Spotting money management

The Ministry of Finance should be directed to arrange similar financial planning workshops for public servants, teachers and members of the protective services as well as employees of State Enterprises. These workshops, for instance, could be held within a year or two of compulsory retirement age. Meanwhile, public sector employees, who take early retirement, should be encouraged to participate in such workshops.

Workshops, too, should be held for public sector workers who take VSEP packages. The corporate sector should also be asked to hold similar workshops for retirees or workers who are severed from companies and those who have opted for voluntary separation.

The importance of these workshops, whether for the Soca Warriors or for a much wider public, cannot be underestimated. The Soca Warriors are all relatively young men, who have become millionaires at an age when most other young people expect to be working for another 30 to 40 years.

There has been no hint of the thrust and emphasis Prime Minister Manning has envisaged for the worshops he indicated he would request the Central Bank Governor to arrange. The basics of any such workshops would be to show the Soca Warriors how to control and manage their million-dollar windfalls : drawing up of one to five-year income and expenditure plans as well as the establishing of individual goals.

While the proposed workshops on money management will not make the relevant Soca Warriors overnight experts on financial planning they will, nevertheless, position them to make better informed investment decisions. These decisions will not be limited to the million-dollar gifts given by the Government but will clearly involve incomes earned as professional footballers as well as monies from endorsements and bonuses.

The Soca Warriors must remember that a footballer’s career is relatively short and that there is life after football. As we pointed out, the concept of workshops in money management should not be limited to the Soca Warriors, but rather broadened to include workers in both the public and private sectors in Trinidad and Tobago. It is not only they who will benefit but the nation as well.