 Welcome back. As I told you earlier today, we're going to talk about budgeting. How do you budget on this festive season? Budgeting refers to the process on how you determine your money and how you're going to spend your money. But as I told you earlier today, we're joined by Tabitha Kibugi who is a financial analyst. Welcome. Thank you. And two kikas of Tabitha. How is it advisable to budget and why? Thank you for that question, Joy. It is very important and advisable to budget for many reasons. But one of the reasons is that you do not empty and finish the little that you have or even the much that you have. You see, without a budget, all you do is spend, spend, spend. You do not get to know how much you were supposed to spend and how far you have come with your spending. So, without a budget, your ten shillings that you have will all end up in spending and you'll have nothing for tomorrow. So, budgeting makes sure we have for today and something for tomorrow. Right. And I understand there are budgeting processes and techniques. Can you tell us more? There are several and very many budgeting techniques and processes that are used. But I will zero down to two that are very important and that we can all use. Up-down and down-up. So, the up-down is where you already have your resources, you have your money and now you decide how to spend it. The down-up is where you first start with your needs going up. You start with the needs and then you look for the allocation. Now, what I advise for everyone is a combination of the two because sometimes the up-down might be too extravagant because you will sometimes find like you have the money. So, you can spend it. And sometimes the down-up can be too tight on you. You might, especially like in the season that we are in, if you work with a down-up, sometimes you might want to get an extra pay of shu because it is a Christmas season but it is too limiting because the down-up is limiting. Yes, it is especially used when you are trying to cut on finances especially when companies are downsizing and all that, they use the down-up. So, what I recommend is have a negotiated budgeting. That is you use the down-up and the up-down. That goes back to the first question that you asked. We must budget. Alright, thank you for that. And to explain more about that. You know this is a youth station and actually youth should budget. Isn't that right? It is right. And why should you just check when budgeting for this festive season? What are the main priorities that youth should budget, should check when budgeting for this festive season? Good question Joy, especially when you say and you talk about the youths. We must acknowledge first that at the stage where one is a youth, they are in the stage where they are trying to build their wealth. A lot of the youths today would not have not reached the stage where they have more than enough to just use however. And you realize even the ones that look like they have more than enough are very keen on how to budget. Now in this particularly festive season, there are so many activities, so many events to attend. In fact, if you look at the social media platforms, you will see so many activities for the youths to attend. Now the youth need to budget in this festive season so that one they can be able to enjoy the festive season so that it does not come with a lot of bad negative energy. You still get to enjoy the festive season, but also you get to spend your money wisely. So the youth need to first of all budget, so they look at what they have, and then they look at the festive season, how memorable would I want this festive season to be. I believe Joy, even you in your plans, actually I started my festive season back last week. Wow, good for you. So you want to make sure that your remembrance of the festive season of December is a good memory. So you need to budget for it. You need to have the resources for it. So budgeting, but also making sure that this is not just an ordinary December. So making it not an ordinary December means that the youth have to factor in everything, but of it would mean you put down everything that you want to achieve. Where do I want to go? Whom do I want to go with? Do I have to go? Exactly. And if I have to go, how much will it cost me? Everything must have the costs accompanied to it so that then the budgeting process is complete because just writing that I would want to go to Naivasha, I would want to go to Dubai, is not enough, put the cost, then work around it, do I have the money and I achieve it. So if you cannot achieve it, Joy, I think we will just stay in the house and enjoy the rest. But to say about budget, which part of you is in charge of this, but is it the judgmental self or the loving yourself, you know, we are youths. Well, I'd go with the truth is around the Christmas or the festivities season we go with the loving self. But the truth is we should go with the judgmental self where your mind is at work so that your emotions do not carry you and do not take over your judgment of what to do. So if your mind is at work you will do the math that is determined by what do I have, what can I spend and is January coming. Because in all these festivities January should be always at the back of your mind what do I have, what can I spend and will I be begging in January. Now with all that, then we can plan for the month for this month and for the festivities. So the mind, the logical part of us should be at work more than the enjoyment as they call it. And actually I understand you are a parent and how should parents engage their youths in this festive season. I love your question Joy. I'm not a parent to a youth but I have an answer to your question. First of all I think parents should have a conversation with their youths about spending. And I think this conversation should not start now when we want to spend because the youth might not understand that mum does not want to. They will think mum does not want but because mum does not have the resources to do this because January is coming school fees is coming and all that. So I believe strongly that parents should have this conversation way earlier but even if it has not been held in this conversation we can still have it today. We talk about we are in the festivities period and these are the things that we want to do as a family. We want to go and visit granny, we want to go for a holiday as a family, we want new clothes, Christmas clothes and this is our pool of resources. So can we prioritise? Priorities are what are going to help us budget as a family so we will check what must we do. So what must be done first the rent has to be paid we need school fees for January we need all this but we also need to enjoy the festivities so what must we do? We do what we must first and then we do what is not absolutely a must next and ensure that the period is full of marry as much as our resources can find. So the function the role that parents have to play is to have a conversation with their children and make them understand this is what we have in terms of the resources and this is what we can afford now can we work around it as a family. That's great and actually we should bear in mind on the youth that are disabled. How do they celebrate or how can you just advise them to celebrate their holidays because you know this budget is everywhere too every person. You've touched a very controversial well touchy issue and I appreciate you for even bringing it up because sometimes they look as