 How are you? Are you just joining us? Welcome, this is White in the Morning on your favorite channel, White254. And I would just like to remind you how you can interact with us at White254 Facebook, White254 channel on Twitter, White254 underscore channel on the Graham. You can stream us live, by the way, on a daily motion. Or you can just watch us here. Either way, we're here. You're welcome. We're gonna have a good time, all right? So we just had two very interesting conversations one with Stephanie Agata and the second with Brian Sakwa 101. And we're about to have our last convo of the day. Talking money. One of my favorite things to talk about, yes. There's a quote, Kenyans like to say, I don't know if it's all Kenyans, but Julisema, Julisema, Julisema ni watuni, so many mimi. One day you could be saving, nice, nice, nice, nice. Then tomorrow the money that you have saved is saving you. We're about to find out how to break that chain chain, all right? Hashtag is where the wedding. Let me allow my guests to introduce themselves. Good morning. Good morning. How are you? I'm good. Yeah, you look good. Oh, thank you. Please introduce yourself to the people. My name is Tom Charles. Tom Charles is a speaker and founder of Motisha. Motisha is a public speaking and training company where we offer public speaking services, including motivational talks, seminars, leadership training, and financial management trainings. So our main base market is like institutions, schools, principals, we have youth groups where we handle investment issues, yes. And then in the corporate world, also, we do sales training for salespeople, yeah. And my favorite kind of guest, all I wanted was your name and your social media, but you've given me everything. I'm like, oh, look at his face. You've not done anything wrong. It's fine. It's fine. It is fine. All right, so you've just described Motisha. This is a company that you run? Yeah. You're the founder and CEO? Founder. Founder, yes. Not CEO? No, no, CEO. Is there a difference? Yeah, yeah, there's a difference. What's the difference? You can change the CEO, you can change the founder. So sorry, so sorry, so sorry. OK, I think we're going to have fun with this conversation. Right today, yeah, we should. You have said motivational speaking, public speaking, and things like that. So you do the training yourself? Yeah, I do the training. Oh, really? How does that work exactly? From point A to point Z. Maybe B. We book an event, create content, package content, go to the event, deliver content, whether it's training, whether it's a seminar, whatever it is, we deliver the content and everything in between. All right, so today our main focus is financial literacy. What is financial literacy? Knowing about money. What is money? How does money work? How do you get it? How do you keep it? How do you use it? And how will you lose it? People don't really talk about that. But people do lose money all the time. All the time. Now, in this age and era of taxation, we have a taxation bill that has just been tabled, parliament, and they're taxing everything from wigs to washers. It's just ridiculous. Honestly, the taxes that are coming, the excise tax, the VAT is at an all-time high. How do we learn how to spend wisely? You know, for you to spend, you first need to earn it. So I think for beginners, we need to start from life. How do we talk about receiving the money in the first place? Because we have this notion of, I'm going to make money, I should make money. We don't make money. De La Ruda does that and gets closed. That's a story for another day. We take money, we receive money. There's an exchange of money. And from my end, my perception, money is a thank you note. You understand? And when you do something for someone, all day is like a thousand years ago, they'd be like, thank you so much. Right now, you're so hungry, you go to that hotel, you eat and you're like, thank you? Do you do that? You'd be like, thank you, you understand? So like, it's a thank you note. So for us, that understanding is important so that when you have lots of it, you're like, I'm adding value. You're like, I'm doing great stuff to people and they're saying, thank you. But then when you don't have any of it, you're like, who did you serve again? No one. What value did you bring? None. What problem did you solve? So who said thank you? No one. So do you have the money? Okay. All right, so how do we lose money? And how do we know we're about to lose money? When we try saying thank you to so many people without receiving so many thank yous. When we try. Well, your lingo is so enticing. And I think that is the easiest way to put it. When we try to use it to get so much than we have earned and earned in the sense of the value that we've given. Yes. So if I did a job and I got like a towel and someone comes to me with something interesting, a shoe, a suit or anything and it's 3,000. What do I do? Branch, I'm Shwari, I'm copper, anything. So I want to bring to myself something that is worth more value than the value I've brought to the marketplace. And so I'm buying these at like a value which is so high. And of course I'll spend above what I have or what I can afford. And then it's gone. And then there is always that desire. Anytime you have money, you'll spend it. As long as you have money, you're going to spend it. If you have 1,000 or if you have let's say 10,000 to live with for a month, the month will end, you'll have zero. If you have like 20,000, the month will end, you'll have spent all of it. So like the way our brains work is like, if it's there, it will be spent. Yeah, if I have some cash, where are the opportunities to spend? I'm sure I'll have something nice, a hotel, it will be all