Jii: So when I was about five or six, I cannot remember the age correctly, my uncle gave me money. I also cannot remember if it was 20 naira or 50 naira, but it was one of the two. You know how you are supposed to take it to mommy and daddy. That is what they trained kids to do, at least at that time. But I decided not to tell my parents. I took that money and I went out and started spending it on snacks, candy. I was buying stuff.
Jii: Anytime I think back and think about money, about what it means, I go back to that story. Because the feeling I had at that time was that I had bought so much snack and candy, and I still had change. It was so much that I could not believe it. Grant that I was five or six, I was really young. But back then the idea of money was: I need something, I exchange money for it. That was it. It was that binary.
Jii: There was also the part, if I am being honest, where I knew there was the social pressure of no one telling my parents. If you go down that line there is the whole "you should spend your money wisely", but not that. Let me talk about what I was feeling at that time. When I think back to when I started to think about money, that comes to mind. I think it grew on me, because when I started thinking about money more logically, more rationally, that still stood with me. When was the first time you thought about money as a concept, your first encounter with money?
Sheriff: Hi everyone. For me, the first time I really thought about money was when we were younger, as you also mentioned, five, six. Anytime relatives visited, or if it was a celebration, so here in Nigeria anytime there are festivals, holidays generally, and people visit, they usually drop money for us, the kids. My mom was very strict in that you do not spend the money. Anytime the money comes in, you must remit it to her.
Sheriff: So whatever money we had, we gave to her. She put it in this thing we call a kolo. It is a piggy box. We put the money in it, and anytime the money became substantial she used it to buy clothes or toys, something we would appreciate for a long time. That was how I knew money then.
Sheriff: But the time I really connected with how important money is, there was one period where we moved to a new area, and thieves burgled the house. They stole the money inside our piggy box. That is when I realised that I really wanted this money. It was very painful. That was when I understood how important money was. So I knew money before, but it was when the money was stolen, when we were burgled, that I really understood the essence of it, because it was painful when I lost it.
Jii: Interesting. And it was a Nigerian thing, where you visit, you see small kids, you give them money. It was a cultural thing almost everywhere in Nigeria. And it was also a cultural thing that you get that money and, like you said, remit it to your parents. That is why a lot of us have that: my parents, do you know how much of mine they are holding? How much I have given them?
Jii: Anyway, this is How We Live from Inskriba. This is a show on how we actually live with things, the things that shape us: money, law, healthcare, and how we move through these systems every day. I am here with, I will let you introduce yourself.
Sheriff: My name is Sheriff. You can call me Sheriff, you can call me Asha, you can call me Demola, any of them works. I say I am a financial enthusiast. Please, just an enthusiast. I like finance. I am not a guru, I am not an expert. So everything I say, do not take it 100 percent. I have not gotten there yet. Hopefully soon I will be at the top of that chain. But yeah, I am a financial enthusiast. I like reading, I like discussing finance. I like politics a lot. I like a bit of controversy, and theories, conspiracy theories.
Sheriff: Though I am not a madman. My conspiracy theories are very sensible if I explain them. I am very logical. I hope this show will be something our audience can connect with and enjoy as they go with us. Thank you for having me.
Jii: Thank you for being here. Like Sheriff said, this is not a show to advise you, or to tell you this is the next stock, or this is what you should be doing with your money. We are just trying to understand the system as far as money is concerned. Our money, finance, however you think of it, and how it relates to us as Nigerians. So let us go back. How did you decide on this? Because there are so many other things you could have been into. Why finance?
Sheriff: My dad worked at a bank, he was a banker for a while. I would not say that is what made me like finance, but the connection was already there. What made me interested in finance as a career, or as a subject, I would say is politics. A lot of things in Nigeria revolve around the economy. Anytime I am discussing politics with friends and colleagues, it usually goes into economics. Why is the government doing this or that? So I had to understand why they were doing this or that. Economics and finance are very intertwined, although accountants and economists do not really agree as much as they should.
Sheriff: So that was the push for me, to just understand economics. I listened to radio a lot, so I started following elections. Then when I got to 100 level I listened to radio even more, because it was easier to do. I did not really have a good smartphone at the time, so I was always listening to radio every day. I was following economics, I was following politics.
