We are close to the end of the Barclays #AfricaSaves savings challenge. If you have not read about this challenge yet, please start by reading the previous posts. I started by introducing the Hand and the Heart conflict and why the hand keeps winning- why we keep impulse buying (reaching with the hand), instead of holding out to accomplish our long term goals, which are…
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We are in the second month of our 3 months’ savings challenge, where we are saving more by curbing our impulsive spending. In the first post, we looked at “the hand versus the heart“, where the hand is our impulse to reach for what we want now, against our heart – the things we want to achieve with our money long term. We then tracked our…
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If you are a regular reader of this blog, or if you follow me on Twitter, you know that we are on a savings challenge, where for 3 months, we will change the way we spend, a week at a time. Typically, we tend to hold our money goals in our hearts, while our hands keep reaching out for things that satisfy our immediate wants…
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Last month, the president assented to an ammendment to the Banking Act which effectively limits how much interest banks can charge loans and how much they pay out as interest on savings. In summary, the bill put: (i) a cap on lending rates at 4.0% above the Central Bank Rate (CBR) and (ii) a floor on the deposit rates at 70% of the CBR. Banks have no choice but…
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If you follow me on Twitter, you know that I love to make fun of a section of Twitter that is popularly called #CementTwitter. As you can see from the linked search results, many people do. But who is #CementTwitter? Well, these people have interesting take on our spending habits. They love to equate everything we buy to how many bags of cement we would buy instead. For…
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In the last post, we looked at the conflict between the heart and the hand. The heart represents the long term savings goals that we want to achieve with our money, while the hand is impulsive and keeps reaching out for short term desires and unplanned spending. I set a goal to save 40,000 shillings towards paying down a loan in the next three months….
Read MoreThe National Health Insurance Fund (NHIF) yesterday announced additional benefits for its members. They will now cover specialized, major and minor surgeries to the extent of 500,000, 130,000 and 40,000 shillings respectively. This development comes soon after they announced that they will be covering dialysis and cancer treatments, and also reviewed inpatient coverage in the major private hospitals from 1,900 shillings to 6,000 shillings a night….
Read MoreWe know what’s good for us in the long term, but it often seems as though there’s a strange force pushing us to do what’s not good for us. Especially when it comes to personal finance. If I told you to save an extra Kshs 5,0000 next month, you’ll tell me that your budget won’t allow for that. Then, when you see a great pair…
Read MoreOver a year back when Safaricom announced that it would be launching a card specifically for government offices, I did wonder what the difference between Safaricom and other banks really is. Yesterday, the company announced that it is piloting its debit card, designed as a Point of Sale (POS) payment card like the bank cards we use. It is designed as an upgrade to the…
Read MoreIn the post where I shared Danson’s inspiring story, I promised to share with you information from at least 5 pension schemes in town, and my experience trying to get this information has been like pulling teeth. Of the 7 insurance companies I called, I only managed to get comprehensive information from two. In one instance, I was told that the pension people were out…
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