Don't marry if.....

If you're not ready to delay gratification when your are angry. To hold your tongue, lower your voice and sometimes wait till the appropriate time, day or even month before you can deal with an issue thoroughly.... don't get married. Immaturity is the inability to delay gratification. Marriage is for the mature.

If you're not ready to leave center stage and allow someone else to become your focus, your study, your muse... don't get married. Selfish people make very bad spouses. In marriage you don't lose yourself but your heart has to be big enough to gain someone else. And soon, with God's blessing: little, crying, diaper soiling, demanding little ones are coming!

If you are not ready, to stand up and calmly deal with meddling in laws as a united front: The opinionated sister, the insensitive uncle, the domineering father, the manner less brother, the nosy aunt..... Don’t get married. Boundaries do not exist automatically, they must be created. A good spouse is committed to respectfully stand up for and protect their marriage from meddling relatives. Don't abandon your spouse to your relatives. It's betrayal.

If you are not ready to pay bills.... don't get married. Love does not pay bills. Kenya power will not give a waiver because your love is O so strong and your gazes at each other, O so romantic.

If you are not ready to let go of your opposite sex "best friends" and invest that into your spouse. To like, to laugh, to play, to be silly and to enjoy life with them, above anyone else... don't get married. Affairs happen because people did not marry their best friends. Someone else holds their heart. Someone else gets them better. Someone else inspires them more. Marry your best friend and cultivate your friendship so that you remain best friends.

If you are not ready to stop competing with the Joneses.... don't get married. Let the Joneses buy their yatch when you are still walking, and enjoy the walk. Your journeys are different. They may have to cross the oceans but you may be going through the road route. A boat might not do you any good on your journey. You must be ready to pace yourselves: stop competing, stop spending your future before you get there, stop the debt, and stop trying to impress people. You must be able to be content. To enjoy your journey without deciding your happiness simply by measuring your progress against other people.

If you are not ready to be an open book. To tell the whole story of your past, deal with the memories, expose the failures and risk rejection.... don't get married. It is fraud to have someone sign off their life to you without the full details. The past is a touchy and demanding friend. It always shows up in the marriage. It doesn't enjoy being ignored and the more you snob, the bolder it becomes and the more tantrums it throws. It will mess up the "neat" and "all together lovely" image that you are struggling to maintain.

If you are not ready to let go of your philandering and wild oats farming.... don't get married. Don't take somebody's son or daughter and subject them to your germs, your indiscretions and your chips fungaz. It never ends well. It's romanticized in the movies; it's being fronted as the only "realistic" way to stay married and keeps the fire burning. But truth be told, the only thing that the fire will burn will be you, your spouse and your children. That family will burn for generations in bitterness, disease, fear, failure, hatred, broken hearts, broken dreams and conniving.

Finally, if you are not ready to let go of the adrenalin rush of a risque life and to settle down.... don't get married. The great Colombus [who we were told "discovered" America, Have you ever wondered if the Native Indians who were in it, knew that it existed :-)] had a diary that was long sought for. People wanted to read about the wild journeys, the sea tempest, the reckless pirates they fought, the death and the danger they must have encountered. When it was found, there was great disappointment. Majority of the pages simply had 5 words: "This day, we sailed on.".

Marriage, like life in general, has many "we sail on" days. You have to learn to find the thrill in the normal everydayness of it. If you depend on wild romance, all night sex [ha], romantic cruises, wild parties, compulsive moves across continents, tempestuous fights and make up sessions to be happy, you may be disappointed. You have to learn to thrill in gentle smiles, loving hugs, knowing looks, cozy moments, shared chores, cute babies, everyday work, dreaming together, praying together and simply living together. If these things are not thrilling, exciting and satisfying, you will look for a way out. The "boom twaff" moments are still there, but they are normally punctuations to the usualness of living. They cannot be your reason for getting married. They are unsustainable on an everyday basis. The one you choose must be thrilling to you even in the most mundane of moments.

I pray this helps someone. Remember singles, YOU HAVE THE PRIVILEGE OF CHOICE. Never let anyone pressure you into marriage. You are either ready or you're not: You decide!. But please don't marry somebody and then punish them to live with your childish ways for the rest of their lives :-). A childish baby is cute but a childish adult is extremely frustrating.

Marriages are for the mature and in many ways, we the married, are still being confronted with the demand to grow up day by day. If you are not ready for that demand, don't get married!!!!

By PASTOR JUDY KARANJA.

Pay slip

The day you make your pay slip redundant is the day you shall have achieved true wealth.

The almighty pay slip is so powerful that losing it gives many of us sleepless nights. It determines what we eat, when we eat, where we eat and if we eat. It is so powerful that people have been known to suffer withdrawal syndromes worse than those of hard drugs like alcohol and cocaine.

I remember the situation of a family friend who lost the opportunity to receive a regular pay slip. It took the wife three months to find out that he had lost his job; as he would wake up every morning, dress up and leave the house. He would then go to the club where he would spend the entire day reading newspapers and magazines.

Fortunately the family did not really need the pay slip, and that is why it took his wife such a long time to find out that he had been retrenched from his place of work. He did not need the pay slip financially. But he needed it psychologically. It had gotten to a point where the pay slip defined who he was.

In this case the man had invested well enough so that his family’s standards of living were not dependent on his being employed. He had declared his pay slip redundant long ago: all that remained was to do the same with his mind.

Employment is not a license to financial security

It is essential that you internalize the fact that a pay slip is not an end in itself but a means to an end. Employment till death is no longer possible. And even then, will the pension, life policy, mortgage policy and education policy be able to support your family’s current standard of living?

You also need to recite the following mantra every morning when you awake. My contract with my employer is a monthly arrangement. They have no responsibility or intention of making me wealthy. This is my sole responsibility and obligation.

There is a joke that has been doing the rounds since the Nairobi city fathers begun onslaught on street vendors;

Journalist: Why are you being chased away from the streets?

Street vendor: To make way for the banks to lend money in the streets.

The pay slip has become so powerful that you can actually use it to negotiate for a loan on the streets, at the same level that you negotiate with mama mboga(vegetable vendor) for your daily supply of vegetables. We shall soon be applying for loans online (web and phone)..We already are!

Unfortunately many of us will take those unsecured loans and use the money to acquire liabilities and doodads? (Personal use assets). Many of you will use the money to upgrade your cars, seating rooms, wardrobes and mobile phones. Yet none of this works towards your creating wealth, it only deepens the hole that you need to fill before you can begin your journey to financial freedom.

The secret to financial security

As in alcoholics anonymous, the first step is to accept that you are an alcoholic; with the pay slip it is to accept that you are a spend thrift. It is only after you have accepted this that you can begin the process of recovery and rejuvenation.

Many employers believe that the more dependent an employee is to their pay slip, the more loyal, dedicated and hardworking they will be. This is why your employer will never send you for training on personal financial planning or wealth creation. If they do it means you have been earmarked for redundancy, rightsizing or simply about to let go. Yet if these employers got out of their cocoons, they would realize that employees would work better if they wanted to work, as opposed to needed to work. When you are secure you become more confident and can therefore give your best to your work.

With the current downturn in the world economy, many companies have found it necessary to reduce their workforce, as the only means of cost cutting. Yet if they had helped their employees to have multiple income streams, the option of pay-cuts would have been feasible.

I tell you, leverage your pay slip to create additional income streams with the sole intent of reducing your dependency on it. This will make you a better parent, friend, neighbor and employee.

This journey begins with you. Become financially literate and plan your finances. Do not depend on your employer or a wealthy spouse. The buck stops with you.

“Will I make it, …… I can make it!”

Not my piece (Borrowed)