gone. When you don't have it, you don't have those options. So you're like, just in the house, just staying there, Netflix, yeah. Just Netflix and chill, yeah, because you don't have the capacity to spend as much. I don't have the capacity to spend as much as the person I need. The one they need urgently. You're shouting, you're shouting, you're shouting. Hey, you're shouting, hey. But what's the remedy to that? Because as you've said, excuse me, as youths, it's exciting that just coming out from school or coming out from whatever phase of life have just come out and then coming into the workplace. Though finally we're being told our first thank you. And yeah, we want to do something with it. We want to feel like, yo, nani, I'm independent. Eh, nobody can, ah. And I want the brand new phone. I want, like you said, the shiny shoes. I just want everything. I want to smell like Mani Buwan, a Muslim-owned neighbor. How do we remedy that? How do we come to the sober mindset of, by the way, we must need to make the dreams come true. It's an understanding of why that happens in the first place. Why does it happen? First of all, self-esteem issues. Wow. Yeah, if you like, peg your self-worth, self-esteem, your courage. Oh, you're smart, you're very smart, sorry. Thank you. Yeah, with how much you have, like with how much you can present, like with how you can package yourself like the physical expression. And then when you have lots of cash to spend, you'll be like, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. In high spirits, when you don't. When you have something to spend, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. When you are in a room and like you're the best dressed, you're like, boss. I mean, that is all. But when you're in a room and you feel like, ah. That kagai. Hey, look who is way above me, you feel like. Self-esteem is pegged on what you have to show. And then the second thing is peer pressure. You know, we think peer pressure is the high school thing, you know, copy assignments to do this. No, peer pressure exists in our society right now. And so you just have your first job, you've landed your job, you've been confirmed, permanent and pensionable or whatever stuff. And then everyone in your circle expects you to live in a certain way. Everyone expects you to present yourself in a certain way. And even at home, when you go back home over holidays, people expect you to be the guy, the lady. Like, are you sure you just want to use like, border when you can do like Uber and stuff and, you know, cause now there's that expectations. And then we also feel like, anyway, let me just, I don't really want them to know that I don't have, you know, of course I work maybe, especially those guys who work at financial institutions. Yeah, the pressure there, you know, it's just something else. Yeah, I've been there for a while. Really? Yeah, and so you find like you're so broke, but then you have to keep up the appearances. And then people see you, you know, you're employed and someone asks for your thought urgently, but you honestly don't have. Like, you... Belanuma. Did you just? You don't have. But you can't tell them, why? Because you're working. Any Nairobi. Yeah, that is someone from home. They won't understand. So you have to go in debt just to like satisfy that to cover your face, put on that facade. I'm good. I'm telling you a secret. Yeah? Niquom Dogo, there's a time, and this memory has stuck with me for some reason. I think it changed my life when I became an actual adult. So Niquom Dogo, there's a time, I had, I don't know, something was happening in the family. I think there was an event or some sort, but I had to go home. So I had an uncle. Uncle, what did you check in the garden? Uncle, hi! You said you had 20 bucks to buy sweets? No. What do you mean you don't have 20 bucks? What do you even mean? What? 20 bucks? Niquom Dogo, sir. You said you didn't have 20 bucks. But maybe, I have 30. I have 20, I have 30. Sorry, ma'am. Yeah, it's okay. Okay, you're throwing mud on the story, but you have a point. You have a point, do you have a point? Yeah, probably, maybe I have a point. Next time, next time, do you have a point. But the point is, growing up, I don't realize that I have 50 bucks to buy sweets. Yeah, sure, sure. And I don't know if I have 50 bucks or not. We don't have. How do we become financially liberated? Because that's a goal I have in life. All right, before that, they usually say, most of us when we get our job or get into that business, we usually believe at the end of the month we will have lots of money. But then what happens is, at the end of the money, there's still a lot of the money. A lot of money. So it's like a wake up call, you'll be like, oh, we have a different ground, you understand. But now when it comes to financial literacy, it's like the willingness and the commitment to just know about money. The avenues to receive, the avenues they'll get out and just be able to secure those and then to grow it. That is investing and everything. You'll be like, all right, now I have this much. Do I want to just keep this much? Or do I want to risk and potentially earn so much more or maybe lose it all, so that risk. Learning will help you make an educated risk or if you can say that. So that, yes, you're putting your best foot forward, but at least you know what you're doing. For most of us, we've had cash, we've thrown it somewhere. We didn't really quite understand the thing. It disappeared. And then we were like, what happened? And for us, it's an understanding that everything is not just about having the money in your hand. It's not just about, okay, I have it here. It's also about like, how did I get here? For some of us, it gets