Every week, Zikoko seeks to understand how people move the Naira in and out of their lives. Some stories will be struggle-ish, others will be bougie. All the time, it’ll be revealing.
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What’s your earliest memory of money?
One time, in 2000, our landlord came looking for my dad to ask for the house rent, and my dad told me to tell the landlord he wasn’t around. Guess what I said?
“My daddy said he’s not around?”
Worse. I told him my dad was inside. My Sunday school teacher had used one film about hell fire to traumatise me the week before, and I wasn’t about to go to hell for lying. The landlord disgraced my dad that day and said things like, “If you don’t have money, go and sleep under the bridge.”
I was 8 years old, and I concluded that not having money equalled turning into an agbero. Of course, my dad punished me too.
Of course. What was growing up like financially?
The rent incident opened my eyes to our financial situation: we were broke. My dad was a mechanic who didn’t make great money, so unpaid house rent and our landlord coming to shout were regular incidents.
To make things worse, my dad had two wives and nine children, and we all lived in a two-bedroom flat. My mum was the younger wife whom he married because the first wife didn’t have a child. Ironically, the first wife started popping kids out the minute he married a second wife— children he didn’t have money to provide for.
My mum was a tailor, and she pulled most of the financial weight for her children’s education. The only thing my dad did was drop ₦1k for food every three days. There were days when my mum would cook a pot of soup, feed the children and hide the remaining soup in her cupboard so my dad wouldn’t find and finish it.
There were a lot of fights between my parents and the first wife. Even us children fought each other too. It was a toxic situation, and I didn’t like going home. After school, I hung out with my friends and ate at their houses or ran errands for their parents for ₦20 here and there.
Speaking of, when was the first time you made money?
I didn’t make any actual money until after I graduated from secondary school in 2008. I got a job teaching primary one students for ₦3500/month. During the weekends, I took serving and cleaning gigs at events for ₦1k – ₦3k. I was making money but didn’t feel the impact because my dad insisted I submit my income to him.
You say?
The man argued that I was living in his house and eating his food — which was actually my mum’s food — so I had to give him what I made. I initially refused, but my mum convinced me to give him the money for peace to reign.
This stopped when I moved out to go to uni in 2010. I didn’t get any allowance from home except for the foodstuff my mum managed to get me when I visited home. I survived by doing several things for money.
I continued serving food at events and lived on the ₦5k it brought weekly in my first two years in school. Then, in my third year, I started selling sneakers. A friend introduced me to the business; all I had to do was show people the pictures of the sneakers, then buy the shoes after they paid and deliver to them. I made at least ₦3k in profit on every pair of sneakers sold.
Not bad
By final year in 2015, everyone in my department knew me as the guy who sold good sneakers. I could sell six sneakers and make up to ₦25k in profit in a week. I was handling my school expenses and feeding myself comfortably. I also started sending ₦10k to my mum when she complained about my dad not dropping money.
The business dipped when I went for NYSC in 2016. Till today, I have little regrets about not working my service year to the same state I schooled in. That way, I’d have held on to my customers. Instead, I went to a northern state and served in a school. No one bought sneakers in the north.
The school paid ₦5k, and I got ₦19800 from the government. It felt like a downgrade. Me, who was balling on almost ₦100k monthly now had to manage ₦25k.
Would you say your quality of life also reduced with your income?
My reduced income just led to me cutting off certain excesses. Back in uni, I bought food every day and changed clothes when I liked. But during my service year, I remembered I knew how to cook. I didn’t like having to tell my mum I didn’t have money, but I didn’t have a choice.
I returned home in 2017 and got an operations role at a finance institution. My salary was only ₦80k/month, but I was really excited about it. I knew several people who struggled to get jobs after NYSC, and I’d just gotten one without stress. It felt good.
I was squatting with a friend when I started the job, but I planned to get my own space. I reasoned that if I saved half of my salary monthly, I could rent a decent room within a year. I ended up squatting with that friend for four years.
What happened?
My family happened. As soon as my mum learnt I was working, she started complaining about the situation at home, and I had no choice but to give her money.
My dad started asking for money, too. I mostly ignored him, but then he’d complain to my mum and pick a fight with her, accusing her of turning his son against him. My mum, ever the peacemaker, would call me and beg and beg until I agreed to send money to my dad.
When I made the mistake of visiting home, my half-siblings would descend on me for help too. At one point, one of my half-siblings was in a federal university, and I was paying his school fees.
An outsider looking in would’ve assumed I was one rich man with the way I kept giving my family money. But I couldn’t stand hearing them complain if I could help. That’s where all my savings went during the three years I spent at the operations job. My eyes cleared in 2020.
Tell me about that
The lockdown happened, and my employers laid off non-essential staff. I fell into that category. I found myself jobless and with zero savings.
