Nigerian Finance Authors to Gain Surprising Lessons From

Money is a relevant though touchy subject to talk about and getting good guidance on personal finance is rare. Nigerian finance authors like Patricia Bright and Arese Ugwu however, help in presenting financial guidance in simple terms. These Nigerian women demystify and break down personal budgeting, gaining money through multiple streams and adopting productive financial habits.

Even though Patricia has a background in this field as she graduated with an accounting degree, she had confessed to finding herself previously baffled by more personal finance issues. As she once pointed out, finance is often seen as overwhelming. “There just isn’t enough education around the topic. And when you do have it, it just seems so jargonesque and massively catered towards men. It just doesn’t appear like it’s for the everyday person. I think it is intentionally confusing! That’s my conspiracy anyway,” she said.

Her book, Heart and Hustle, released in 2018, is in her own words an “untold story, a little piece of me packaged in words, written from the heart and packed with key learnings from the hustle.” From her journey through working in finance for five years to running her beauty business, she revealed what drove her to guiding people in navigating the intricacies of finance. She realised that she and a whole lot of others had made mistakes in budgeting and she wished someone had guided her on avoiding money mistakes. ‘I almost felt obligated to start the conversation because of my own problems.’

To push this goal forward, she runs a number of financial literacy projects and products such as the break platform course as well as her book. She also started a podcast that’s centered around entrepreneurship. The podcast, which ranked number 1 on Apple, and her second YouTube channel, The Break, talk about her $1000 investment portfolio and about multiple income streams.

They aim to help women step up their financial literacy. Amassing over 320,000 subscribers in less than nine months, it clearly developed a huge appetite. “We’ve had some viral videos at some points and the comments have just been so amazing in relation to how transformative it’s been for people. I’ve had messages from people saying that watching my content has helped them get out of debt or they’ve saved £6000 over the pandemic or they’ve come up with a financial plan they’re really confident in,” she shared. “I’m not, you know, saving the world but I am opening up a conversation around finances that a lot of the time hasn’t been discussed.”

She says it was challenging pivoting into a topic as she was still learning about herself but the viewer count for The Break shows a shifting tide in YouTube content in particular. As influencing becomes one of the most desired fields of work among young people, transparency around finances is of growing necessity. In fact, Patricia’s most viewed videos on The Break are all around how she budgets her own salary and how she made over one million dollars as a YouTuber.

‘People definitely don’t talk about it as much as they should,’ she says in regards to a lack of transparency in the influencing industry. ‘It doesn’t benefit anybody to be so secretive about salaries, how you spend your money or how you invest. I think sharing that information is so powerful because it enables people to make the best choices for them.’

‘We’ve watched enough makeup tutorials,’ Bright continues. ‘When I started out there were no makeup tutorials and now there are so many amazing ones and that’s great, but there’s loads now. This type of information, about financial literacy, is something new that needs to be delivered in a way that’s fun and engaging and helpful for so many people.’

By Leadership.