here because we worked the whole night. For some of us, it got here because we spent our money on an investment. We invested in someone else's business. So while that business was running, we were also doing our own thing, and so it got here. Then again, the second thing now after it getting here, where will it sleep? Will it be like my fancy desires? Will it be like addictions and stuff? Will it be like me being just reckless? Because any of those, yeah, you'll have lots of it. Just a quick one. There's so many people who believe, if I earn like a hundred K, man, I'll never be in debt, like never, like never. People earn like millions and they're in debt. So when you have lots of money, the desire just grows. You get more, and instead of like vets, now you want something else. You want fielder. Now you are in that space and the paycheck increases, and now it's higher. And now Toyota, it's not Toyota anymore. Who does that? Let's go to BMW, Audi and stuff. It's like you grow the paycheck, the desire grows. So unless you are able to like, all right, this is enough, okay? Yeah, I don't have to move to a two bedroom house. I'm just okay right here. Until you're in that position, like, yeah, I need like maybe one shoe every three months, and not like three shoes every month, until you're in that position, you'll earn more, but it will still find a way to slip out of your hands. I have a strange question to ask, and this is just me being curious. This to call, May, May's mental health awareness month. It sounds a lot like mental health is very in touch with money and finances, because you've talked about addiction. That's something where your money can honestly just be siphoned for no reason. You've talked about self-actualization, where you know, you don't have to compete with anyone. You don't need to, you don't need to compete with anyone. This is job description, but don't work. You want, or I see someone else who is driving a particular brand of car, and I say, I got. When you're in that position, you don't need to compete with anyone. You don't need to compete with anyone. So it sounds like mental health has a lot to do with it. I would say money has a lot to do with that other one, but it's more or less the same. They say money is not the most important thing in the world, but money influences every important thing in the world. Wow. And mental health is one of the most important things in the world. So like, just an extension, money will influence your marriage, money will influence your education, the level and everything. Oh, sorry. I'm like, I speak and everything, so it's... Yeah, yeah. Shutting the tabs of you're talking a lot of truth. Oh, oh, oh, sorry about that. Money will influence, like, the love, family, how closely need it. It will influence religion, to engage in the society and stuff. Money will influence everything. And so, even your mental health, if... Sorry, I had to take up a bit of silence. But he went, okay. Yeah, it's religion. Religion and money, they're just connected. So like, money is connected to everything. That's just basically it. So even mental health, money is connected to that. Yeah, because the things we call money wounds. For example, there are some of us, if, for instance, I bought this suit like X amount, if I'm asked at home how much I bought it, I'll be like X minus like one K or like 1500, I'll have to say my price, yeah. Like, people will ask you, how much do you pay for rent? Instead of like, it's 17,000, you'll be like, ah, this one, just 12,500. You are kind of ashamed to be like, to really tell the truth. Because of how you perceive you and them, you don't really want to make them feel bad or anything. Yeah, and then there are those of us who, money is that thing, as we say it, that brings them excitement. Or money is that thing that they have to like, have keeps them on their toes. They spend it so that they don't have so that they can work. If they have, I, if they have, I. Hey boss, today A-Bana, today I'm here. Then look, you can't know what to when that, and I can't say no, you can't go. Yeah, and now in addition to that, we have something called money comfort zone. Like, there's amount you are usually comfortable with. And even with the salary or anything, yeah, it's just like the normal comfort zone, but when it comes to money, when you get into this, if it's like 60,000 to like 70, if especially those who are in business or sales, that the salaries and wages fluctuate, if you earn way below that, you're like, ah, no, this is not me. You get to that zone, you are okay. You realize you're going to exceed your targets for the month, you've like reached that zone, and it's like third week, the last week you want to be working. Because you reached your zone and chances are high you are going to exceed it. So you just lazy around because you're there. So it's quite important in addition to like, understanding your mental orientation towards money, like understanding your safe space when it comes to money. Yeah, there are people, if 10K is not somewhere, or 100, they are not comfortable. There are people, if 10K or 100 is there somewhere, they're also not comfortable. They just want to be jumpy and everything, yeah. All right, so we've talked about actually making the money, it's in our hands now, talking about how to spend it. So that, I want to phrase it intelligently. What's your name? What's your name? Come on, Mr. How? At what level on Facebook? Why 254 channel on Twitter? Why 254 underscore channel on the ground? Hashtag of that day is why in the morning, we're just talking about financial literacy with Tom Charles over here, and the founder of Morticia, and we are trying to demystify a couple of things, money-related. So the