In this week’s Naira Life article, the lady who’s mastering money 416k at a time had me thinking about my life for a long ass time. Of course, I came to the conclusion that she has two heads, because how else can someone save more than 70% of their salary?
Asides wallowing at the state of my account balance, I sat down to think about where the bulk of my money goes. Turns out I’ve been spending my life savings on food.
I also asked these Nigerian women to share what they spent most of their income on and just how much they spend.
I spend a ridiculous amount of money on Ubers
I don’t have a car and I hate moving around with public transport, so all my coins go to Ubers. Thankfully I can afford it, and I’m aware that it’s a little ridiculous to spend so much money on just transport. But my life’s motto is comfort first. Plus moving around in Ubers saves a lot of my time, and I hear time is money.
It’s hard to calculate how much of what I earn goes to Ubers because I have a 9-5 and a pretty great side gig. But I’d say 20% of the income I get from my 9-5.
Weaves, weaves and more weaves.
It’s not like I buy weaves all the time. I work a government job so my salary is a joke. But I have an online business that does quite well. The average cost of any of my wigs or weaves is about 150k, my 9 -5 pays about 80k a month. So I guess I spend like two months salary on hair. I’m not ashamed of it. It’s not as if after I buy a wig, I can’t afford to put food on my table or pay my rent.
My rent is exorbitant
The first year I moved out to live on my own, I had a flatmate. But she left the country the year after and I got stuck paying the full rent. I paid it in hopes of getting another flatmate, but no luck yet. I really like my apartment and have no plans to move out, so for now, I have to keep paying the rent. I’d say the bulk of my money goes to rent. I earn 300k a month and my rent is 1.2 million a year. Which means 100k of my monthly income goes to saving for my rent.
Internet is so expensive
Internet. I don’t have a job so I can’t say what percentage of my income I spend on this. But I get sort of an allowance from my parents which usually comes up to about 50k monthly. And I spend about15k on internet every month.
Food, I don’t like to cook.
Food. I don’t like to cook, so feeding can get a little expensive for me. I’ve never sat down to do the Math but between groceries, eating out and buying food every day I must be spending about 40 to 50% of my income on food.
My struggle skin won’t let me live.
I have very very problematic skin. I decided to start paying more attention to it about 2 years ago because man must slay. The only problem is that good skin care products are expensive. Don’t let those people telling you that black soap is all you need, lead you astray. They just have good genes. I don’t buy skincare products every single month thankfully, but the months were I run out of everything at once I can spend almost 50k on products. My monthly salary is 220k.
Food undoubtedly
Food, undoubtedly. Then maybe skin care products because I love to take care of my skin. But food comes first. I’d say I spend about 8 – 10% of my income on food. Then if you add eating out at restaurants it goes up to like 12 – 15%.
MAC is cost
I’ve always loved makeup and buying it wasn’t always so expensive. But the way this Buhari’s economy is set up, everything I love is now so expensive. Like MAC is so cost and I’m a makeup artist so I can’t even avoid buying it. I just started this MUA business so I think most of what I make goes into buying new products. I think I spend like 80% of what I make on that.
I have way too many friends.
In the past year, I’ve spent a ton of money on aso-ebi. I’m at an age where all of my friends are getting married all at once and I’ve come to the realization that I might have too many friends. I’m currently in between jobs so I can’t say how much I spend exactly. But based on the last salary I made, I’d say last month I must have spent 40% of my old income on just aso-ebi. Ridiculous.
