Follow Your Money: Building a Debit Score + Fully Funded Trip to Cape Town & Kenya Makes Influencers Pay Taxes.

Issue 5: The Only Score to Track Your Financial Growth

Hi friends,

Happy Tuesday. Welcome to Issue 5! 👋🏾

Last week, we talked about the importance of a Debit Score.✨

🎯 In this week’s issue, we zoom in on how to build your debit score and track your financial growth. We also looked at a fully-funded trip to Cape Town✨ and the new law that makes influencers pay taxes in Kenya. As always, Lessgoo 🚀🚀

BUILDING A DEBIT SCORE.

Issue 5: The Only Score to Track Your Financial Growth.

As we established last week, debit scores ain't the regular social media stalkers on your money. No 🙅🏾‍♂️, debit scores are your homies, your Gs, your personal finance cheerleaders 👯.

While credit scores measure your worthiness, debit scores measure your progress and last time we checked, we ride on progress over perfection. 👌🏾

I know what you’re thinking—how do I build one 🤔? With so many resources on credit scores and very few on debit scores, we’ve come up with a model that’s worth trying. 😉

👉🏾Instead of having a single credit score for so long, your debit score would be measured monthly based on your Budgeting and Saving habits. 👌🏾

For the purpose of this newsletter, we assign the following weighting to each of them,

• Budgeting = 45%

• Saving = 55%

👉🏾To calculate your score for this month, try the formula below.

• Saving score = (Amount saved/ Total income) * 45

• Budgeting Score = (Amount spent/ Budgeted Amount) * 35

• Debit Score= Sum of both scores.

Right now, credit scores are more recognized than debit scores, and much as you can use your credit scores to get a loan, it’s not the same for debit scores. 💁🏾‍♂️

But as I mentioned in the last issue, if you stay around just enough, you might just experience debit scores on Dot. 😌😌

That said, it is important to remind us that debit scores are meant to track your financial growth, budgeting skills, savings contributions, and overall financial stability. 🤌🏾

👉🏾It’s your score for progress over perfection.

That’s all for this Issue.

FINANCIAL NEWS & TRENDS in AFRICA.

connecting the dots across frontier markets in Africa.

Africa Spends More on Debt Servicing than Health Care- UN Secretary- General

Takeaway: Let’s face it; this couldn’t be more true. But here’s the catch, while this is true in a sense, it is incomplete and thus a single story. 🙅🏾‍♂️

That said, this is a call to the young population of the continent to be so intentional about spending habits, saving, and budgeting expenses 🤌🏾. Little actions like these are like ripples that could inevitably come together to form tornadoes. It all starts with you and me.👌🏾

South Africa Increases Interest Rates to Record-level in 14 years.

Takeaway: The short version of this is that the country's central bank has increased the cost of borrowing money for banks and individuals 🙅🏾‍♂️. By doing so, the central bank aims to reduce the amount of money circulating in the economy and lower the effects of inflation. 👌🏾

👉🏾No doubt, this is a bitter-sweet situation but below is a reframed version of the situation, hopefully the sweet one.

Borrowing money is now an expensive hobby and focusing on your credit scores alone has consequences 🙂. T’s the time to start saving and budgeting like never before, the time to start building your debit score. 👌🏾✨

Kenya Introduces New Tax Reforms;

Takeaway: The country is proposing a good amount of tax changes under the Finance Bill, 2023. The Bill has A LOT of new taxes and several modifications of the existing tax charges but one tax reform particularly stood out.

👉🏾If you’re an influencer in Kenya, be ready to pay up to 15% of your income to the government. 👈🏾

It’s an interesting move by the Kenyan government, one that also comes at an interesting time when the government is racing to cover up its loan deficits.

Namibia Makes a $10B Bossy Move Towards Green Hydrogen Energy Source.

Takeaway: Last week, we read about Tanzania's progress toward its $40B Liquified Natural Gas project.

Well, Namibia is deploying the equivalent of its annual GDP towards another sustainable energy project. 💪🏾

Think Burna Boy meets Davido to produce a song on green energy 🔥. Bottomline, these two projects are tremendous investments that represent Africa’s commitment to developing sustainable and green energy sources. ✨⚡️

With basic infrastructures like these, my hope is that the continent will slowly but surely live up to its promises of becoming the economic epicenter of the world. 🚀🔥

MONEY TRIVIA

👉🏾Unscramble the following words:

• I A V S N G

• E D N G S N P I

• G T D E B U

RESOURCE LIBRARY

Opportunities

• The African Youth Summit 2023 in South Africa—Fully-funded trip to Capetown and currently accepting applications. 🎯✨

• If you are an artist, you should check this out. ASUS ProArtist Awards is accepting applications for creative designs. 🚀🎨

• Here’s Your Chance to Intern with the African Union. 🚀

• If you live in Africa, are self-employed, and have completed post-secondary education, consider applying for the McKinsey Forward Program. 🎯🤝

• Here’s an opportunity to attend the 2023 Youth Stem Summit. 💪🏾🎯

Freebies

• I (re) discovered a super helpful tip on how to reframe negative situations and emerge positive. Check out this video on the Drama Triangle! 🔥🎯

• If you’re thinking of exploring entrepreneurship but not sure how? Check out this guide by Y Combinator-- helped me a lot.✨⚡️💫

TRIVIA ANSWERS

🎯Savings

🎯Spending.

🎯Budget.

👉🏾That’s a wrap on this week. Before we go, here’s our QOTW:

Confidence is silent. Insecurity is loud.— Don Corleone

Until next time,

Dulra

Founder/CEO, Dot. ❤️