“People say that money is not the key to happiness, but I always figured if you have enough money, you can have a key made.” -Joan Rivers

“A woman’s best protection is a little money of her own.” -Clare Boothe Luce

Financial independence is of utmost importance, even to the black woman and today, Beauty Queen Debbie Shaibu shares with us on finances. It is no rocket science; she shares simple tips that’s are easy to adopt.

Enjoy the read.

Dupe: Welcome to Dupe’s Blog ma’am

Deborah Shaibu: Thank you, it’s wonderful to be here.

Dupe: Can we meet you?

Deborah Shaibu: Ok, I’m Debbie Shaibu, a final year English major, beauty queen, breast cancer ambassador, writer, beauty enthustast and budding entrepreneur, well, I’m quite a Jack of all trades.

Dupe: Tell us a little about yourself.

Deborah Shaibu: I’m a focused, passionate and ambitious person who commits herself totally to whatever she envisions which has had its pros and cons. I’m a God lover, currently on a quest to know God personally and I’m also very passionate about women and women’s rights which lead me to pageantry. I love to eat(I bet you’ve never heard a beauty queen say that lol), read, write, do DIY projects, travel and spend quality time with myself and those I love.

Dupe: Tell us about the pageant you won.

Deborah Shaibu: Ok, well, Miss Comely Queen Nigeria is an annual pageant which equips its queens with resources they need in order to take giant strides against cancer, especially breast cancer. I’m currently working on my pet project which is going to be a concert to raise awareness for cancer among youth through entertainment.

Dupe: Do you love being a black girl?

Deborah Shaibu: Whoo-hooo!!! I’m literally screaming right now because I can’t find words to quantify how much I’m grateful to be a black woman. I love everything from our thick hair to our shiny ebony skin, curvaceous hips and strong character. I think God made black women to show off his creative skills.

Dupe: Let’s talk about money. How important is financial strength to the black girl?

Deborah Shaibu: Extremely important, like Robert Kiyosaki said “Money isn’t the most important thing but it sure affects everything that is important”. Financial strength makes us better people, better Girlfriends, better wives, better mothers, etcetera. And I’m really glad that our generation of women have realized this and are no longer sitting lethargically, waiting on a man to provide their daily bread.

Dupe: So you’re saying the black girl needs financial independence not just a man to take care of her bills?

Deborah Shaibu: Exactly.

Dupe: How bad is financial stress?

Deborah Shaibu: I think almost every adult knows just how terrible it is to be under financial duress. It reduces people into nagging, worried shadows of themselves. The love of money might be the root of all evil, but the lack of it is definitely the mother of all distractions.

Dupe: What simple habits can be practiced to avoid financial duress?

Deborah Shaibu: READING!!! Read read read!! Read, Watch and listen to things that improve your financial knowledge. The goal is to know more today than you did yesterday.

Also, knowledge isn’t power, applied knowledge is power so if you don’t apply the knowledge you acquire, it’s simply as good as no knowledge at all.

Work on your inner self, examine your core beliefs because like Oprah Winfrey said, “Our doing is fueled by our being“. Check your daily habits and learn to be an excellent money manager which simply means master the art of budgeting your money, saving to invest and pay for your future. Also, take time to learn about investing and make investments because passive income is real wealth. Most importantly, follow your dreams, seek out what sets your soul on fire because you can only be truly successful when you love what you do and finally, none of this will be possible without discipline and gradual self mastery. Oh! And never, ever ever ever give up and quit.

Dupe: You mentioned budgeting. How do you track where your money goes?

Deborah Shaibu: Ok, some people suggest making out time at the end of every day to write down everything you spent your money on that day and that’s fine if you can keep up with that daily and also remember everything you purchased that day down to even a lollipop.

That doesn’t work for me so I practice monthly and weekly budgeting which to me is more flexible and time friendly. Every month, I divide my money in respective percentages to different bank accounts which gives me a clearer view of how much is for what and weekly, I write down my wants and needs plus miscellaneous because I can be quite impulsive sometimes and allocate certain amounts of money to each so I know how much my spending limit on e.g. fast food is for that week and it sort of functions as a mental compass for me.

Dupe: How do you identify your needs and differentiate them from your wants?

