Yesterday was Mothers’ Day, and as I was reflecting on my relationship with my mother, I was reminded of a small thing that mom did for us, that probably shaped how we view money in adulthood. Like most Kenyan children of our time, our parents sent us to boarding school. A key feature in a boarding school child’s life was when you did “back to school”…
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Rock bottom financially is a position that some of us are familiar with. This is where things fail to work as planned, and you find yourself in mountains of debt, and not enough cash flow to both pay off the debts and your living expenses. The tendency for most people is to black it all out and hope it goes away. However, it does not…
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Yesterday, the popular sport betting company Sportpesa announced that they had a winner for their Kshs 221 million jackpot. With great pomp and color, Samuel Abisai, the winner was unveiled this morning. As expected, social media has been abuzz with the things one would do if they won that much money. This was my favorite; the state of our economy. Buy milk for a whole…
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Last week, the dilemma above crossed my Twitter timeline. The gentleman is disillusioned about his wife of 3 years, after finding out that she took all their savings (mostly his) and used them to pay off her student debt without informing him. From the post, he had been saving for some time to buy a house. I want to assume that he had told her…
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After months of waiting, Treasury has finally launched M-Akiba, a simple way to buy government bonds using mobile money. This is fantastic news especially for those of us who: Are millennials with no inclination for bureaucracy. The traditional process of buying government instruments involves a lengthy and tiring account opening process at the Central Bank. A few years ago, I went through the process with an…
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Most people know M-Shwari for that quick loan when you are in a fix, but did you know that M-Shwari is also a savings account? How M-Shwari Savings Account Works M-Shwari similar to a bank savings account linked to your M-Pesa wallet. A good way of envisioning this is to think of your bank current account (that you use for transactions), coming with a free…
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A friend recently wrote to me to ask me for advice on whether he should buy a house off-plan, with the intention of selling it once the development is complete. With his permission, I publish the advice I gave to him below. Off-plan house sales (also called pre-sales) are where the developing company sells some units in advance, and uses the money raised from these…
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The brochure is very compelling. It tells you that whatever your financial goal, an “insurance-investment” plan can help you accomplish it from as little as KShs 2,500 per month. This is a brochure for a typical insurance savings plan, whether it is for education, or general savings. They state that the insurance plan is linked to a fund that invests at the stock market (equity…
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The other day, I asked some questions on Twitter and it elicited an interesting conversation on the timeline but also in my DMs In Kenya, it is common for parents to expect parental support from their children. The logic as aptly expressed by a leading economist David Ndii is that a child is the best pension plan – it visits, brings grandchildren etc, unlike just…
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One of the key lessons from the January spending fast failures was that we were too ambitious to start out with a total fast. I now realise that a spending diet is a more sensible way to start off. A spending diet works the same way a food diet works. When doing a food diet, you set a goal you want to achieve (weight loss to x kgs,…
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