app on the Google Play store or Apple App Store to create a CSD account, https://www.centralbank.go.ke/dhowcsd/ and https://www.centralbank.go.ke/securities/treasury-bills/ to see guidelines and to:

1. Open a CBK DhowCSD Account and provide investor details.
2. Decide what to buy, how much and what price.
3. Complete and submit bids.
4. Obtain the T-bill and bond auction results.
5. Pay for your successful bids. This process is automatic, following the details you provided in (1) above.

A business name, brand and branding are aspects that form the identity of every business. A name is a unique identity of a company like Toyota Motor Corporation. A brand is typically the name of a company's product, like Toyota Prado or Landcruiser. A brand is a unique identity, like a name and other identifying marks, and usually has a positive reputation in the eyes of consumers. Branding is creating a unique name, character, and different features for the business and its products and engaging in marketing activities to popularize the company and its brands (products). A name should be creative, catchy, easy to write, read, pronounce, and indicate the company's work. It should project the product's promises, qualities, benefits and the job it will do for the customer. For a product to have brand status, it must have enduring benefits, do its job well, be durable, and make a customer feel good or satisfied by owning it. A marketing campaign (branding) to promote the company and its products must identify a product's benefits, praise them, and connect them to the name of the product and the manufacturer in the eyes of potential consumers to create a lasting appeal.

A viable business is born of a problem-solving business idea. To identify business ideas, you must imagine, self-search, and search the consumer universe to find sustainable ideas and things you would love to do. The business idea you come up with should have matchless appeal, solve a problem for people (filling a void, a gap or a need in the market), and be profitable. A good business idea addresses people's concerns or removes pain for them. However, you should know people do not buy a product or a service for its features and benefits. Instead, they hire the product to solve a problem they have. Harvard Business School Professor Clayton Christensen developed the Jobs To Be Done (JTBD) theory, which states that customers don't simply buy a product, service or its attributes - they "hire" it to do a "job" they need to be done. Some of the ways to identify JTBDs include:

1. Take stock of your knowledge, skills and experience.
2. Solve a problem that bothers you or others.
3. Talk to and observe customers at work to discover their needs.
4. Produce a better and cheaper product than the market.
5. Fill gaps where customers are under-served in products, services, delivery systems and customer care.
6. Produce something that enhances people's pleasure and esteem.
7. Save money and time for people.

Merits and demerits of starting your own business

Self-employment is having your own business. A business is an activity that creates and delivers something people want to buy and provides a profit for the owner. Running your own business seems attractive, but it has pros and cons you should consider before setting up your business. Here are the pros and cons:

 Pros include:

1. Personal freedom and flexibility.
2. Potential significant financial rewards.
3. Has higher job satisfaction and self-esteem.
4. Opportunities to learn from your own mistakes without losing your job.

The cons include:

1. The risk of failure and loss.
2. Long hours of hard work.
3. Higher financial responsibilities.
4. Higher operational responsibilities
5. Insecurity and uncertainty.
6. Less free time.
7. No employment benefits.
8. No job security.

People ask what is personal financial planning and how it differs from corporate financial planning. Personal financial planning is about what an individual or a household does to plan their finances, while corporate financial planning is about preparing a financial plan for a business entity. Personal financial planning is an exercise an individual or a household performs regularly to manage their income, spending, savings, and investments to attain specific desired goals for now and in the future. The process also incorporates planning one’s present and retirement lifestyles, such as what to do besides one’s career, what to do in retirement, and how to finance all these lifestyles. It essentially entails active identification and generation of income streams, allocating part of the income for current needs, wants, emergencies and other requirements and saving and investing to create wealth for comfortable current and retirement living. Planning should also look at managing different areas of life, such as estate planning, career, family, children’s education, body, mind, soul, enjoyment, friendships and public service. Planning aims to create a roadmap for navigating all these facets to arrive at the desired destination in an orderly manner.