Money 2023
Introduction
In 2020, my salary was 120,000 NGN per month (i.e 1.44 Million Naira in a year), it’s amazing how approximately two years later, I spend more than that on food alone. I am super grateful to God how far I have come in my career. Before we dive in, you may also want to read this
Source of Income
99% of my source of income for the entire year was my salary. The other 1% came from a WordPress project which the client is still yet to conclude till today so I didn’t get all the payment but I am glad I asked for the amount I asked for cos even if they don’t balance, it’s all fine by me.
Moral lesson: always charge for inconvenience ahead.
Expenses
In all honesty, I think my highest expense per month is tithe and offering ( I am not complaining), I am only saying my expenses would probably be way lower than it is.
Followed closely by feeding: I think it was around mid January or early February that I realized that I didn’t have the time nor the skills to feed myself very well so I turned to ordering from Heyfoods (and later on Chowdeck). In total from both platforms, I mad a total of 277 orders this year. With an average of 4K spent on each food, That’s about 1.1 Million Naira. Things like dining in, provisions, etc are excluded.
I did MTN 100,000NGN for 1 Terabytes subscription three times, there’s subscriptions here and there on my airtel SIM which I can’t keep track of but say 350k in total on internet.
My rent was 400k (I heard this is what some of you pay for service charge in Lagos).
A lot of my friends got married this year as well, and my average budget for each one was basically 100k and here’s how I approached it:
If I am buying asoebi and attending in person, all of the expenses would be subtracted from that 100k while the remainder is sent as gift (either cash or their wishlist) . Tbh, I didn’t set out with this in mind but after calculating my average expense that’s how I arrived at that value. Total weddings attended is 5 or 6.
Took a solo trip to Ghana sometime in the middle of the year. Shoutout to Afolabi Praise Ayobami for hosting me for those 3 weeks, my expenses would have gone way up than the 350k to 400k that I spent.
Giving back
Contributed more than 100k towards someone getting a computer to further their career in 3D and animation.
Gifted both strangers on the internet and people in my cirlce books as well and paid for the delivery of those book. I am not sure the total but I am sure it’s well above 5 at an average of 10k. That’s about 50k+.
Random internet subscription for people coming up in their career in tech.
Loans/Debts
Something I am really grateful for this year is how financially responsible people around me are. While I do not have an exact figure but I am pretty sure I gave out loans of over 2 Million Naira in total this year and the major loans all got repaid in time. Infact, the total I didn’t recover is just 10,000NGN.
Investments
While I don’t even think about it as investment, I bought very little units of a couple of crypto currencies that I am hoping to hodl for a while such as: Matic, WorldCoin, and BTC.
I am still waiting for the 350dollars in risevest which has now dipped to 310dollars+ to get back to 350dollars so I can remove it and either use it to buy a proper course on investment or save it.
Talking about savings, I tried to save at least 50% of my income every month. I use Quidax USD Savings, you can as well. Just download the Android or iOS app. The returns is 7% per annum for flexible savings and 10% for fixed savings. It may not seem like a lot, but if you consider the value of NGN over the past couple of months, it’s a better bet against inflation and a safe alternative than throwing money at every investment opportunities that looks like gold.
Yeah, that reminds me: I put about 350k NGN into a startup (still in development).
2024 Investment Plans
The major part of my career is built on free resources or almost free resources like: YouTube, TheNewBoston, cheap Udemy courses, CS50, etc. This I believe has made to be very reluctant about paying for resources which I am beginning to realize might be rubbing me of high quality resources and knowledge, this is something I am going to turn around in 2024 by investing heavily in courses.
For some reason, startups and small businesses appeal to me. Especially the ones that solve mundane problems that doesn’t require a lot of technology/engineering effort to get off the ground. If you or someone you know is working on something. Kindly book a session here.
I will also love to get into stocks, ETFs, Treasury Bills and all. The plan is to get a course on Money Africa to understand this bit.
Conclusion
In certain circles, I am the most knowledgeable about money. Yunno, the guy that everyone asks advise from on what to do with money but in all honesty, the only thing I know how to do with money is save it.
While I most likely will still continue to save, I am really hoping to increase my risk appetite in the coming year.
