We are born into families we hadn’t chosen, but Jehovah made that choice. Parents’ gifts are secretly given. Friends, thanks for sitting with me through yet another post as I share a tribute to my niece who left this world not so long ago—six years now.

When we are born, our parents do their best to care for us. They didn’t have instructions to guide them. They spoke to others who raised children before them, and followed their advice, their own instincts, and that of the doctors.

A book perhaps in the home that decorated the shelf they neglected to read—the Bible. Instructions on how to raise an infant as they grow.

As children we were told how to act, how to sit, eat, clothes to wear; we had no choice but to follow our parents’ instructions.

As we got a little older, they delegated the task of advanced training to teachers. Teachers whose responsibility is to perfect our spoken and written language. Teach us how to read and write and how to do mathematics. It is within the teachers’ care that a student is recognized. The parents are then informed of the gift they hold.

Like planted seeds, if not cared for within the soil they are in dies, so it is when humans are not in the right environment to flourish. However, the advantage we have as humans is that we adapt until we can move.

A bit older and more independent, we leave our parents’ home to make our own. And that’s where real growth starts—out in the world.

As we develop relationships, we learn to love. With emotional pain, we develop resilience. We learn self-taught financial responsibility. Something we were never taught at school; then, with insight, we can see that a teacher’s life was just like ours as a child. They too were being told what to teach and how to teach. And like in a bubble, we all exist. Not being able to rise above those who understood and knew how to achieve wealth and control it, until it was too late for some of us.

Much older now, we gain a better understanding of self through struggles, temptations and pain; the financial world through trial and error.

A subject that should have been taught in schools: Introductory of Financial Theory. The study of how people, companies and markets choose to allocate money, assets and risk over time. How it uses math and economics to explain how assets are priced, how portfolios are built and how financial decisions are made under uncertainty. The core concepts of financial theory.

• Time Value of Money: Money available today is worth more than the same amount in the future because of its potential earning capacity.
• Risk and Return: Investments with higher potential returns generally carry a higher degree of risk.
• Efficient Market Hypothesis: You cannot easily beat the market consistently, and
• Modern Portfolio Theory: Investors can maximize their return for a chosen level of risk by carefully diversifying their asset mix. If you have ever invested in an Index fund or diversified your portfolio, you have benefited from Modern Financial Theory.

Perhaps if we were taught ‘Life Lessons’ before and not after leaving school, today we would not have a world of youths struggling to survive or having their parents in the tired state they are in, to still carry the load of a household. Children would know what to do to make money. How to spend what they have and not what they don’t have. To appreciate what they have.

My niece, born on August 14, 1966, at the age of eight, showed how gifted she was. A child destined to become an artist and an author; her journey caused her to work as a special agent for the FBI. Debra-Ann was skilled in the way her thoughts were expressed, that within her incomplete novel, “Child Of The Stars,” in my care. She requested that teachers be sent to Earth.

Therefore, it is with great joy and sadness at losing her to improved appearance that I honour and celebrate her life. The wisdom she held, the child she was and the woman she had grown to be. Below is a photograph of me with her and her family, some artwork of two of her favourite entertainers, the book cover artwork, a poem and other artwork of hers.

You are missed but not forgotten; continue to rest in peace until we meet.

Friends, thanks for reading. Until next post, take care of yourself and each other!