By: Reitumetse Mahloane
Maseru
On Tuesday February 27th 2024, a programme on Money Management and Financial Planning was assembled at the American Corner, State Library in Maseru. In league with MISA Lesotho, TKO Financial Wellness & Advisory gathered and organized this one-day event, and a small number of interested media practitioners was invited.
TKO is a registered company that provides financial wellness, financial coaching, and training programs to promote financial education, which now in partnership with the U.S. Embassy Maseru is launching a new programme which exclusively targets media practitioners and creatives in Lesotho. A programme meant to promote good money management skills and financial planning, personal branding and capitalizing on technology to unlock opportunities within the creative industry. Media practitioners rely on an irregular income, which can be an unsettling task to manage. Hence the programme mainly targets them.
As an aspiring media practitioner, I not only had the pleasure of attending the programme, but also managed to meet in person and interview some of the media industry’s experts Tokiso Nthebe, the founder of TKO Financial Wellness. He emphasized the importance of having a good attitude towards money. “As an individual, you need to believe that money wants you and it is good, then you can have it, but if you believe that money is the root of all evil and that nothing good can come of it, then you will not get it.”
I strongly believe that this programme has changed and improved many mindsets of those who attended the event.
At the event, we learned about financial literacy, the importance of having knowledge on the management of money. We learned about the 3 Ms: Mindset, which knowing your beliefs around money, Money, how you make money and how you manage irregular income, and lastly, Method, which is also basically how you handle and manage money. We also learned about the Pillars of financial planning, some of which piqued my interest. These include, Insurance, Investment planning and Retirement planning. There were many others as well but these caught my attention mainly because they have to do with saving money, how to secure it, and how to plan on for the future even after retirement.
The programme also made us aware of things some of us were oblivious to, such as the difference between good debts and bad debts. We learned that being in debt is not a bad thing, just as long as you are able to manage it. For example, having a debt to buy equipment for a business that is going to make you money is not bad, it is more like an investment. That is referred to as a good debt, because it is beneficial. Now, owing money to get personal things which are unusually unnecessary, such as getting new clothes, going out to restaurants and parties. All this information gave us more ways of managing money, which was the programme’s aim.
Among the people I interviewed was Francis Mukuzunga, a former editor of Informative newspaper, who is currently the managing editor of The Mail. He mentioned in the interview that one can never know everything, that it does not matter that he has been in the media industry field for a long time. He said that he learned a lot from the programme, and that he was very pleased with the event and how everything turned out. He was not the only one happy with the event’s progress, Ts’epang Pheello, programs manager at Ts’enolo FM also thought the event was brilliant and that it was a great initiative for the media industry.
Lesaoana Lesupi, Ultimate Radio programs coordinator said he was very happy with the structure of the programme and that all the information we all learned was vital and very enriching.
In conclusion, I personally believe that this has been one of the best events to ever be held in Lesotho, not only was it uplifting in terms of Youth Empowerment but it gave us general knowledge on how to manage money as the media practitioners, so I think the set goal of the day was fully met.