Every day, we gain new insight that often makes us wish we could revisit a past decision and take a different approach for better results, especially regarding financial decisions.
Forex traders wish they’d made better predictions after a loss, gamblers regret certain betting decisions after negative results roll in, and everyday Nigerians wish they’d bought more stocks before the prices went up. In many cases, these situations can be fixed by making better decisions.
But what do similar regrets look like for older Nigerians who might no longer have as much time to fix them? We spoke to four Nigerians aged 50+ who shared their biggest financial regrets and the alternative decisions they’d have made if they knew what they know now.
“I shouldn’t have invested in a cyber café”
— Okorie*, 54
It took a couple of trials and errors to accept that I wasn’t cut out for business. But the biggest error I made was investing all my money to set up a cyber café in 2012.
I’d just lost my job at an automobile company where I was a parts manager. The company made my role redundant for some office politics-related reason, but they gave me a ₦2m severance pay. I decided I was too old at 41 to start looking for a new job, so I decided to focus on a business.
I reasoned that my earlier business ventures failed because I was dividing my attention between them and my regular job. I’m not sure exactly how I got the idea to set up a cyber café, but it felt like a good idea.
I lived close to a university and figured that students would need a place to access the internet and print documents. Also, there weren’t any cyber cafés around, so there was no competition for me. In retrospect, that should’ve been my first warning sign.
Feeling optimistic, I took out my ₦1m savings from the bank, added it to my severance pay, and rented an office space. The space cost ₦500k/year, and I used the rest of the money to buy two computers, a commercial printer and sort other set-up needs.
Business was bad from the first day I opened the shop. It turned out that most of the students did their printing inside the school, where it was cheaper due to competition. Also, people didn’t need cyber cafés as much anymore because of smartphones. They only came if they had to do group projects and assignments, and needed a computer to type.
In hindsight, I should’ve done extensive market research before dropping all that money on an idea, or better still, consulted people who had better business sense.
I’m not sure I made up to 10% of my investment when I shut down a year later. I didn’t know I’d still have to spend money to maintain the computers and printers. By the end of the year, I had no money to renew my rent, so I just packed it up.
I can’t remember how much I sold the computers and printer now, but I’m sure I didn’t use the money for anything reasonable because I’d have remembered. I returned to the job market and fortunately got a job within months. I’m still there and religiously saving for retirement with my pension and treasury bills — I have ₦1.8m in the latter. I’ve been burned too much to consider business as a source of income when I retire.
“I had the chance to buy land, but I let it go”
— Bayo*, 61
I lost the chance to own millions of naira worth of real estate because I believed holding money was safer than letting it go.
In 1993, my wife’s brother tried to sell me land in Satellite Town, Lagos — two plots of land at ₦65k each. I’d just received a ₦100k windfall from my late dad’s pension settlement money, and my wife wanted me to invest the money.
There’s nothing she didn’t use to convince me to buy that property. She even volunteered to borrow the balance from people. But I didn’t think it was a good investment. The land was in a “bush” area that didn’t look like it would be developed in years. Besides, buying the land was one thing. What would we build on it?
I decided to save the money instead. Months later, I used it to remodel our house from a bungalow to a one-storey building so we could rent out the extra space.
However, my brother-in-law bought a plot in that area and sold it for ₦19m in 2021. I hear that land in Satellite Town goes as high as ₦50m today, even more if it’s in a better area close to the road.
That extra floor I built in my house? We stopped renting it out years ago due to problematic tenants. My family occupies all the rooms now.
I still think about that property from time to time.
“I over-relied on my pension and didn’t utilise loans”
— Femi*, 64
Early retirement seemed like a good idea in theory. However, when I retired in 2016, it quickly became clear I wasn’t prepared for it.
By the time I retired, I had a house with two tenants and a pension account scheduled to pay me ₦120k/month for the next 20 years. I assumed collecting rent and my pension would be more than enough to survive on — ₦120k was good money in 2016.
Now, it’s barely enough to sustain me, my wife and our lastborn child for a month. My lastborn is still in university and her tuition fees went from ₦20k to ₦200k in 2023. My older kids still call for financial support once in a while.
I still get at least ₦1.8m in rent yearly from my tenants, but I can hardly plan around that. Most of the time, I use it to settle loans I took during the year to support my wife’s trading business and handle medical bills.
I wish I hadn’t relied so much on my pension. I should’ve followed the footsteps of colleagues who took loans from cooperative associations to build houses and start businesses. I assumed taking loans would be me “doing more than myself” and reducing my monthly take home.
But I now realise it would’ve just been a temporary sacrifice for future gain. If I’d taken advantage of those loans, I would’ve had at least one more house to supplement my income. I might have even set up a business and put someone in charge.
It’s sad that I’m supposed to be enjoying my retirement now, but I keep thinking about how to make money.
“I regret staying with my children’s father”
— Grace*, 55
Marriage in itself can be good, but it’s my biggest financial regret. I was married to my husband for 20 years before we separated. While we were together, he never held a stable job for three consecutive years.
As a result, I had to handle our home and children’s expenses. In addition, I had to finance whatever new business venture my husband took an interest in. The businesses always failed, but like a virtuous wife who wanted to protect her husband’s ego, I never questioned him.
I allowed him to have the final say on money I worked for because I didn’t want fights. I didn’t want him to think I lacked “respect” because I was the breadwinner. I let him make terrible financial decisions because I wanted him to be the “head of the home”. Money wasn’t the primary reason we eventually separated in 2022, but it played a role.
Now, I’m five years from retirement without reasonable savings or investments. I know when people were using ₦500k to buy land. Now I can’t think about that unless I have like ₦10m. If I’d left my marriage earlier or not endured the plenty of nonsense I did, I’d have land and property today.
I’ve been trying to save as much as possible to have a retirement safety net. I also have my pension to look forward to, but it’s nothing compared to how much I’d have achieved for myself if I hadn’t gotten married, or maybe married a more sensible man.
*Names have been changed for anonymity.
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