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?
It was the buying power of money. In nursery school, I got ₦5 for snacks, in addition to home-cooked food. My classmates brought ₦20 to school. While I could only afford a biscuit or a sweet, they bought actual food, sweets, and biscuits.
Even as a kid, I realised there were different categories of money, and what it could do. My ₦5 put me in the “biscuit and sweet” category.
What was growing up like financially?
My dad was a federal government worker in an agriculture agency. It sounds more prestigious than it was; it was just a standard government job. My mum, a teacher, opened her own school when I was about seven. She also had a provisions store on the side.
We weren’t exactly struggling, but we weren’t comfortable either. I didn’t realise we were in penury until we got out of it. We mostly ate whatever was in my mum’s shop at the time. If she had wheat in stock, we ate wheat consistently. It was very “you either eat this or don’t eat anything.”
When did the “exit from penury” happen?
When my mum’s school took off. By the time I was nine, things shifted. We moved from a face-me-I-face-you apartment where I’d never seen electricity to a developed area with a fridge, fans, and a blender. I remember the feeling of having an Ox fan and light in the house for the first time. By 10, we had a school vehicle that doubled as the family car.
Do you remember the first thing you did to earn money?
Oh yes. I grew up in a Deeper Life household with no TV or anything like that. When my mum’s school got a computer, it was the next best thing. I learnt how to use computers and became obsessed with them. My dad also got a laptop at some point, and I would often hide to use it at night.
When I was in JSS 3, I overheard my dad’s friend telling him he needed someone to design a letterhead for his hospital. So, I told my dad’s friend I could do it. I designed the letterhead with Microsoft Word, and he gave me ₦500. That was my first ever pay.
I also started to learn design using CorelDRAW and Photoshop. We lived around a polytechnic, and one of the houses in the neighbourhood was like a campus fellowship. I got acquainted with the polytechnic students who often came around to charge their phones. My brother started learning CorelDRAW from some of them, and I tagged along. I would watch what they did, and when I got back home, I’d practice on my dad’s laptop.
Then, I used to take ₦120 to school every day for lunch and transport. Instead of buying food, I’d save up all the money and trek for a week to buy ₦1,000 data on my dad’s internet modem. This data usually lasted a week, so I did this every week. I spent nights on my dad’s laptop, browsing the internet and learning CorelDRAW and Photoshop. I posted my designs on Facebook, and I soon started making money from them.
How so?
I was getting paid in recharge cards. Someone would see my design, comment that they wanted something similar, and I’d do it. It was mostly music cover art requests from upcoming artists. Recharge cards were the easiest way to get paid. This was in my JSS 3 days.
The first “big money” I made from a cover art was ₦2k. The person sent me two ₦500 MTN cards and one ₦1000 Airtel card. I gave my mum and dad the ₦500 cards, and used the ₦1k to buy data for the modem.
In addition to design, I also learned how to build WordPress websites. Everyone had a blog at that time. It was easy to build one with Blogger or WordPress, add a logo, get a free domain and plug it in. I started building music websites similar to NaijaLoaded for people on Facebook.
2go was still reigning then, and there were rooms where you could get cracked WordPress plug-ins for different websites. I just needed to select one, make a few design changes, send it to the client, and get paid in recharge cards. Now that I think about it, that ₦2k payment was for a cover art and website package.
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How consistent was this income?
It wasn’t that regular. I was doing it — the cover arts and websites — to get good at it, not just to make money from it. I know that at some point, I stopped saving my ₦120 daily pocket money to buy data because I earned enough to cover data costs.
The next major thing I did for money in secondary school was with my brother. He was in SS 3, and his class had a research project to print. We gathered everyone’s flash drives, printed them at my mum’s school, and then charged his classmates double. I can’t remember how much we made, but it was serious money.
Another thing my brother and I did for money was cracking modems.
Cracking modems?
Yeah. Back then, if you had a Glo modem, you couldn’t use another service provider’s SIM like MTN on it. However, we learnt from online forums how to crack and turn a modem universal so you could use any SIM on it.
We didn’t even start out with the idea of making money. We just cracked our dad’s modem so we could use another SIM’s unlimited data option. Then one day, my dad’s colleague came around, and my dad asked us to do “that thing” we did for his modem for his colleague. We charged him ₦1500, and that’s how the business took off.
We started cracking modems for everyone around us. It only lasted a couple of months before the hack stopped working. It was good while it lasted, though.
You were quite the secondary school entrepreneur
Yeah. It was not exactly out of necessity. My family’s financial situation was already better at that point. It was just people being willing to pay for the things I knew.
While I was doing all these side quests, I was still getting occasional gigs on Facebook, even up until I left secondary school. I graduated in 2017 and went to stay with my brother, who was already a uni student. Following his recommendation, I took a ₦30k programming summer class while preparing to get into uni.
