Emeka tiredly walked himself up the stairs to the penthouse. The time was 7:55am.

“This early wake up on a Saturday morning, na wah o!”

He yawned as he climbed a few more steps. He didn’t want to worsen the image Chief had of him by being late but that meant he only had about 3 hours of sleep after returning from the club last night. With the way he was feeling, perhaps it would have been better to be late instead of falling asleep while Chief was talking to him.

“What is today’s lesson going to be about? Woh, the only thing that would be worth it, is a lesson on how to increase my salary”

Emeka yawned again. He didn’t understand why Chief who had so much money, would choose to live in the same compound as his tenants but then again, “all these people that don’t know how to enjoy their money”. Maybe he should be the one giving Chief lessons instead. He knocked on the door and was let in by the steward.

Chief was reading the newspaper at his dining table, the remains of his breakfast still in sight.

“Care to join me?, he asked.

“I’ll just have coffee, please” Emeka replied gratefully.

“Nigerian newspapers can be depressing sometimes”, Chief said as he folded away the paper. It saddens me that so many people think the only way to wealth is by looting. There are so many legal ways to get rich, provided you know the rules”

Chief looked at him over his glasses as he poured him coffee from the pot. “What I am about to teach you, will change your life but you must be willing to do the work of applying it. The principles are tried and true paths to wealth. They have worked for centuries and will continue to do so. But because they are so ordinary and so common sensical, most people disregard them and instead chase shadows.

“I used to be just like you, Chief said shaking his head ruefully. Perhaps even worse than you. At your age, I was broke, stinkingly broke” Chief emphasised “and neck deep in debt, even though I had a good job. But with these wealth building principles, I changed my life for good”.

Emeka took a sip of the hot coffee as Chief continued. “I came from a very poor family. My father was a subsistence farmer and my mother sold akara on the roadside. My parents barely eked out a living in the town I grew up in. We lived in deep poverty, the whole family sharing one sleeping mat at night. In order for us to all fit the mat, we had to arrange ourselves with our heads and legs alternating but on the days we had beans for supper, that was just the ideal position for chemical warfare”.

Emeka and Chief both burst into laughter.

“My parents were poor but they recognised the value of education. They made sure their children’s school fees were paid, even if we had to go without food for days. On one desperate occasion, when the harvest had been poor, my father had to sell part of his farmland just to afford our fees. I did not take their sacrifice for granted and studied hard in school. My parents had taught me that education was the way out of poverty and I was determined to use that way of escape”.

“I studied Law in University and got a job in the Legal department of an oil company immediately after graduation. That was a lifelong dream fulfilled. Initially my monthly salary felt to me, like an obscene amount of money, considering the background I came from. I couldn’t spend it all but just like the adage that says “As income rises, so do expenses rise to meet it”, my expenses started getting larger and larger. First it was a car, then a fancier car, then an even fancier one and all the trappings that come with being young and successful. I felt I deserved it after the hardship I suffered as a child.

Before I knew it, I started having to borrow from friends and colleagues to meet up. At first, it wasn’t difficult to pay back the loans, it was just a matter of waiting until the end of the month. But if you keep on spending money you don’t yet have, sooner or later you run out of money. Your salary comes but it all goes to paying back the people you borrowed from without anything for you to live on. I started borrowing from one friend to pay back debts to another friend. Before long, none of my colleagues would lend me money. My borrowing habits were known all around the office and gossiped about behind my back”.

“Linda Ikeji’s blog” Emeka chuckled.

“What was that?” Chief asked.

“Nothing, Sir”, Emeka said, shaking his head. “Please, continue”

“Since I couldn’t get any money from friends, I started taking loans from banks. Loans to pay back loans, loans for consumer goods, loans to travel on vacation, loans to pay expenses of extended family. Family members and acquaintances thought I was living the high life but it was all borrowed money”.

Chief paused at this point and looked out of the window as if seeing his younger self somewhere out in the distance.

“It was a very stressful period. I felt I was locked in a vicious cycle. You know that rat, that runs on a wheel in a cage, expending energy but going nowhere very fast?. That was me and for some reason, I just couldn’t stop. I needed those shiny, new gadgets to take my mind off the stress, I needed to travel to try to relax a little bit, I needed to keep up appearances for my family”

“The biggest disgrace came when I started defaulting on my bank loans and the bank wrote directly to the Managing Director of my company to garnish my wages”.

“Chei!”, Emeka exclaimed, almost falling out of his chair.

“E reach to shout”, Chief said.

“I was a junior staff, working hard in a company, trying to make a great impression and the very first time, my MD gets to hear my name, its because I am a loan defaulter. The letter was passed down the entire chain of command, from the MD to the Director of Human Resources to my General Manager, to my Manager and finally to my Supervisor. My supervisor gave me a frank talk that day. “You are a good worker”, he said “but this?…this just makes you look irresponsible. You cannot drag the name of the company in the mud just because you can’t control your spending habits. Better be careful, this is the kind of thing that can get someone sacked,  just like that”

His words had a sobering effect on me. It was a wake up call and I resolved to never let money run my life again. My taste for expensive things had been awakened but I was going to indulge in them on my own terms. My curiosity however, was also aroused. I had thought I was rich just because I earned a good salary but it was clear that wasn’t the complete picture. What then did people do to get rich? How could I be like them? All the rich people I knew were not smarter than me, they worked hard but no harder than me. It was clear they knew something I didn’t and I made up my mind right then to discover what it was”

Chief looked down at the gold watch on his wrist.

“Emeka, I have a golf game I need to get to in a few minutes. Let’s continue this chat tomorrow afternoon”.

Emeka couldn’t believe the story he had just heard. There were so many things he wanted to ask. He started to say something but decided against it. His questions could wait until tomorrow.