My dad and siblings kept calling for help, and they never understood when I said I didn’t have money. When the calls became too much, I stopped taking them entirely. One day, my dad sent me a text message saying, “Thank you for refusing to help me, but remember I’m still your father. Your child will do the same for you.”
Ah
I was so angry. This was someone who was never there for me growing up. I didn’t hold on to that and had helped him financially several times. Just the one time I didn’t, he was swearing for me.
It became a whole issue. I called him back, and it descended into a full-on shouting match. I told him never to call me again. My mum tried to intervene days later by summoning me to the house for a physical meeting so I could apologise to my dad.
The physical meeting also became heated, and several of my half-siblings took my dad’s side and insulted me too. These were children I spent my money on and contributed to their school fees. I felt betrayed. I also concluded they had the audacity to talk to me the way they did because I’d stopped giving them money.
It was a wake-up call. There I was, bending myself backwards to help my family, but they saw me as an ATM card that had no value once there was no money in the account. I felt used.
Sigh. I can imagine
My friend was the only reason I didn’t starve or become depressed. He kept encouraging me and also convinced me to learn project management. He told me it was lucrative and I could get a remote job with it; that was all the encouragement I needed.
I took a couple of free online courses and started putting “Project Manager” on my CV and LinkedIn like I had actual experience. Fortunately, an opportunity came in the middle of 2021: one of my former bosses at the finance institution helped me get back my operations job. I’d been pestering him to help me get back in, and I didn’t even think he took me seriously until I got the call to resume.
This time, my salary was ₦100k/month. The money was a welcome change from months of relying on my friend’s kindness, but my primary goal was to get project management experience.
How did you do that?
I started shadowing the project managers on my team and asking them to give me some of their work. A lot of it was about monitoring compliance, risk management strategies and countless meetings.
Thankfully, I had an understanding manager who liked the work I was putting into gaining enough experience for a career switch. When a spot opened up in the project management team in 2023, she recommended me, and I got the role. My salary bumped up to ₦250k.
Whoosh. How did that feel?
It felt great. I’d actively pursued something and gotten it. The salary increase was also timely. I had moved into my own apartment in 202,1 and my landlord increased the rent from ₦350k to ₦500k/ year. Thankfully, the new role came around the same time.
I also became more intentional with my finances, saving at least ₦30k/month. Since I realised how much my family drained me financially, I stopped checking on them. I haven’t even visited home since 2020. I can’t afford to go home because I know the billing and sad stories that await me if I try it.
My dad still does his emotional blackmail, but I make sure to start every call with a made up narration of how I’m also suffering so I have an excuse when he inevitably asks for money. I don’t pick anyone else’s calls except my mum and her kids; I try to send her at least ₦30k/month. I know she probably gives some of her allowance to my dad, but that’s her business. As long as I’m not giving him anything other than random recharge cards and rice during festive seasons.
What are your finances like these days?
I got my current job in April — still a project manager, but my salary is now ₦400k/month.
I plan to get married next year and will need to move into a bigger apartment. So, I still live like I earn ₦250k so I can save ₦150k/month. I currently have about ₦950k in savings, but I’ll need double that if I want to achieve both goals to a reasonable extent. I’m starting to think aggressively saving alone won’t get me there, considering how terribly high the price of everything gets by the minute.
I’m also considering side gigs to increase my earnings. The same friend who introduced me to project management recently linked me to a remote job site for freelance and contract job opportunities. But I’ve been applying to jobs without much success. The one that seemed promising was going to pay $30/hour for a week, but my network during the interview was terrible, and they didn’t reach out afterward. I hope I find something soon.
I hope so too. Let’s talk about your typical monthly expenses
What’s one thing you want to be better at, concerning your finances?
I need to hack the making money bit. I’m not a big spender, but I had a really late start in my financial journey, and I haven’t made the best decisions. Maybe if I’d been more intentional with managing money, I’d have a bigger safety net and would even be able to consider investments like my mates are doing.
Right now, I can’t afford to tie money down because I’ll need it in the near future. Maybe after that’s settled, I can start researching investment options like stocks and crypto.
I’m curious. What’s an ideal income range for you?
I’d say ₦800k/month for my current professional level. However, I know I’m still a junior level project manager, so that may not be possible yet. But I intend to keep upskilling and applying to more opportunities. I believe it’s only a matter of time before my earnings match that amount.
What’s one thing you want right now but can’t afford?
A car. I work from the office only twice a week, and I’ve been toying with the idea of driving cabs whenever I’m free. If I had my own car, I could do that on my own time and park somewhere if I had meetings. Plus, it’d help me with mobility. Anyway, that’s just a wish. A good car costs at least ₦5m now, and I don’t have anything up to that.
How would you rate your financial happiness on a scale of 1-10?
6. I feel like I wasted so much time trying to save my family and sometimes, it feels like I’ll never get that lost time back. It’s my biggest regret.
If you’re interested in talking about your Naira Life story, this is a good place to start.
Find all the past Naira Life stories here.
