 Hi, my name is Liam Keep and I am an Administrative and Program Assistant trainee at Seed Winnipeg. Seed is a non-profit organization that strives to reduce poverty and renew Winnipeg's inner city through financial empowerment. Many businesses have been launched with the support and expertise of our organization. Seed Winnipeg is also home to the Money Stories Program, a money management class that teaches youth about handling money through an Indigenous lens. Through our dedicated work with the National Centre for Collaboration and Indigenous Education, we have been able to develop new curriculum and participant manuals that complement the activities and topics that we cover in class. My name is Zambibian and I'm a Residential School survivor. I attended Cecil Jeffery in Kanora, Ontario, and I was about six or seven years old, and so did my dad. He also went to the same Residential School, and when he went to Residential School, they took his last name and gave him the last name, Kachum. And so now, when I do speaking engagements, I respect my parents by sharing only the first thing that they gave me, that's Zambibian. And when we think about central living, we want to think about the three R's. That's reduce, reuse, and recycle. So not only does simple living benefit us, and the people around us, but it also benefits the environment. Reducing means buying less and getting rid of things that we really don't need anymore. Finding ways to be happy with fewer things. We have reusing, which means using something again, or finding more than one way to use an object. And we have recycling, and this means using something old to make something new. For those of the three R's, you utilize those and be on track to simple living. Living a simpler life. Thinking about indigenous peoples, traditional indigenous peoples from the past, they used simple living quite extensively. When looking at reducing traditional indigenous populations, they didn't take more than what they needed. They understood that there was a balance that had to be kept, so there was no over-hunting. Because they knew they took too much. There's not going to be any for next year. Similarly with gathering. They took too much of one particular plant. Next year, there will be nothing for anything. So they only took what they needed. They reduced what they took. But also they reduced their waste. When thinking about harvesting an animal, traditional indigenous populations, they would use all of the animal. They would minimize waste as much as possible. Because they understood the work involved. They get that particular animal, but also the sacrifice that the animal made. So that's reducing in a more traditional sense. We use it. Again, traditional indigenous populations also reuse. Because again, they understood that the effort, the energy and the time that went into getting their materials, getting their goods would not be for granted. So someone took the time to create an arrow. And someone took the time to source the flint for the arrowhead. As soon as that arrow broke, they didn't just throw everything away. They might reuse the arrowhead and make a spear or use it for a blade. They didn't reuse that because they understand that it took time and energy and effort. And it's not just everyone. There's a limited source of those things. It's everything with recycling. Indigenous populations use old clothes, old pieces of clothing. They might make it into strips. So now they got lashings. They recycle what they had because they respected time, energy. And in fact, there's a legitimate amount. There's a finite amount. So that's the idea of simple work. I'm going to give you a little bit of my financial background. I started off a lot like you guys. I was, I've been homeless. I aged out of child and family services when I was 18. I had no education. I only had grade nine, no budgeting skills, no money management skills at all. My sister told me to go to Walford and I did and I managed to get Walford. That was the first money that I had, but it was just like what back in those days, maybe about $60 for two weeks or less. And that didn't go too far because I didn't know how to handle my money. First thing I did was probably go buy pop and chips, which I didn't eat like. As I gradually got to workshops like this, I got more education. I went to school. I learned how to handle my money. And I was taught how to do a budget. And this is actually my budget book that I have. And it is, I have to get a new one because this is 2019. And in my budget book, I've had this for about 15, 20 years. I get a new one every year. As you can see, I have mortgage, hydro cable, credit card, loan and cell phone. And I always put that in there. That's what I'm going to get, like what I fix. And I also have these envelopes. So every time I have a goal, like say, most people would have a goal like a new cell phone. I'm not sure if it's $200. But I would write that down and say, maybe at six or seven months down the road, I would always put a little bit of cash in there for my new goal. I found that this works best instead of, because every time you try to think of, I want to get GST, I'm going to put it down on the cell phone. Every time GST came around, that GST money would be gone to some bill that I forgot to pay or something like that. Some unexpected expenses are my income tax. It didn't work out that way. When I was found out, it worked best if I did envelopes like goals. That helped out, worked out really, really good for me. So we said budget, right, and save more. Increases income so we could save more. And as budget could stay the same. Or there's one other thing we could do. Sell this car? Yeah, you could sell this car. But again, if we keep this budget the same, what else can we do? Pick up his time frame. Increases time frame, right? We could increase it to 18 months and he would be at where he needs to be. So he really has three options then to get here. He could keep his income the same. Keep his budget the same and just give him more time. He could increase his income and save more. Or he could budget, cut down his expenses and find money to save. And so what we're going to do now in the next 15 