 The negative effects of debt. Almost everyone knows what it feels like to be behind on paying bills and concerned about having enough money in their accounts to cover all their bills at the end of the month. A few people know what it feels like to have borrowed money and not have enough money to repay the loan when it falls due. Some don't. People who are going through debt deal with a lot more than unpleasant calls and worrying about how to repay the debt. There are other negative effects of debt. Being in debt can affect your goals. Debt can cost you to put a hold on your dreams and aspirations. Debt will cloud your mind with worry and rob you of the ability to plan. To work on your goals, you require focus and an enabling state of mind to plan and execute the plans. Being in debt can negatively affect your credit score. In other countries, a bad credit score will affect your ability to rent a house, get a credit card, and you would also pay higher interest on future loans. In Nigeria, however, a bad credit score will stop you from getting a loan from any bank unless you totally liquidate the bad loan. So if you're an entrepreneur, a bad credit score can affect your business should your business require a loan to expand. Being in debt can also affect your personal relationships. It can cause marital problems, arguments with children, and lost friendships. In some instances, you lose the trust of your family and friends. Being in debt can affect your health, both physical health and your mental health. You may gain weight or lose weight. It can cost you to slip into depression and lose control. Being in debt will rob you of your peace and can cause you to lose sleep. You can be constantly in a state of worry and anxiety trying to figure out ways to repair your debt. How do you get out of this negative debt cycle? Stop all borrowing. Track your spending. Stop all spending on non-essential items and start thinking of where to make cuts. Be prepared to make lifestyle changes. Instead of shopping in your neighborhood, consider buying foodstuff in bulk from the markets. Before you buy anything, ask yourself if this is a need or simply a want. Spend less on wants and more on needs. Start a budget. Identify how much you need for all your expenses monthly. Compare it to your monthly earnings and then adjust your lifestyle. Stick to the budget that you have made. Look for ways to increase your income. Look for a better paying job or start a side hustle to augment your income. It may be easier to earn an extra $20,000 from a side business than it is to reduce your spending by $20,000, especially if the issue is low income rather than frivolous spending. Practice gratitude and contentment. Both will help you keep away from debt. Focus on what you have and say for what you want. This will help you avoid debt and its negative effects. This is interesting. I think I would love to talk more about it. You are actually completely right about saying it's over cloud your thinking, your ways of life. It's out your dream, your planning and stuff like that. Again, you look at debt in another perspective. Just like you said, it's cut short in Nigeria because you see predominantly the borrowers don't even understand. That's what I'm talking about capitalists. They are just about, I will give you this money. I already have a projection that release this loan on the millionaire. I once also won $20 million at the end of the year. That is their interest. If your defaulting is even a plus to them because they will be putting more penalty, more money for them. We have a system where they don't care about the customer. They do receive the care, but they don't actually care. If you look at it compared to the United States that you made mention of, it actually gives you more of a less access to certain facilities like incentive that you enjoy. If you are entitled to like 10 incentive, it reduces it to like let's say 5, 4 depending on your default rate. That's interesting at least. If you say stop, I'm looking at it from a businessman. Stop borrowing. My business is out. How do I generate money? You understand? I think it's a little bit deeper than that. I think the fundamental problem is ignorance. So ask an average 10 or 15 year old what they know about credit and debit. They have no clue. All they have is the mathematics that taught them in school. So if you don't understand this fundamentally, that's a lot of who are getting debt. You see a lot of suicide rates going up. You see the state of happiness index, which I was going to talk about the misery index, happiness index going down. Because people have gone themselves in holes that they had no idea how they got in or have no idea how they would come out. It's because you don't have education. So I think it goes deeper than that. This education must start from early years. Ask an average 18 year old American. They know exactly the kind of debt they should take. They know how long to take them to pay. They know the percentage they are going to pay. They have all that information. So that's the problem we have these days. Like you said, like many things in Nigeria or even Africa, the people that are in charge of it are more interested in punishing you. It's like the average policeman, the average policeman wants you to take one way so that he can give you in Nigeria or even give you tickets. So when the use of something is not known, abuse is automatic. I think that's what the problem is. Why I say stop all borrowing is not stop all borrowing forever. It's just that if you're in debt, you're already in a war. The easiest way to get out of a hole is to stop digging. If you keep borrowing, you keep digging this hole. Even if you're a business person, it's imperative that you take some time away from borrowing, actively borrowing, and look at the situation. How do I get out of it? What are the steps that I need to take? What are the things that I need to do to help me get out of debt first? So stop all borrowing so that you can assess the situation. I'm not saying you would never borrow. But for now... If you ask finance people, they will tell you there's good debt and there's bad debt. What is happening is there's so much bad debt. And the cost for bad debt is ignorance. We're back to the ignorance question. So even the average businessman does not realize how much they need to borrow for what. So you see the average businessman gets 100 million a year loan. Half of it is used to buy a Range Rover. You see what I'm saying? It's the wrong utilization. And most people fall victim of this. Most entrepreneurs, you're an entrepreneur. In fact, some even get grants. You've gotten a grant for your business. But they won't apply it how they went to the investors and portrayed what the money was going to be utilized for. But once the money hits their account, they remember, oh, then was this some loud spending involved? Exactly. Another thing you should also look at it probably because I'm into businesses. We have asset and liability. You can buy a Range Rover. It can be an asset and it can also be a liability. Range Rover can never be an asset because a Range Rover will lose value the day you drive it out. So the reason why I said it can be an