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.
What’s your earliest memory of money?
A memory from JSS 2 stands out. My friends and I started a random business we called “Tiss-Robb”. We just wrapped Aboniki balm in tissue and sold it for ₦20.
I’m very curious how that idea came to mind
The weather was really cold, and I think people were rubbing balms on their bodies and in their noses to get warm. We just thought we could make a cheap inhaler and sell it to our schoolmates.
We advertised by visiting different classes and giving a full marketing presentation on why they needed our makeshift inhalers to deal with the cold weather. The “product” was a hit for a week until someone said it wasn’t healthy, and that’s how the business crashed. I can’t even remember how we shared the proceeds.
Tell me about what money was like growing up
It’s always been kind of confusing, because I honestly can’t tell what my parents did for money. I think my mum practised law at one point, and my dad was some kind of consultant.
There was a point in my childhood when we lived in a really nice estate, and then later moved to a smaller house. I’m not sure whether it had anything to do with our financial situation, since my parents were quite secretive. They never talked about money with us kids. I think they also tried different businesses at different points, but I don’t have much context.
Let’s come back to you. When next did you try to earn money after the inhaler stint?
2022 — my third year at the university. At that point, everyone I knew was doing something. I could meet someone on the road, and the conversation would go:
“What do you do?”
“I’m studying chemistry.”
“No. I mean, what do you do?”
It was my sign to find something to bring me money. I spoke to my friends, and one of them sent me a link to a WhatsApp group that often posted writing jobs. At this time, I was doing my industrial training at some institute in Victoria Island, Lagos. It was very far from where I lived, and I spent a fortune on transportation.
I also had to be there super early and always got home late. On top of all that, it was an unpaid position. I endured it for a few weeks before I stopped going. I decided to focus on getting gigs from the writing group instead.
How did that go?
The group members had international Upwork accounts and often outsourced their gigs. When they posted vacancies, I’d apply with writing samples. It was a very Jack-of-all-trades approach. I applied to any and all jobs, from music to crypto and from psychology to fiction.
I started getting gigs almost immediately, but the pay was really bad. I’ve charged ₦1 per word for a 70,000-word book before. It was usually between ₦1 and ₦3 per word. Pay only got higher with crypto pieces; those paid around ₦5 per word.
I was often working for five or more people at a time on different projects, and I frequently worked late into the night. My goal was to make at least ₦100k monthly, and I got that most of the time. Sometimes, even ₦200k or ₦300k.
Was this good money for you?
Oh, it was. However, I was hardly spending it. I save a lot; people might even say I saved too much. One time, when I was younger, I saved all the pencils and pens I got from party packs for weeks, only to have them all stolen in church.
Let me even tell you how I lost my life savings in 2020.
I’d been saving the ₦3k/month allowance my mum gave me for food in secondary school. Instead of buying food, I’d choose to starve just so I could save the money.
By 2019, around the time I got into uni, I’d saved up to ₦300k. Then, forex became popular, and the promise of huge returns drove me to invest with some traders. I made some profit, but I kept reinvesting to get a bigger cash out. Then someone told me about a crypto investment platform with returns supposedly beating every other platform. I put my money there, and I never got it back. The platform disappeared, wiping my money clean.
Damn
See, it was terrible. During that period, I was going to church and begging God to kill me. I would cry and roll on the floor. I mean, ₦300k isn’t that much, but it was all I had.
I digress.
Back to 2022. I was saving half of whatever I made from writing and spending the rest on clothes and other stuff. I also bought a laptop around that time. I’m not sure why, but my major saving goal was to buy land and open a block factory. I just told myself I needed to save ₦1m to buy land in Epe.
However, when I eventually hit the ₦1m goal in 2023, I heard land prices were around ₦2 or ₦3 million. I also started getting worried about potential omo onile wahala, so I abandoned the land idea and left the money in my savings.
Were you still writing?
Yes, but in late 2022, I sort of stopped working with several writers and stuck with one. My job was to manage his Upwork account. I revamped the account and began applying for jobs, about 5-10 daily, on his behalf.
He handled the conversations, but whenever clients requested phone calls, I took them. The account was a woman who was supposed to be based in New York. So, I’d put on an accent and speak to the clients. I also managed a small team of writers on his behalf, whom we outsourced some of the gigs to. I did some of the writing, too.
