How Can I become financially successful in America?

Question: “Sir, I just arrived in America, please can you tell me how I can  become financially successful?”

My response: increase the ability to earn money, and that is the summary. But since I have space, I will add more: focus on increasing how much you earn per hour, and not the number of hours you need to earn money. If you improve how much you make per hour, you will unlock wealth in America, but if you focus on working all hours, you will just labour to pay bills and will create a vicious circle that will rattle your personal state of mind.

Remember, just like more people get into trouble here because of too much food, unlike in most parts of the world where the problem is lack of food, pursuing money on hours will lead to troubles. Yes, there is always work to pick and spend the hours! That is an illusion to financial independence.

They have got certifications in anything you can think of. You will see people who accept all hours to flip burgers in fast food stores for $15 per hour, even though a 3-month class in a community college will give them a certificate, which will boost their hourly rate to $33 per hour. You can be an office clerk at $15 per hour, but you can be a certified billing technician at $40 per hour. Both works are largely the exam except that one requires a certificate which you can get within 4 weeks.

Do not be inspired by immigrants who boast of working all hours and keeping many jobs. Most times, that happens because of lack of strategic career planning and efforts. They start low like everyone, and then stop dreaming. 

And finally, you can be employed in a company as a Clerk and retire as one; the choice is yours, and nobody cares. Demonstrate excellence and showcase how you can help a company create more value, like a magnet, opportunities will come your way. But if you fail therein, nobody cares. That must not happen because there is no village where you can run to escape paying bills as people do in Nigeria. In other words, having a job is like oxygen here because bills are as constant as air. Welcome and good luck. 

(This can help on the necessity of building a credit; do not neglect that ) 

• -You must build credit in America.
• -To do that, since you just arrived from Nigeria, call your bank or a credit card company, and ask for a prepaid credit card.
• -Where possible, buy everything with that card, and at the end of the month, pay things off. Do not carry a balance!

Register for Tekedia Mini-MBA (Sept 9 – Dec 7, 2024), and join Prof Ndubuisi Ekekwe and our global faculty; click here.