asset, I would justify that. We're actually in a country where you are actually giving privilege to have access to some form of contracts, some form of business till the way you look. You understand. If I drive a Range Rover and I have a business dream, the business dream is to, that can generate probably times 10 of the money I borrow. But I sound like, okay, if I have a Range Rover, I'm like, okay, how much is this Range Rover? It is $40 million. If you give this person this project of $200 million, this person can go on the way with our money. It tends to win in some cases and pay off the debt. So as of that time, that is not a liability. It's actually an asset. It depends on the perspective and our funding for the environment. I totally agree with you. There's a valid point where, and that again just speaks to the poverty of intellect, of our society. Exactly. Because the day you begin to judge a man by the car he drives, there's a big problem that you have. Unfortunately, that's how people are judged. So you saw someone with an empty head, but it goes in with the Range Rover and you judge him because he drives the Range Rover. That's the reason why people get into more debt, because this person is an empty head and they are giving to you with the Range Rover, then you give him $250 million because he's driving the first million Range Rover. Then the man has no way to reproduce that Range Rover. For the man that has capacity, he doesn't need a Range Rover to prove that he has capacity. He goes in there and he gets into that meeting. Many times, there's so many people, like she said, there's so many people that have gotten grants. Professors in universities, they get millions of dollars in grants for research and things like that. They don't drive Range Rovers. But I totally understand what you mean in terms of there are times where, as a business man, there's image that is required for you to portray to show your capacity, show your capability. But unfortunately, we have a system where there's no design, there's no framework that allows you to judge someone properly. In many instances, these guys, after they're in Range Rover, they still have to pay a lot. Even from the loan, they have to settle people from that loan. And you know that it's impossible for this person to take a $200 million loan. He has settled with a $100 million loan. You must ask yourself, that $100 million that he has settled with, how is he going to recover it? Exactly. Thank you. You know? Then from there, he buys the newest Range Rover to get another loan, another $500 million loan. And these people get, you know, like she said, dig yourself deeper into it. I think another thing we should also be looking at is more of a company who buy over loans, right? Where, depending on the liability cover. So for every individual, you see that it's more of a basic, just like you said, poverty is there, is deep, right? It's basic, how do I eat? You understand? And some people are not aware, ignorance of knowledge, or what they can do with their potential, right? We need to have buy over companies for normal basic people to say, okay, what is your liability portfolio? It's $100,000, okay? You have this ability, you can do social jobs, social jobs that will off-take, right? We'll pay you after then reducing it gradually, right? It's another way we can also look at it. Because if you look at it, another thing we can also do is more of corporatives and whatever that we have today. Basic lowman, they do daily contribution, monthly contributions to corporative, through SSU, Adjo and others kind of thing, right? You can actually, because they transact in cash, so data is lost, which is a great value. By the time you begin to buy over the loan, you understood the activities, you understand community financing and say, okay, if Mr. A and Mr. B, this is your stuff, you start monitoring each other, right? If you don't return this one, the person will not be able to take this. So with that, you are buying over the loan, restructuring them systematically and getting things better. Because if you see a man that doesn't even have any, he has brought up to the tune of 100,000 on all those IP, 30% per month, he's crazy out there. 30% per month individual just to eat. On 10,000, you pay almost like 13,000 or 15,000. It's also the issue of regulation. Regulation is also very important because many times industries are not regulated, have a way of just going haywire. So clearly, so I feel first regulation, secondly, fintile, financial intelligence, it's very important. It's important that from 50 years ago, already 50 years late, we should be educating our children, educating our people, educating the adults. We must include, I think this advocacy is to include financial intelligence in the school curriculum. I think it is actually included but the sad part of it is those who are teaching it are not practical. And those who are even... Because entrepreneurship has been introduced during the Jonathan's era into all special institutions. Not for everyone. Into all federal special institutions, entrepreneurship is the most cost that you have to take. I've never heard... I'm not sure that was executed. No, it was executed. You can go to any university, you see entrepreneurship from other levels. Like a G, like a general... Exactly. Everybody takes it. There is even a location of resources in millions, hundreds of millions to be the entrepreneurship center across the federal institutions in Nigeria by Jonathan administration. So that's what we are actually seeing. We have people who are the arms of affairs in this kind of structure who do not even understand business because they have not particularly been part of business. They are just taking theory and it's difficult to actually impart the knowledge of direct market response to understanding the process. So it's still theory, theory, theory. The problem is like most of the curriculums are their cake. I'm sure I've interviewed about 100 candidates in the past maybe five years. When I heard them say they studied entrepreneurship they studied business admin and I asked them throughout your four years of studying business admin, did you ever administer any business? Did you ever meet an entrepreneur that said business administration? But you've never won in four years being told to administer a business. So how do you come out as a four years, go for youth service, you are there looking for a bank job? There is a lot. Education has to be restructured. Overhauled. It's really needed to overhaul this. From the guardian and counseling we have people who are actually studying course that because my dad, my mom said I should go and study doctor they don't have that passion they don't have that ability and what have you. Education is expected to acquire knowledge that we used to solve a problem. But right now we are having dogmatism so you just come and pull. You have people for class you don't have anything to offer. So we have 80% of Nigerian graded who are unemployable because practically they are not there. And it's becoming so difficult. So that education is very imperative. So Lumoyan will be talking about Newton's law of politics. Each one must move one to end voter apathy.