Deborah Shaibu: Needs are things you can’t live without like food and rent, while wants are things that you can forgo without any consequences.

Dupe: How much shopping is too much shopping?

Deborah Shaibu: Shopping that exceeds the amount of money budgeted for shopping is too much shopping.

Shopping for things we don’t need or sometimes even want is impulsive & shopping to impress or intimidate people we don’t even like is plain stupidity.

“Stop buying things you don’t need, to impress people you don’t even like.” -Suze Orman

Dupe: What should be our attitude to borrowing and lending?

Deborah Shaibu: Well there’s good debt and bad debt. Good debt is money you borrow to finance an investment that will produce more money e.g. buying a rental property or acquiring land while bad debt is money we borrow to squander e.g. a car or house loan. My advice would be to steer clear of bad debt. If you must borrow, keep it small and if it’s a large sum, make sure someone else is paying the debt back (e.g. tenants pay back the owner’s loan on a rental property). Lending is okay if you know how to do it right, you trust the person you’re lending money to and you don’t stretch your purse too thin.

Dupe: Thank you so much for your time. We hope to have you here again soon.

Deborah Shaibu: Thanks for having me, I’m truly honoured.

The black woman is art; a perfect expression of pain, struggle, strength and beauty.

– Anonymous

One of the aims of the Black Girl Magic category on this blog is to encourage and strengthen black women. On this month’s episode, Adesewa Stephanie Oniye shares her very personal experiences with us as a child and growing up. From abuse, to heartbreaks, to failure but she’s coming out golden and magical like the black girl magic that she is.

Enjoy the read queens.

Welcome to Dupe’s Blog ma’am. Can we meet you?

Adesewa : Thank you Hun.
My name is Adesewa Stephanie Oniye.

MEET SEWA –

(Black Girl Magic Adesewa)

Like I said, my name is Sewa,

I am the the first daughter of 3 kids, I am 22 years old, born on the 9th day of January.
I am a poet, fashion designer, beadmaker, and a foodie.
My father is a lecturer, so I was brought up in an educational background. I have basically spent all my life in Ahmadu Bello University, except the last 2 years of my secondary school( of which i attended at Zaria Academy Shika, Zaria).
Presently, I am in the Department of Veterinary medicine, A.B.U Zaria, 500L.

What I love about being a Black Girl. –

(BGM)

Strength… We can show a wide range of emotion, but no matter what, we are still strong.
Skin: it doesn’t give us out when we are blushing or shy unlike whites

GROWING UP –

(Little Sewa)

Well, I grew up with my uncles. My parents weren’t always home. My dad was a workaholic, he came back in the evenings most time, and my mom was into trading, she was travelling most times.
My uncles were bad influences on me, there’s this particular one though. I saw him bringing different ladies into our house and go with them to his room…from that, to watching pornographic movies, irrespective of the fact that myself and my younger brother were present and very underaged. He didn’t care.
But, there was this day, I was sleeping, I had just come back from school, this uncle sent my brother to get something from the neighbours’ house, leaving just myself and him in the house.
He came into the room and started to touch me in places he wasn’t supposed to ( I was 7/8 years old, I didn’t even have boobs, I still wonder what was actually turning him on)… before it degenerated, my brother had already come back so he stopped.
Other times, he would force me to seat on his laps, and he’d have erections and kiss me on my neck and tell me to kiss him back on his.
This happened a couple of times, until one day I refused and ran away. He caught me, flogged me, and locked me up in my room..
But then in my room, another of my uncles was sleeping, I guess my sobs woke him up, so he called me, trying to pet me, told me to come and lay close to him, and before i knew it, he was having an erection and he was pressing on me…
I was going insane in my head… I started crying again, then he stopped.
It was crazy, but, I’d like to end it here.
It affected my mind because sometimes I have flashbacks, but that’s where it ends.

I’m secretive too; I never told my mom about it, and it kinda ‘deepened’ my mind.

I’d like to think my life wasn’t really really messed up because my mom was praying.