Sheriff: Then after school. A lot of times the easiest path for a graduate is to work in a bank. And for you to work in a bank, when you are speaking in an interview, you need to show that you understand what you are coming to do there. So I started involving myself in a lot of these things, reading wide, because as I mentioned I like to read. So I knew a lot of things about finance. I could say it went from politics to economics, then to finance as a topic. That was it for me.
Jii: It makes sense, from politics. Because there is no way you talk about politics without it, and there is the old and very popular saying: follow the money. When you follow the money you see how decisions are made, why decisions are made, the influences. Money influences a lot of things. What school did you go to?
Sheriff: I went to Unilorin.
Jii: I went to UI. Unilorin and UI have a connection, because when Unilorin was established they got a lot of lecturers from UI. But it is interesting, because we always looked at Unilorin as public in name but private in practice, in the sense that you people did not use to have strikes.
Sheriff: Yeah, they are very strict.
Jii: Four years is four years, unlike other public schools. Let us not go into it. But did you study a course that had to do with finance, or was that added later?
Sheriff: I did agric, and then I majored in agricultural economics. A lot of it relates to finance anyway. That is what I did. In my spare time I was also part of the quiz and debate club, which requires reading wide. So there were times when we had to read things to do with finance, politics, things that fed into each other.
Jii: Now that we have had a quick glance into your background, and we can say you have a number of years of reading, of school: what does money actually look like from where you stand?
Sheriff: For me, money means freedom in a lot of ways. It means independence, because I have seen what not having money does, and I prefer to have money. There is a saying in Nigerian Pidgin that money dey kill rubbish. Money helps to manage that aspect. And while I do like money, I will not say I do not like money, I still try to control the appetite, because as they say, the love of money is the root of all evil. So you need to be balanced. As much as you love money, you also need to be balanced in your acquisition of it, in your chasing of it. So money means freedom for me. It grants you freedom in a lot of ways. What would you say money is like?
Jii: I agree. Money is freedom. One question I have been pounding on for the past few weeks is that money can make you do things you would not normally think you would do. And I tell people now that rich is not the opposite of poor, because there are different levels. There is the 1 percent, there is the 0.1 percent. They are just different levels. We just saw someone become the first trillionaire in the whole world, and it is not due to liquid cash, it is due to assets.
Jii: So I do agree. Money is freedom. Money is ingrained into social life, cultural life, economic life, almost every aspect of our lives. And I like that you said it is not just trying to acquire as much as possible. It is putting in the balance of what you really want to do. I think that is where people get it wrong. It is all good to aspire to how high you want to get, but being able to balance it out and know where you really want it, because money is funny in the sense that it can be addictive. You keep at it and then you start blurring the lines between ethics, what I should do. Especially now that we live in a world where you can almost do anything as long as it is justified by, I made money from it.
Jii: And in the Nigerian context, you hear people say, do you know who I am? What they are really saying is, do you know how much money I have? I did this, and I made this amount of money. But yeah, that is what we are here to talk about. Not trading, not other financial talks, but the concept of money. To me, money is freedom. Money allows you to do things. Money allowed me to buy snacks when I was five or six. And money allowed me not to tell my parents that I had been given money, which I got beaten for.
Sheriff: Exactly. So in your story we already have the two extremes: getting what you want, pleasure, and then you going against your parents' rules.
Jii: I want us to touch a little on trading, because there is the conventional way: finish school, get a job, start saving money. Growing up, that is how you made money, it seemed as simple as that. But now we are seeing that you cannot do that. And I am going into trading because it is very popular now, people are getting into it, especially in Nigeria, seeing it as a stream of income. Which means they now have to understand not just their own money, but how the company whose stock they are going to buy is going to make money, so they can make an informed decision.
Sheriff: Typically, growing up, what we knew is you work after finishing school, you get a good job, you work, you save. Your savings sustain you in terms of bad times. And your work and savings could be enough for your family, if you do not have any major catastrophe. But the way the world is now, not just Nigeria, the way the world is now, you almost need two sources of income or more to survive.
Sheriff: So say a nine-to-fiver who cannot have a side business. There are people still able to manage it because of online marketing and things like that. But for most nine-to-fivers who cannot manage that, their next option is to invest. So you save, invest, then you spend the returns of your investments, then hope for your investment to keep growing.
