Resources For Your Financial Health
Hi, Jamii Finance Readers!
This week’s newsletter will be a bit different and more personal following the feedback we have received from you! When we set out to start this newsletter, there was lots of excitement to share everything we’d learned about investing, saving, and the whole shebang. While the theory around financial literacy is helpful, it tends to be a bit dry, boring and difficult to follow at first- and that’s why we decided to make the newsletter more relatable in a bid to spark interest in the subject matter and reduce the anxiety that comes with personal-finance planning.
I had always thought that only the very wealthy could invest - and the reality is, you do invest what you have leftover from settling your expenses, so I may not have been too far off the mark. Yet, I think the biggest disservice to myself was to never then take the time to learn how I could leverage my income (however much) to set me up well to be financially secure. There are so many resources online (Investopedia, Nerdwallet, among others) and many things you could do for yourself that could help with your financial goals. We intend to have this newsletter help you pick out a couple of videos, newsletters, and personalities that would be helpful to guide this journey.
In the past months, I’ve spent time speaking with some of our readers. I've learned that there are numerous innovative ways to make money in our context- agriculture, beauty, transportation, etc. While some of these industries might not be the most ‘sexy’, there’s room for growth and improvements which could bring lots of financial rewards. Investments don’t just have to be in property, land or the stock market- especially since these options initially demand huge amounts of capital. What’s more, with any kind of investment, time and patience yield the best results so don’t be too frustrated if, at the beginning of your saving or investing journey, it feels like there’s no visible change!
And now to the fun stuff:
Resource of the Week:
This video shows how to use a simple Excel sheet to track your income and expenses. A great resource to help see how you’re spending money so you can then budget and increase your savings rate.
ICYMI:
The African Continental Free Trade Area, the free trade agreement ratified in 2018, officially kicked off at the beginning of this year. The short story is that it should be easier and cheaper to trade across African borders with tariffs eliminated from 90% of goods
A great opportunity for international exposure for 15-17 yr olds supported by The Rhodes Trust at The University of Oxford (UK)
Bridge2Rwanda launches Isomo Academy, an intensive English training and college preparatory program designed to equip Africa’s top high school students with the skills they need to compete for and win scholarships in top universities in the world
I drafted this newsletter while bobbing my head to Sema Sole’s new hit: Kama
The Jamii Finance Team is looking to interview entrepreneurs in any field to be featured in this newsletter. If you know anyone interested in sharing their journey with us, please reach out to contactjamii@gmail.com. Thank you and have a fruitful week!