Since I’d dabbled in WordPress, I figured I could do more after learning actual PHP, JavaScript and other programming languages. Once I was done learning, I could go full-on into programming. I didn’t get the chance to do that.
Did something happen?
More like a detour. While taking the summer classes, I was still exploring design on the side. I’d gotten into digital painting with Photoshop and posting my paintings on a Facebook group.
A Nigerian guy living in the US noticed my work and reached out to ask if I could do it at scale for different images, and he’d pay me $5 per design. I agreed. He’d send me images to work with, and he used my designs to create T-shirt graphics for his eBay store. Or was it Amazon? I can’t remember exactly.
Anyway, I typically worked on 5-15 designs for him per day, and he paid into my dad’s account through Western Union. We worked together for about four months. I remember my first big payout from him was about ₦30k, and I used it to buy a graphic tablet. I’d been using a mouse to design before that purchase, and it wasn’t the best. Ironically, the design requests stopped just after I bought the tablet.
What did you do next?
The Fiverr era was on the rise. People would go on Fiverr to find clients who wanted paintings of themselves, and then subcontract the gigs to artists in Facebook groups. I would get these gigs for ₦4k – ₦5k per painting.
It wasn’t a steady income source, but the money wasn’t bad. I also posted my work on Facebook and Instagram and got clients from there. The highest I made from painting was ₦12k.
I got admission to uni at the end of 2017 and resumed in 2018. I stopped using Facebook as much, and the painting gigs faded away. Instead, I decided to properly pursue a design career.
What prompted that decision?
I saw a logo designed for a Guinness World Record attempt by a guy in my brother’s class. It blew my mind. The guy had a design studio, so I interned there.
There was no specific pay since income depended on the projects we got. So, I got commissions around ₦5k – ₦10k. I also received around ₦10k – ₦15k in pocket money from home, so I was doing okay. I interned with him for about four months, then became an assistant art director at the studio in June 2019. The studio dissolved in December 2019, and everyone went their separate ways.
Fast forward to February 2020, I got one of my first branding gigs through my brother (who was now a product designer). That one paid ₦76k. In March, I got my first salaried job after someone saw my work on Twitter. The job was at a music distribution company, and they paid me $100 (which was about ₦36,500) a month. I held that job throughout 2020, with some other freelance gigs on the side.
In December, I left the job because I asked for a salary increase to ₦150k, but they offered me ₦70k. I’d learned enough to know I could make more money than that, so I turned it down.
Did you get another job?
Not immediately. I went full freelance in 2021, earning between ₦200k and ₦400k per project. My first big break was a $2,400 billboard project for a US client. After conversion, it came down to about ₦1.3m. It was so mindblowing to me. I immediately splurged ₦500k on an iPhone 12 Pro and spent extra on some shoes I still keep as trophies.
Then I got broke again because I spent it all. I almost landed a $4k/month job but lost it at the 8th interview stage. I was depressed but kept going. Fortunately, things began to look up. By late 2021, I got another branding project for $2,300. The following month, I got another project that paid me ₦800k. Money was flowing. I even moved into a nice, furnished self-contained apartment.
2022 came, and I decided to try full-time work again. I got a ₦400k/month job, but only stayed a month because a fintech poached me. They said they’d pay me $2000/month, but it turned out they were paying the naira equivalent at the official bank rate. So my salary was ₦800k. That experience taught me to be very clear during salary negotiations.
Were you doing all these while still in school?
Uhmm, I dropped out of uni in 2022.
Oh. Why?
I did it partly for the plot and because I was scared for my future. I was in a 400-level engineering course, but I didn’t know anything about it. Also, I was making money. It didn’t make sense to continue sitting for lectures and wasting time. I’d lost interest.
I was in the engineering workshop one day in 2022, and an ASUU strike was looming. I told my friends, “If this strike happens, I’m gone.” That’s what I did.
I dropped out and enrolled in an online university to study brand marketing and strategy. My tuition was ₦31k/month, so I could comfortably pay months in advance on my salary. My parents were surprisingly cool with my decision. I finished that degree in 2024.
Let’s go back to your career journey
I worked at the fintech from 2022 to 2024. I even stopped taking freelance gigs and focused on my job instead. In 2024, I got laid off. By then, my salary had grown to ₦900k.
I got ₦1.8m in severance pay and made an interesting money decision. Instead of saving the money, I added my entire ₦2m savings to it and bought a car for ₦3.75m. I had no idea when I’d see money next, but I spent it all anyway.
I have to ask: Why?
Because life is not so hard. There are so many things you should do because you have free will. I always make use of my free will, and it just made sense. Also, I’d been thinking about getting a car just before I got laid off. If I didn’t spend that money on a car, I would have spent it on something else. I didn’t really need the car. I just wanted to get it.