What was your pay like?
We didn’t have a specific amount; payment ranged from ₦50k to ₦200k/month, depending on the number of gigs we secured. I was mostly at the mercy of his benevolence; he paid more if he felt I’d done a lot of work that month.
Our arrangement lasted two years. I stopped working with him in November 2024, around the time I went for NYSC.
Did you stop because of NYSC?
No, I realised I’d spent all that time building his own thing, and having nothing for myself. The realisation came when I started trying to pivot into B2B writing. I told this guy, and the following week, he presented an idea to change the Upwork account to focus on B2B writing.
I found it weird that I told him I wanted to do something, and he suddenly wanted to do the same. He even asked me for B2B writing samples, which means he most likely wanted to use them to grow his account. It opened my eyes to how much of my writing was under his account. I was mostly ghostwriting. Even worse, I couldn’t even try to link up with a former client because I technically didn’t exist.
Right. So, what did you do after you stopped?
I started building a brand on LinkedIn, regularly posting and writing. I hoped to get a dollar-paying B2B writing job, but the opportunity I found was an SEO content writing job with a company in Ibadan. This was in February 2025.
At this time, I was rounding up my NYSC in a neighbouring state — a teaching job at a public secondary school — but the role was remote, so I didn’t need to travel. My salary was ₦100k/month, and honestly, it felt jarring because I was used to earning ₦200k – ₦300k monthly.
Besides my arrangement with the Upwork guy, I used to take on random fiction writing gigs and could be working on three books at a time. However, I’d stopped all that to build my personal brand. I didn’t want to ghostwrite anymore; I just wanted my name on something.
That makes sense. How long were you at this SEO writing role?
About five months. In July, I applied for a writing job on LinkedIn and got it. It was my first time earning in dollars; the job paid $800/month. By December, my role changed to marketing associate, and my pay increased to $1000. I still work there, and my salary in naira is about ₦1.4m.
How does it feel like going from ₦100k to ₦1.4m in 10 months?
Unreal. I always fear I’m about to lose my job because it’s like there’s no way this opportunity is here to stay. I constantly wonder if I deserve this job. Like, am I really that hardworking enough?
Whenever I get a message from my manager, I’m like, “This is it. She’s caught on to the fact that I’m not good at this job.” There’s just a lot of anxiety. I’m constantly in a state of preparation for when I’ll lose my job.
The negative stuff aside, it’s been really, really good. It’s more money than I thought I would be earning at this point in my life. It has changed my life.
How so?
Actually, I don’t think it has changed much. I think I’ve always been pretty structured with money. It’s just that my anxiety makes me overplan because I’m looking for security.
I’ve always saved a good portion of my income. When I earned ₦100k, I was saving ₦50k, paying ₦10k as tithe and living on the remaining ₦40k. Now, I have more money to spread around. I recently started using a spreadsheet to track my expenses and budget. I didn’t need to do that before because ₦100k wasn’t a lot, and I knew where everything went. Now, I have to pay a closer look to be sure I’m making the right decisions.
Now, I remove my taxes — I’m still trying to understand this one. I just know that with the new tax law, freelancers don’t get their taxes deducted from their pay like regular employees, so I’ll have to figure that out manually. I just try to remove ₦200k monthly and keep it in a savings app, so I can calculate my taxes and pay the government next year. I’ve only done that for two months, and I keep dipping into it for expenses. So, right now, I’m behind on my taxes.
Let’s do a full breakdown of how you budget monthly expenses now
I don’t consider taxes and pension my money — I just opened a pension account this month. So, after I remove 15% for taxes and 10% for pension, the balance of ₦1.2m is my “salary”. Then I break it down to: 10% for tithe, 17% for personal needs and 73% for investments.
This is what the 17% (₦207k) looks like in a typical month:
For investments, I put my money (usually about ₦800k-ish per month) into US stocks and ETFs using the Bamboo app. I also put some money in Risevest via their real estate investment plan. I also bought about ₦200k worth of Bitcoin last year, but the value keeps dropping, so that’s annoying. I’m looking to get into gold and Nigerian stocks this year, though.
Also, I should mention: I applied for a virtual MBA last year because I randomly decided I wanted to be a Chief Marketing Officer in the future and saw that an MBA was a requirement. I know someone who got a partial scholarship at the same School of Business, and I applied and got it too. It lowkey got me thinking about whether there was actually a scholarship or if the tuition was always $3k to begin with.