Sheriff: I would use 2018 to about 2023, when crypto was very hot. It was hot in the world generally, but it became more serious in Nigeria. A lot of young people got into crypto and they made a lot of money. They invested in crypto, joined different projects, from Bitcoin and the like. So a lot of people were introduced to investing that way: you use your money to buy a token, the token does times 100, you sell, you make your money. For a lot of young people in Nigeria that was their first introduction to investing.
Sheriff: Then especially since 2023, crypto has been doing ups and downs, so a lot of people are looking for safer bets. People are now looking into the stock market, and even fixed income. Fixed income just means, if the government wants to borrow money from the citizens, they release treasury bills. They will say maybe 26 percent. So if you have 100k and you leave that money for a year, you are going to collect your 126k, minus whatever fees you pay to the person who helped facilitate the trade.
Sheriff: Or you just use it to buy stock on the stock market. Some people are very risky in their trades, they will buy a stock that is not [inaudible] because they think they can time when the stock will go down. I would never advise something like that. Well, this is not an advisory podcast, but I would never do that for myself.
Sheriff: Some people just buy stocks and keep them for say five to ten years. They gain dividends from it. They leave it for a particular amount of time and then sell and make a huge profit. So a lot of young people in Nigeria are looking in that direction, to make money faster.
Sheriff: And one thing I would say is that betting has also become a big thing. I do not want to exaggerate, but a lot of people are betting now. There is a lot of push around from different firms. I know people who would say betting has helped them, and I also know people [inaudible]. So people are just looking for different avenues to make money at the moment. They are looking at investments, betting, business that they do in their free time. Those are the legal ways I can see that young people are looking to multiply their money at the moment.
Jii: I agree. And like you said, the trend was there, especially for a country that has huge unemployment and underemployment. Also from 2018, just before the pandemic, and then the pandemic hit. People needed it, everyone was working from home, they had more time. So they saw different avenues like crypto. And betting had always existed, for how long. Now it has been reformed into different aspects. They do not want to say it is betting, they will say it is a prediction market, or prediction platforms.
Sheriff: Yeah, prediction markets.
Jii: But there is a straight line from betting on sporting events to betting on political events or whatever. Again, like you said, we are not in any capacity to say this is financial advice, do this, do that. We are just understanding the concept. From time to time we will be talking about different aspects of money. Money, as we have established, is risk. Different risk levels. Even, how aggressive do you want to be? I think that is one of the questions if you go on these apps, your risk level and things like that.
Jii: I will say this every episode: this is not financial advice. If anything, it is financial understanding. Over the next few months, what are we going to walk through? This is both of us. It is mostly going to be conversations, and sometimes maybe a live audience. What are some of the things we will talk about?
Sheriff: In the next few months we will be discussing money, we will be discussing the economy. We will be discussing what is eating your money, because it is inflation that is eating our money.
Jii: I liked the way you said that. What is eating your money.
Sheriff: We would also be discussing financial discipline. And we would also discuss spending your money sometimes, because some people never spend, they are always saving or investing. There is one joke we make here, that if you keep not spending, your next of kin will spend your money when you die. So it is best to spend it.
Sheriff: We would have discussions about how the financial markets work, how the economy affects the financial markets. We will discuss everything and anything that relates to money. We could also discuss career: how money comes into a career, how we make decisions when it comes to our own personal career. If it is just for money, or if it is not only money, what else we look for. There are different reasons and avenues for why people do things. So just look at us as your gist buddies for finance and money. I am sure you will be able to relate with most of what we discuss here.
Jii: What is the wildest thing you have heard about money?
Sheriff: I would say Elon Musk being a trillionaire. It is almost unfathomable sometimes. I do not have any ill feelings towards Elon Musk, but I do not believe his companies are worth that amount. If it was a Google, I would understand. But SpaceX is not everywhere, we do not use SpaceX everywhere.