minutes is we're going to look at his expenses, which are right here. And we're going to find that $267. We're going to find that money so he could save. So now we're going to look at making sacrifices or changes to the way he's spending his money. You have to have a plan for it to make it work. Because we want our budgets to be realistic. Because an unrealistic budget is impossible to keep. So you have to have a plan. And keep in mind who David is. He's 20 years old, he's a young guy, he's got friends. So a plan for cutting down his coffee budget might be too. Buy a can of coffee. So you might see a decrease in his coffee budget and maybe a small increase in his grocery budget because now he's making coffee at home and packing it with him. So those are some of the things you want to think about. If you're going to make a change, come up with a plan or a reason that that's going to work in stick. The other thing I'll touch on before we get to it by ourselves is look at his total expenses. What is it? $14.80 and how much of a budget does he? Or how much is his income? So that means he has what? $20 left over. Okay, so he's already saving $20 a month. Now for a monthly goal is $267 and he's already saving $20. How much do we really have to find in his budget then? $247, perfect. Credit history too helps quite a bit. So if you have a lot with the credit rating you're not going to find a good place. So you do have to look after your credit rating. I keep telling them that always check out the interest rate because it can be quite high, especially with credit cards. You have to look and shop around for the best interest rate. And I was going to mention about credit. Your credit is your best friend. Pay your bills on time. Your credit rating is a rating on each individual account that you have in your name. Okay, so if you have an auto loan that'll have a credit rating. If you have a phone in your name that account will have a credit rating. If you have a mortgage that account will have a credit rating. Why is money management important? So you can budget your money properly and get your bills paid on time, get things paid on time and learn how to live a proper life, I guess. So you're not falling behind on your bills. What do you think is the most common mistake you do with money? I don't budget. So when I don't budget, then I'm spending too much money on something that I'm short for my rent or something like that. So now I'm learning how to budget. So what would you tell youth now? Based on your learning. You need to budget. Can you give us a few examples? Sure. So for me, I have daycare payments and I have my mortgage that I'm paying while helping my mum pay and I have my food. So if I don't budget properly, I'm way under for something all the time. So for me budgeting, it's going to be able to get my bills paid on time. I'm not going to be late. I can build up my credit and do things like that. So if I budget, I still have a little bit of extra money left over for myself. So it's good like that. What animal best describes your money management skills? I don't know the turtle, maybe. It took me a little while to get there. But now that I'm there, it's better now. What have you caught yourself using money, have you caught yourself using money differently since taking the program? I have. So I'm not so quick to just spend now. Before, if I wanted to go out or put money in the BLT's or something like that, I would do it. Now I'm not doing that so, so quick I think about it. I'm like, no, you know what? I can't afford that today. So it's good. You were able to meet Viv. She came in and did some storytelling. What value did that bring to the program? It was good to hear like her side of the story. You know, she's been budgeting for a really long time now. She had a binder there and she's able to, you know, afford a condo for herself now. And she was sharing her experiences like that. So that gives me motivation to keep budgeting my money. And I'll be able to accomplish the same things that she did. What topics do you feel were the most beneficial to you and why? Definitely the budgeting and the credit because I didn't know anything about credit. I didn't know that when you checked your credit score that it was a softer hard hit because I've had a lot of people check my credit. So that's going to affect it. So it's good to know that I have to be at a certain level before I can start getting approved for things. So working on my credit is a good thing for me. How confident are you about saving money into a goal now? More confident now that I budget. So now I can fit that in my budget. Even if it's, you know, 20 bucks or 30 bucks a month, it's still something that I can save. So that's good. How do you feel about the facilitation of the program? Going to keep you interested, engaged, fun? Yeah, I know it was good. Can you tell us some of your favorite activities? I pretty much liked everything but just how he was really real about situations in our life. It made it more, I could relate to it more easy. It kept me interested as well because it was real life things that we were talking about. So that was good. What part of the program would you like to see more of? Still, like you guys offer savings. So I definitely like to look into that more because I know if you need furniture or things like that, that's something that I would be really interested in learning. So that, for sure, yeah. Final thoughts on the entire program. One last message for the audience. It was good. And I'm going to take this and teach it to my daughter when she gets older. I'm also teaching this to my mom right now. So it's perfect. Yeah. Hello, my name is Justin and I started as a participant in an after-school program. During this after-school program, I learned many skills. At first, I thought that the Money Stories program was just another certificate and didn't see any benefit. I thought it wouldn't have a direct impact on me. However, it helped me realize my potential and how much of an impact this program can help people. And the community members who have attended our programs and a special thank you to our partner, National Center for Collaboration in Indigenous Education.