Anyway, it’s a $200/month (about ₦300k) payment for 15 months. I made the first payment in January to secure my admission, but the programme starts in June. So, I’ll start paying $200 monthly from July.
Back to the investments, is there any structure around how you spread your portfolio?
As the spirit leads, honestly. I mostly just follow financial advice on Instagram and try to see what other people are doing. Right now, I have ₦7.1m in my portfolio.
I notice you didn’t mention savings
Yeah. I used to be a hardcore saver. It got to a point last year that I had about ₦3m in my savings app, and I started to wonder if I was making the best financial decision for my age. The money wasn’t really moving, and I figured I was better off investing in stocks. This is the time I’m supposed to be taking risks. I don’t want to lose money, but if it happens, I can make it back.
So, I took out most of the savings and put it in my investment account. The real estate investment might be the only one I consider as savings because it’s stable and offers consistent returns. I still have ₦1m in my savings app, and I get ₦13k monthly interest. Sometimes I take it, sometimes I just leave it to compound.
I’m curious: Have you noticed a faster portfolio growth with the new investment strategy?
Yes, but it fluctuates like crazy. Still, I believe it’s a better approach to money management. My saving goal has always been to invest in land, but I kept saving for years, and the price kept rising. But look, my investments rose from ₦3m last year to ₦7m.
Of course, it helps that I earn more now and have been pumping more money into it, but at least the growth is faster than it would have been if I were just saving. I’m even tempted to withdraw the ₦1m from my savings app and invest it, but I’ll just leave it as an emergency fund.
Most people I speak to who have lost money to investments are wary of investing again. But it looks like you’re jumping headlong into it
I think I’ve always been a “high risk, high reward” person. I don’t know. That crypto experience definitely scarred me, but I guess I’ve healed.
How would you describe your relationship with money?
It’s good. I earn the most among my friends, but — this might sound dramatic — I feel like since I was the first to “blow,” I’ll probably be the first to lose everything down the line.
You know how the first person in the movie does really well, and you know it means they’ll do badly after? That’s how I feel. I’m always scared and waiting for the other shoe to drop. I might have an anxious attachment to money.
Do you think so?
I know, I know. I’m still investing money and putting it out there, not holding it down. But I don’t consider money invested as money spent. I know I can lose it, but it’s still my money just going up and down. I’m also not putting money into wild places like agriculture and forex, so the risk isn’t too high.
Also, I live below my means, even though I’ve been spending a bit more lately, maybe trying to make up for all those years of saving. I buy more clothes and things I like now. My purchases haven’t affected my investments, though, so nothing too crazy.
Is there an ideal amount of money you think you should be earning?
I feel like whenever I read other people’s stories, everyone says big, big amounts in this part. I’m still grateful to be earning what I do now.
However, a few weeks ago, someone messaged me on LinkedIn that was going to pay between $3k and $5k. I didn’t get the job, but it got me thinking that earning $5k would have been great, too.
I should ask: Is there anything you’re trying to manage the anxiety around your job and money?
No. I’m just existing with it. I probably should do something, though.
Is there anything you want right now but can’t afford?
I wanted to buy a MacBook, but it cost ₦1.5m, so I settled for a ₦400k Dell laptop. I’d also like to change my phone. I have an iPhone 11, and I want to go higher because this idiot keeps overheating. I’ll probably need ₦300k to ₦400k to swap it.
I also want to grow my portfolio to ₦10m this year, a figure I hope will make me feel safe. Then, I’ll start saving up to move out of my parent’s. I’m looking to save between ₦4m – ₦6m by next year for the move.
What about something you’d like to be better at financially?
The research part of investing. The part where you review the company’s financials and let the data inform your decision. Right now, I just move based on what I hear is doing well. I don’t think that’s great.
How would you rate your financial happiness on a scale of 1-10?
7. I do a good job of saving and investing, but I feel like the goal is always shifting. I used to tell myself, “I just need to get ₦1m, then I’ll feel good.” When I got that, I increased the amount and just kept shifting the goal. When I hit ₦10m, I’ll probably give myself another goal. I’m not sure what amount of money I’ll make that’ll actually make me feel good.
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.