This should be an eye opener to parents too actually.
No matter how close the man you are leaving your kids with is to you, a man is a man.
To everyone that’s going through the same thing, you should voice out, you should fight, you shouldn’t be quiet at all.
If it has been done and you have been damaged already, I pray you heal and find yourself again…
I want you to know that you’re going to be okay…

LOVE RELATIONSHIPS

I have had quite a lot?
I’m the kind of person that can’t endure the pain of heartbreaks, so I run into another relationship almost immediately.
I know it’s quite unhealthy, and I am actually working on that, because I found out that I don’t heal.
My first love was Igbo, as at then, he was a true definition of what love was, but we got separated because of my dad, i was quite young *laughs*
The realest relationship I had was my last.
I never knew the kind of man I wanted until he showed up. He was humorous, he knew how to make me laugh, he was the definition of the word ‘caring’ . He was my mumu…
I would have married him but he belonged to someone else, so it didn’t work out.

I have gotten my heart broken a million times, but, I love love so I go into every relationship like it’s my first.

VETERINARY MEDICINE –

(You were made to do hard things, believe in yourself).

I wanted to be a medical doctor, but I didn’t like the sight of human blood so a few people recommended Veterinary medicine so, vet it was.

I’ve always wanted to be an author too, I believe someday I’ll publish a novel.
I like travelling, so touring the world is part of my bucket list too.

Vet. *laughs*
As you know, it is not beans and plantain.
For me, I had to sacrifice the little ‘fun’ I had to study.
Even at that, I failed some courses in 300Level which resulted to me getting ‘filtered’ going to 400Level.
Let me explain the “Filter” concept.
Every semester, the maximum credit load is 24 credit units. In vet, we have lots of courses to pick, so all the courses we pick equals the 24 credit units already. This is for every semester.
If you happen to fail a course in a semester, there’s no space for you to pick it the next year because you already have a maximum credit unit.
To clear that course, you would have to wait an extra year doing nothing but only that course you failed.
Note that if you fail the course 100 times, you will stay and repeat that course for 100years.
In vet, this is done twice in your 6 years.
When you are in 300L going to 400L , and when you are in 500L going to 600L.

My dad is a lecturer (a professor) and almost every lecturer in vet knows him.
I’m not as smart as my dad and people expecting me to be as intelligent as he is is actually one of the greatest challenge I have had.

If only people knew how better I am now and how less intelligent I was in primary and junior secondary school.
I think being in vet to this present level is a great achievement…
To be honest, some of my former class mates and teachers still look at me in shock when I tell them that I’m in vet school, as if to say, ” is it not this girl that used to get 45th position in school?”.

God is awesome I tell you.

And I like that vet does not give me the liberty to always be at every event, because whenever I decide to attend one, I am given maximum attention *laughs* …
There’s respect and all.
And I get to be a Doctor after school you know.
Even though sometimes I’m always like “what even brought me here? this stress is too much” or “I’m frustrated”
*laughs*
At the end , I’m sure it would totally be worth it.

I’M GRATEFUL FOR; –

(Gratitude in spite of challenges)

I’m grateful to God for giving me the kind of heart and mindset I have. I consider myself a strong woman for not breaking despite the things I have gone through.
And my mom, my prayer warrior, I could a been a mess.
I’m grateful for my friends .

(Ziyet,Joy, and Sam) for motivating me through vet school, I probably would have run mad by now (Vet school is crazy like that) *laughs* .
My friends are my ‘fun’. Very humorous and happy people.

Saving the last for the best is my Dad, my first love. For keeping calm and always encouraging me even when he was supposed to send me out of his house *laughs*
I consider myself blessed?

ADVICE TO THE BLACK GIRL STRUGGLING WITH ONE THING OR THE OTHER –

(A word for the wounded Black Girl)

There’s no giving up.
Life would want to hurt you, but don’t fall, don’t break, don’t give it that chance.
Don’t let negative experiences control you or change the person you are destined to be. It is true that negative experiences cause insecurities, doubts, discomfort, and sadness.
But all of this can be overcome and only you have the power to do this.

Dupe : Thank you so much for your transparency and your time ma’am.

Adesewa : Thank you for having me ?

Tag: black girl magic

Black Girl Magic || Interview with Deborah Shaibu on Money Management.

Black Girl Magic || Interview with Adesewa Stephanie Oniye