they are disadvantaged so the ones that are disabled or the ones that are abled differently first I believe every family should consider them as part of their festivities that we are all enjoying. So the first thing I think all families should do is that they should not set them apart they should include them in their budgets secondly I would advise them to also be positive minded see sometimes it's hard to incorporate someone into the festivities when they are already looking down upon themselves so the second thing is that I would encourage them to participate as much as possible. So there is the societies and families to include them and themselves to be part of it. Now for those that are working they can always find for example if you are going for holiday find a place that is friendly to your kind of disability because if you go to a place where say if you are physically challenged you cannot walk if you go to a place like Apul you might feel like everything is not working but you can find another way of having fun like you cannot plan for hiking because that would be a challenge for you but you can find something else that works for you anywhere where there is eating anywhere where there is a lot of socializing so I would advise that the ones that are physically challenged or have disabilities of different sorts that they choose wherever they will choose to enjoy their festivities is something that is friendly to their to themselves and to their bodies and to their minds so that they also get to enjoy it and don't feel like they were left out so the greatest role on them is to make sure that whatever they choose is what works for them and they should communicate it sometimes families have a way of excluding them so they can speak it out last time we went to a beach and I could not have fun because I cannot participate in the activities they are how about we try this last time we all went hiking and they had to wait for you guys down at the mountain because I cannot go hiking how about we try something else I think they should also try and find and encourage the people around them to participate in activities that are friendly to them so that they also feel the merit of the festivities sure, think you think about that and actually let us talk about savings you know we need to save because we do not predict the future and are people late to save for this festive season is it too late to save the salary that you have or that you are getting this coming month is it really late to save they say that the December salary is not for the Christmas season it is for the next month so we need to save by the time we get to this festive season we should have saved for it so our savings should have started in January especially depending on how big your spending is your expenditure during this period is on the question of if it is late it is a little late because happy new year is coming well happy new year comes with the happy school fees children are going to come one and they are joining universities rent has to be paid we have to go to work and we do not want to cry in January come new year so I think the place of saving is very important do you know what Joy, I also think that even in this festive month we can still save we usually save up to November and we will start again in January we should plan to save even in December because it is not as hectic and as dry and sunny as it really is and then I think in this time we should not spend all our savings in their festivities actually I wanted to talk about that point is having fun with the savings advisable because you know we saved and something you know you cannot predict about the future and something just happens is it advisable how can I put it to spend on your savings my advice would be this Joy spend what had been saved for the festivities do not spend your savings when we are saving we should save some saving X amount because Christmas will come because December will come so if there was no such fund if you use whatever else you had spent and then the new year comes and an emergency comes then it will be hard to work around it but then that will allow me to touch just a little bit on the savings when we are saving we should be saving with those things in mind an emergency fund should be different from your normal savings so that no matter the situation I will never touch this unless it really is an emergency okay when you have removed all your monthly expenditure there should be the savings that you have and with the constant reminder and thought that Christmas new year and December at large is coming I think we should all be saving towards it just as we would save for a trip for school fees for all that we would not take school fees money to go for a trip with so I also think we should not spend all our savings on this if you had not saved specifically for the festivities if you are going to spend what you had saved just a small the tiniest portion should be spent on the festivities probably the 1% of it tomorrow we will not remember the festivities yeah sure so do not spend everything that you have worked so hard to save on the festivities just a small portion and then we make sure tomorrow we are smiling not crying and to wind up how can one have fun without money you know because we are not so that blessed let us say let us put it that manner but how can we have fun without money good question especially the youth yeah yeah and because people call it that having fun is all about money spending and all that I believe there is several ways that we can have fun spending money one we can visit our parents instead of going to Naibasha and Mombasa and Dubai and more often than not we can find that our parents will fund the eating secondly we can make, marry and have games just by ourselves in our houses for example we can play board games we don't need to spend money you can play games the mind boggling games without spending money we don't need to spend in activities that are around us for example if you belong to a church or a community group and they have planned for they have planned for an event in the community say having fun with the kids around or the less fortunate or less privileged you can go and have fun with them you get to use your skills have fun with them encourage someone and you still have fun many other ways that you can create fun by yourself invite friends over pool resources if we have 10 friends and we put a movie in our house we will still have fun and we will not have to spend a lot or we will all pool our resources and be able to bring up something that will still have fun but we will not spend too much because sometimes we use too much to get the same thing that we would have had if we can cook in the house rather than buy out that's another way because buyouts are expensive in these days of asking them to actually be brought in the house that's expensive but cooking in the house pooling resources together that will work and I just give you 5 seconds what do you advise the youths out there to how on budget on this festive season spend what you have already saved do not spend what you do not have wow we had Tabitha Kibugi a financial analyst thank you very much for coming and for just giving us and telling us about how to budget on this festive season as you had out there and also parents and all people who watched tonight I will tell you just have a budget on how to spend on this festive season that's what we had for you my name is Jayant Aga God bless