thing I see troubling the youth a lot is, okay, to my work hard, and hard is from whether you're self-employed, whether you have odd jobs, am I your salary, whichever way the money's coming, it's coming. But it's not staying. And does saving mean that you have so much money, now you have enough to save, or is saving a mentality for okay? I don't have the amount maybe I wish to have, but I will intentionally set aside this amount to save. And when do you start investing? When you've saved enough, or which one comes first even? Savings or investments, which one is smartest? All right, to answer the last question first, you need to save first. Yeah, now, most of us, when we are looking for avenues to invest, like start a business and everything, we ask ourselves like, where am I going to get the funding, the capital and everything? And loan, yeah, loan. But you see, that's a very bad idea, a terrible one. Because the first business is likely going to fail, like chances are so high it's going to fail. There's so many things you don't know about the business, there's so many things you have not learned, there's so many mistakes you're going to make. And so the business is going to fail. So it's better, you put your own money, like month in, month out, you save a portion of whatever you are earning, who king is a palet. If it fails, it fails with your cash, you go cry in the bathroom for two hours for the whole night. Chelsea, fine. When you come back in the morning, you are okay, you are at zero. But if you use like someone else's money, you go cry, when you come back in the morning, you are in debt. Now you have to start like the depression and the thing. Yeah, so save to invest. And then when the business is growing, you can take out debt to boost it. If you're now sure this is taking shape, now the resources I have cannot sustain my clients, like I needed an office space, and now I need like one more assistant or like an employee, or now I need these equipment, now you go take out loan, because you have verified your business concept that it works. Yeah, okay. Just because that business worked out for someone, it does not mean it's going to work out for you. So until you confirm and verify that it will work for you, just use your own money. Yeah, the first one was the first part of the question. The difference between, you just answered the difference between savings and investment. So do you need savings is that it's too, you have a lot of money. It has clicked. So you cannot tell yourself like, when I have enough, I will save. You will never have enough. You will just like never have enough. So what happens is there are two main important things when it comes to finance. There are important things. Oh, there are two things we need to consider. Important things and urgent things. Savings is very important, like extremely important. It's not urgent. No one will point that down to your head to be like save some cash this month. No one does that, right? It's not urgent, but it is very important. But so when money comes in, most of us we focus on the urgent things, rent. Okay, okay, okay. Shopping, shopping. Okay, okay, okay. Okay, the urgent things only. And so if you don't have a budget, you didn't like note things down like the expenses you have for the month. You will come to realize like, okay, I've spent money on everything that is urgent. I've left out things that are important. I've left out some cash for savings. I've left out maybe some cash to like philanthropy or stuff. If that is something you do, I've left out some cash for myself, like self-care and everything. Those things are important, but they are not urgent. And so when it comes to saving, it's like just receive your cash and be like very intentional with it. Yeah. Talk to me about budgeting. You said that I think it's very important. So for example, if my salary is 10,000 shillings, and also should dictate where I live, right? The amount of money coming in should dictate where I live. Because I cannot be earning 10,000 and my rent is 8,000, correct? So work me through budgeting. They say, budgeting is telling your money where to go instead of wondering where it went. No, it's a punchline. Are you telling your money where to go instead of... Wondering where it went. Yeah, we've all had that tau and we're like, wait. It's not that one. No. Not that one. This one, it's not that one. No, this one, it's not that one. Where did that go? Yeah, so because what happens is we take our good time when we know that, ah, now it's in the account, mobile banking, so 5K I'm going to send, 7K I'm going to pay rent. You know your budgeting, but with your mind. And of course in five hours you're going to forget. And when you forget what happens, you go back to default, which is handle what is urgent first. You had a list of very important things in your mind, yes. But now when you've forgotten about the list, your mind goes to what was very urgent. Yeah, the issues that you think are very pressing, you will handle all of them. And then at the end of the day, you're like, oh, where do I get money for this? Understand. So ideally what is recommended would be like 10% saving for starters or like five, because it's the consistency and the habit that matters at first. So that you get into that zone, you'll be like, I am someone who saves money. You understand? You'll be like, I am someone who does this because it's like for like the last 12 months, you've been saving. That is who you are, you know? So 10% is acceptable or five, depending on how you are. Because of course everyone is different, yeah. And then the others you can now go with like, how much do you want to set aside if you have debt to pay? Because we do like have debts, living