By Horace Palacio: There is a thief working every district of this country, and he has never once been arrested.
He does not climb through windows. He walks straight through the front door of your bank account. His name is inflation, and his method is elegant. He never takes your dollars. He drains what your dollars can do.
The hundred dollars under your mattress still says one hundred next year. But watch it at the counter. The rice costs more. The rent costs more. The bus, the chicken, the cement, all quietly up. Same bill, smaller life. And because Belize imports nearly everything, as this column has hammered all year, we import our inflation too. Every price rise in America and China ships here inside the container, and our pegged dollar carries it faithfully to your till.
Now here is the trap most young Belizeans are standing in right now. You were taught that the responsible thing is to save. Put it in the bank. Watch it grow. But look honestly at what the bank pays on savings, next to nothing, while the cost of living climbs past it year after year. Saving cash alone is not safety. It is losing slowly, politely, with a passbook.
So let me give you the one rule that separates the people inflation robs from the people inflation cannot touch.
You cannot save your way past inflation. You can only own your way past it.
Because the thief has one weakness. He can only steal from cash and wages. He cannot steal from things. When prices rise, the man holding only dollars gets poorer, but the woman holding land, skills, animals, and a business watches her holdings rise with the very tide that drowns him. The wealthy are not outrunning inflation because they are smarter. They are outrunning it because they own. I have preached ownership in this column for a year. Today, the practical edition, for the young Belizean starting with little.
One caveat first, because honesty is the house rule here. I am a columnist, not your licensed financial advisor, and nothing here is a promise of returns. These are principles, ranked for the young and the broke, starting with the asset that costs almost nothing.
Asset one. Your skill. The most inflation-proof asset on planet earth sits between your ears. A certified electrician, a skilled welder, a sharp bookkeeper, a young person fluent in the digital tools I keep writing about, these people reprice themselves as prices rise. A wage is fixed. A skill negotiates. And in the age of AI now circling our job market, the premium on skills machines cannot fake is climbing monthly. Free courses, cheap certifications, a trade learned beside an older master, this asset starts at zero dollars and compounds for fifty years. Buy it first. Buy it always.
Asset two. Land. Your grandfather knew this without a single economics class. Land is the classic Belizean shield, because they are not making any more of it, and because, as I wrote in the home ownership series, our land is being discovered by wallets far heavier than ours. Every year you wait, the gate price rises. So buy small, buy far, buy early, the modest lot on the edge of the village today is the family foundation of 2040. And hear the caution that protects you, verify every title at the Lands Department before a dollar moves, insist on proper transfer, walk the boundaries yourself. Land fraud is real, and diligence is the fence around this asset. But done right, understand the contrast that changes lives. The car loses value the moment you drive it off the lot. The land gains value while you sleep. Land before car. Always land before car.
Asset three. Credit union shares. The institution three Belizean women started with seventy five cents now anchors a movement holding over a billion dollars, and it pays its member-owners dividends, typically well above what a savings account whispers. Start with the minimum. Feed it every payday like a bill you owe yourself. And here is the double power, your growing shares become the borrowing strength that later buys the land and the tools. The credit union is the young Belizean’s on-ramp to everything else on this list.
Asset four. Things that earn. Now we reach the difference between looking rich and getting rich. The poor buy things that cost money and call them assets, the rims, the newest phone, the upgraded car. The builders buy things that make money. The deep freezer that sells cold drinks by the school. The sewing machine filling uniform orders. The mower, the drone, the tools of a weekend trade. And notice the inflation magic, a business can raise its prices when costs rise. A salary cannot. Owning even a tiny business puts you on the collecting side of inflation instead of the paying side.
Asset five. Things that grow. This is the oldest Belizean wealth of all, and it is roaring back. I reported this year how our cattle industry exploded into a formal export trade worth tens of millions, with Mexico asking for every certified head we can send. A weaned calf, my friends, is a savings account that eats grass and gains weight. Chickens, honey, cacao, plantain on that lot you bought, agriculture pairs your land with your labor and pays you in the one commodity whose price never stops mattering, food. In an import-addicted nation, the young Belizean who produces food holds an asset with a permanent customer.
Now the honest paragraph, because some of you are already typing the question. What about crypto, what about the schemes flying around WhatsApp promising to double money in weeks? Hear me plainly. Anything promising quick doubling is a pyramid wearing makeup, and Belize has buried enough savings in those graves. As for crypto itself, it is a speculation, violently up, violently down, and a lottery ticket is not a foundation. If you must touch it, touch it last, with only money whose loss would not bruise you, after the skill, the land, the shares, and the earning assets are in place. Foundations first. Casinos never.
And the discipline that powers all five, pay yourself first. Ten percent off the top of every paycheck, invisible, automatic, before the phone company and the weekend see it. Small money into real assets, every month, without drama. Then multiply it the way our people always have, by pooling, the family land bought together, the partner savings circle with people you trust and rules in writing, the syndicate of three friends buying the lot none could afford alone. I wrote it in the ownership series and it remains true, what is impossible alone is routine together.
So here is the whole article in one breath, young Belize.
Inflation is a tax collected only from the asset-less. Every year you hold nothing but cash and a wage, you pay it in full. The umbrella is ownership, of skill, of land, of shares, of tools, of things that grow, built small, built early, built boringly, every single month.
Your great-grandparents bought land with small money and long patience, and you are living off that decision today.
Somebody in 2075 is waiting on yours.
Be the ancestor.
The views expressed in this article are those of the author, Horace Palacio, and do not necessarily reflect the views or editorial stance of Breaking Belize News.
The post The silent thief is robbing young Belize, here is what to own so it cannot appeared first on Belize News and Opinion on www.breakingbelizenews.com.
By Horace Palacio: There is a thief working every district of this country, and he has never once been arrested. He does not climb through windows. He walks straight through the front door of your bank account. His name is inflation, and his method is elegant. He never takes your dollars. He drains what your
The post The silent thief is robbing young Belize, here is what to own so it cannot appeared first on Belize News and Opinion on www.breakingbelizenews.com.