Anyway, I suffered for that decision in the following two months, but it wasn’t so bad because I had rice at home. I also got a few freelance gigs to tide me over until I got another fintech job in June 2024 — I should mention here that all my jobs have been brand design roles.
What was the salary like?
₦900k/month. In January 2025, it increased to ₦1.5m. Remember I cleared my savings before? I started saving again, living on ₦500k monthly and saving ₦1m. It wasn’t the first time I was saving most of my income. When I earned ₦800k – ₦900k, I saved ₦500k.
In June 2025, I moved to the fintech where I currently work. They poached me on LinkedIn, and I was very particular about salary negotiation. I told them I wanted $2,300 to $3,000/month, and honestly expected them to run. We eventually settled on $2,300, which is roughly ₦3.2m.
How has your income growth over the years impacted how you think about money?
Money can finish, just have a skill. That’s the only thing that has saved me. I’ve made money, and I’ve been really broke. The one constant has been having a skill and talking about what I do. Your skill is the one thing that can’t be taken from you; it’s essentially your money-printing machine.
Also, people have this misconception that you can’t make serious money from graphic design. I mean, I do brand design, but it’s more like a packaged name. Slightly different roles, but we all do the same thing at the granular level.
My dad doubted I could make a living from it, too. During COVID, he asked if I thought I could fend for a family with design. I told him to give me a year. The following year, I got that ₦1.3m billboard project.
I’ve not made it big yet, but I’m definitely on the right path. As long as you’re good at what you do, constantly put yourself out there and make friends — a lot of the early opportunities I got were through friends — you can do anything as a designer. It’s a hill I’m willing to die on. You can make it as a designer; you can even be a baller.
You know how we say it’s only people who make money illegally that can afford to buy Azul in clubs and spend anyhow? Last year, when I was switching jobs, I had a month where I received two salaries — ₦1.5m from one and $2,300 from the other. I was like, “This is the night I make bad decisions.” I went to the club with friends, and personally blew ₦1.5m in one night. It was for the plot. It reconfigured my brain. You don’t have to do illegal stuff to afford a certain lifestyle. You can make money and spend it the way you want. I dropped ₦12.5m on my dream car a year after buying the first one, and that money came from one design project. Anything is possible, really.
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Interesting. How would you describe your relationship with money?
I can be very disciplined with money, but sometimes I’m just like, “What is this life?” So, I often give myself space to indulge and just spend. Think about it like cheat days. People have cheat days at the gym. I have money cheat days.
Right now, my savings approach is to spend one month’s salary for two months. For instance, my January salary goes to my spending account, and my February salary goes to my savings account. I currently use a savings and investments app. Most of my “savings” sit in the wallet, while I invest $300 monthly in the app’s real estate investment plan. Altogether, my portfolio is worth $9,300.
Do you have a savings goal?
My long-term goal is to get to $20k or $30k. However, once I hit $10k, I’ll keep that and then start doing more high-risk investments and less saving. I’m not sure what instruments to use yet. Most likely stocks.
Let’s break down your typical monthly expenses
Is there an ideal amount of money you think you should be earning?
I think I’m earning alright, considering I work with a Nigerian company. If it were a foreign company, maybe $5k would be the expected pay for my level.
Is there anything you want right now but can’t afford?
It’s between building a house and relocating. It’s just annoying that you can’t trust that this country is going the right way to justify building a house here. The alternative might be to buy a house in another African country, but I don’t have the money for that yet.
For relocation, I have a country in mind, but their digital nomad visa requires that I earn at least $4k/month and have about $10k – $15k in savings.
How about the last thing you bought that made you happy?
Money rarely makes me happy these days. I’ve gotten to the point where I don’t think about immediate needs like rent or food. However, I don’t want to only make money so I can be set up. I want to make money so I don’t have to worry about money.
Now, when money comes in, I know it’s either for saving or for day-to-day living. It just feels normal. Of course, there was a point where I was excited, but now it’s plateaued. $6k/month would spark joy, though.
Right now, I’m almost bored. I even took up an $11/hour gig last month just for the plot. The money is ridiculous, but it’s just something fun to do on the side for a few weeks.
To answer your question, I recently spent ₦1.1m on a five-day trip to Ghana with a friend, and I had a lot of fun.
How would you rate your financial happiness on a scale of 1-10?
6. I’m not in debt, and I don’t worry about basic needs. But honestly? This is the richest I’ve been and the poorest I’ve felt.
Three years ago, the money I have now would have been enough to start building a duplex. Now, it can barely buy a plot of land in a good area. Inflation has changed everything. Earning $6000/month will change that rating to a solid 10, at least for the next year.
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