opinion

Why does your uncle sound so certain that crypto will make you rich by December, and why does your aunty sound just as certain that it will wipe out everyone who touches it? They are both talking about the same thing, and neither of them has run any numbers. That is opinion doing what opinion does best, sounding like fact while wearing fact's clothes.

An opinion about money is a belief you hold that has not yet been tested against evidence. It might turn out to be right. Plenty of opinions do. But the danger is treating a strong feeling as if it were a settled sum, because feelings do not care whether your business plan actually breaks even.

In Lagos you will hear that landlords always win, that civil service is a dead end, that certain businesses are only for certain tribes. Some of these opinions carry a grain of experience. Many of them are just repeated loudly enough to sound true. The market does not read minds or listen to confidence, it reads cash flow, demand, and timing.

In the United Kingdom, you will meet the opinion that property only ever goes up, said with total assurance by people who bought their houses in the 1980s. Ask someone who bought a flat in 2007 how that certainty held up.

A Nigerian in Manchester sending money home might have strong opinions about which relative is 'wasting' the money and which is 'using it well', but without asking what the money was actually spent on, that opinion is just a story dressed up as judgement.

The healthy move is not to stop having opinions, everyone needs a starting view. It is to hold your opinion loosely enough that a real number, a real result, or a real receipt can change your mind.