This is a statement of fact that most people don’t recognise.

Not recognising this fact has a lot of consequences in the way you handle money.

One of the consequences is lack of appreciation for small money and hence carelessness about such amounts of money. N1 is small and can rarely buy anything in Nigeria today. As a result, most people won’t bat an eye if they lose N1. That is not considered a loss. Also, they won’t appreciate the gift of N1. “It is nothing.”

Over time, this attitude leads to spending unnecessarily more on items or losing a lot of money on missed opportunities.

To be rich, you must not only recognise that no money is small, you must also adopt it as a guiding principle in your attitude towards money.

Riches or wealth are like the human body. It starts with one cell, which then multiplies to trillions of cells.

Similarly, most riches, true riches, are products of small money accumulated over time.

As mentioned above, N1 can rarely buy anything in Nigeria today but if you save N1 on 20 items in one shopping trip, you have saved N20. Multiply this by 100 times, you have saved N2,000.

That is why those who recognise that no money is small take the time to scrutinise the price details and differential of every item on their shopping list.

A friend of mine does this religiously. When he goes shopping, he will check the price tag, divide the price by the quantity or weight of the item so as to get the price per grammage or quantity. This looks weird but when he disclosed how much he saved, I woke up.

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It is for the same reason why some people will never buy household essentials in small quantities, especially from retailers. They recognise that the small money saved by buying in bulk over time can translate to the income of one month.

This is one of the many benefits of cooperative societies or groups. Cooperative groups buy products in bulk directly from producers and then sell the same to members at a discount. In some instances, individuals borrow from their cooperative group to buy critical needs in bulk and at discounts.

By this, cooperative groups helped members, who are usually low-income earners, to save ‘small money’ on many household essential goods. The money made from these activities is the secret behind the multimillion-dollar cooperative movement around the world today.