Sheriff: One thing I tell people, because it is something they teach in finance, is that you can own a business in different ways. You can either sell one thing to a hundred million people at say one naira, so if you sell to 100 million people at one naira you are making 100 million. Or you can sell it at 10 naira to 10 million people. You are breaking it down, and you still make the same 100 million naira. It depends on your business. But SpaceX is not in every room. Google is virtually everywhere. One way or another, you use Google. So it is still strange to me. I have been studying it since it happened and it is just strange to me that it is the first trillionaire.
Jii: I agree. And like you said, it is not even about him. It is about the fact that there is a trillion. Money can be so abstract that the idea of what a trillion is, is ridiculous. Honestly, even a billion. It is crazy. I remember when we started with millionaires, and then it took a while before billionaires, and even the billionaire club took a while.
Jii: I guess people aspire, people really are ambitious. But I do agree, that is a wild take.
Sheriff: I think one other thing is Mansa Musa. He was a king in Mali. He was so rich, he had so much gold, that he crashed the gold economy. That is something that is very wow to me. For you to be that rich that you can crash the global gold economy. He made a pilgrimage from Mali to Mecca, to current day Saudi Arabia. And while going he was sharing so much gold on his way that gold became as if you were seeing sand everywhere. He was just sharing gold. He was that rich. For him to crash the gold economy, I cannot even imagine how rich he was at the time. So I would say those two are the wildest things I have seen money do.
Jii: I think they say he is probably the richest man that ever lived.
Sheriff: That ever existed.
Jii: Even though, certainly, I have seen theories to suggest that he was broke. I did not go deep into it, I just saw it, I think on YouTube, and I moved on. But that is wild, for you to go around sharing gold and it crashes the price. Which makes sense. Supply and demand and what have you.
Sheriff: Yeah, it is supply and demand.
Jii: Did you have anything to add?
Sheriff: Do you have any wild money story?
Jii: Let me see. Maybe not wild, but before I started looking into the concept of how IPOs and stocks work, I did not understand how those valuations worked. But it is pretty simple. Let me go back, that is what I wanted to say. I think my wild take is the way Nigerian politicians spend money, and the way they call money.
Jii: It is wild to me that you can just come. Because if anything, we have established that money is a series of decisions, in terms of how you spend money and how you receive money for the service you sold, or what you buy and sell. But I see things where, yeah, we want to build this infrastructure and it is 14 million dollars in Nigeria, and I am asking myself, how did you come about that? First of all, I do understand that they are contracting, people are coming. But I have come to understand that especially for public infrastructure, you should have a plan on how you make that money back, not just for taxpayers but for the economy of it.
Jii: So you just come here and say, we need an airport here and it is going to be $40 million. And there is no basis on how this is built. This airport is probably not even going to be used by anybody. Which means 40 million down the drain, and let us just assume that is even the right figure. So it is wild to me how politicians spend money.
Jii: And I am sorry, I am not a Lagos boy, but the other one is how Lagosians spend money. As a whole, and I am not even saying island or mainland, as a whole, how Lagosians spend money. Maybe I am just this humble, unexposed Ibadan boy.
Sheriff: Even I have stayed in Lagos all my life, apart from when I went to school in Kwara. And I know for a fact that sometimes you go out and it is like, money dey [inaudible]. Because the way they spend money is not the same. Nigeria, all of us are in it now, we are saying inflation is high, but the way Lagosians spend on weekends, it is very hard.
Jii: It is, especially when you have, maybe not your friends, a group of acquaintances, people you know who are maybe about on the same level, or maybe we are not. But they spend money and you know that they do not necessarily have the money. Or maybe they have the money, but they should be spending it on something else. Again, it is not financial advice. So the decision of how Lagosians spend money and where they spend it on, that is wild to me. It is fascinating. And I can see how people enjoy watching it.
Jii: Do you have any other thing to add? This is just the intro.
Sheriff: Nothing much. I just want to encourage our audience to follow us through. Any feedback we get, we would certainly work with it. Your stories, whatever it is, it will be perfect for us and this will be a nice session.
Jii: I agree. I do not have any other things to add, except that this is How We Live, an Inskriba production. The conversation continues in writing. We have the website, where a number of writers write on systems as they relate to Nigeria, from money, healthcare and law to social interaction, anything. So until next time, we will talk.
Sheriff: Thanks.
Jii: See you soon. Thank you again and have a great day.
Sheriff: Thank you, have a great day too. Bye.