By TKay Nthebe
On Monday, the world launched the first day of the Global Money Week (GMW), a campaign celebrated annually with the goal of raising awareness about the importance of financial literacy. GMW is celebrated from 20-26 March 2023 and this year’s theme is “Plan Your Money, Plant your Future.”
Through hosting various financial literacy initiatives such as essay competitions, social media campaigns, seminars, webinars and workshops on topics ranging from budgeting, credit, savings, insurance and investments, this campaign seeks to empower young people from an early to understand money principles and help them acquire financial education.
In our context as Basotho, with the coordination of the Central Bank of Lesotho (CBL), the Financial Education Steering Committee (FESC) comprising of commercial banks, micro-lenders, insurance and asset management companies, pension funds, credit bureau agencies, non-governmental organisations and the Ministry of Finance the campaign has been extended to a month instead of a week with the goal of reaching more Basotho.
Let’s unpack the theme “Plan Your Money, Plant your Future.”
Plan your Money: As Basotho, we have a responsibility to plan how best to use our money by preparing a spending plan. This is a roadmap or budget that outlines and guides which expenses to prioritise and how best to spend your money. Preparing a budget will help you track your spending. If you do not have a budgeting template,please see the one provided below.
Plant your future: With climate change and the Keep Lesotho Clean campaign important conversations in our country, taking care of our environment and avoiding littering is as important as managing our finances. According to Global Money Week (2023), this year’s theme recognises that future individual financial well-being is linked to the health of our plant and society.
How to plan your finances?
Planning your finances does not have to be complicated. It starts with normalising money conversations, changing the script and not calling money names like ‘Parcel.’ Developing a healthy relationship with your money requires that you seek professional financial advice from qualified and licensed professionals, have a budget, manage your debt, save for rainy days, invest, and plan for the future. In my weekly Leruo articles, I discuss the building blocks of a holistic financial plan.
How can the Leruo platform help you?
Navigating your finances can be extremely challenging, especially in a constantly changing and complicated industry with many products to choose from. Leruo is a financial education platform, proudly brought to you by Alliance Insurance, through print, radio and digital platforms. Through Leruo, Alliance seeks to provide personal finance and financial planning hacks to help the ordinary Mosotho navigate their finances, plan and access information about financial products and services.
As the Global Money Week draws to an end, I encourage you to always get a copy of Leruo available every Friday in The Reporter newspaper, listen to Leruo Radio on Wednesday and Thursday mornings on the Ultimate Radio and Bokamoso FM respectively, follow Alliance Insurance on different social media platforms and their website at www.alliance.co.ls for FREE personal finance tips and nuggets. Likhomo!