expenses. Now when it comes to expenses, it's like at least not more than 30%, let's say 25, should go to housing. Yeah, so if it is not fair, if it is 10K, hey, put up a top in your bag, 2500. But that is like, now that is important. If you want to live in a good house, you just increase your earning, yeah. But so make sure 25% goes to like the housing. Now you have like a good, let's say you started with like five percent savings because this is something you've never done. The problem with us, that is where you started with like you save some nine K and then the next day it saves you because in your mind I'm like, now this month, this month, So you just jump all in, you know, you don't have a strategy, you don't have a habit, it's not in you, the next day the agent wants, what is that P in your KCB, did I apply for mobile banking and then you go and withdraw but if it is a consistent habit, you know that this has some intention like am I serving, maybe mostly for three things, am I serving for emergencies like we all know emergencies will come, like it will pop up like someone is sick, like you've lost something, like this has happened, emergencies will pop up, yeah are you serving for that, do you have enough for like a month's upkeep or two months' upkeep, you know and possibly, if possible, like just save for a while and when you reach some threshold just leave that account then you know, this one is for emergencies, yeah in case your close family member or someone is really close to you once like thou urgently, you're not going to your salary or somewhere else, you have like a fund for emergency in case things go bad at work, you have like somewhere to fall back on, understand and this is a question we usually want to ponder on during our seminars depending on of course on the level of the guys we are interacting with would be like maybe if you have a 5,000 problem right now, how will you handle it or if you have a 10,000 problem, of course depending on our audience and so you find guys who are who and like 30 or 50 or 70k but if they have a 15,000 problem right now, they'll go in debt you know because savings it was important but it was not, it was not the thing there was not that consistency, if they wanted they could have but they just didn't yeah the second thing you save for your desires and ambitions and everything he'll tell me but yeah those kinds of ambitions you'd be like I've always wanted to do this you know because it's a fact reaching for those dreams and ambitions kind of fills you to go to the next level you know you work so hard for a while for like 3 years you go and enjoy some good time in Mombasa or like Zanzibar or whatever and then you're like boss next time SA and so you kind of do some work you know because you know at the back of your mind I'm doing this for something yeah it's not in vain so for those ambitions so that you also feed your soul you're saying such nice things this morning child so wow you're asking nice questions way okay in conclusion as we wind this conversation up which is quite unfair honestly but what happens how do you get yourself out of a bad situation let's say maybe you didn't budget well life happens so you find yourself at perhaps negative something instead of zero negative something how do you get back on your feet you don't grade yeah you don't grade you just go lucky if you're living in a two bedroom just like an ego candle really cheap so that you have something but of course to most of us ego plays a huge role and you just can't take that you of course you can't afford the house now but you're like let me just copper let me just take debt let me just you understand yeah so you downgrade so that you see the money you are supposed to like save like pay debts now you have a large chunk because your expenses are lowered if you are like filing your own kind everything you kind of downgrade take public service like you just downgrade first ego if you settle things now when I let ego back when the leg on a mission you have to say but at first you just need to like okay the first because you are earning understand so it's either you need to really improve your earning potential which at that moment will be hard because you need to like invest in something and if you invest it means you need to put in both time and money of course money is now the problem so money you cannot put in you may look for a second job or a third or anything but then it will still come back yeah you get more money you spend more unless you are able to like downgrade and then with MBA too I'm not I'm not okay take things slow whatever is surplus you sort out your issues it may take like six months or like one year but at the end of it you become a better person you know it's about who will you be you know yeah you're a wise man Tom Charles we're going to take this conversation elsewhere after this you are tuned your shinda that's the only problem otherwise I try to find Facebook on Twitter hashtag of the day has been why in the morning Charles would you like to say something before we close it up last remarks last remarks for everyone yes please money is hard to make but easy to spend but easy to lose so make it don't lose it our social handles if I may it's more t-shirt services on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and for YouTube it's more t-shirt speaking your personal account on Facebook is at Tom Charles K.E. yes if you want to recharge you can holla us at 0768-205-511 0768-205-511 all right you heard it can't take away or add on to that but I can tell you to have a fantastic day from myself Valentine or at Colony Val from Stephanie Ayeta from Brian Sockel 101 we wish you a fantastic day we'll see you when we see you be good