Something’s got to give – The Struggle Is Real
After a lengthy phone call, bae finally agrees to come over tomorrow! What are you going to wear? Is your room clean enough? Is there good food in the fridge? There are so many questions running through your head right now, you almost forget something crucial… until it hits you; Mom and dad are going to be home, and they’re expecting Uncle Kwaku.
Kai! But this guy who called him! Uncle Kwaku paa. He’ll be cracking silly jokes about how he dried my bed the last time I wet it. No one needs that kind of stress. Lord knows you’re in no mood for any embarrassing conversations and weird questions that would freak bae out.
Can you really keep living like this with no form of privacy whatsoever? The thought of getting your own place is becoming more and more appealing these days. Your friends are struggling with similar issues – they can’t have bae over, their house chores on Saturdays are like AMA clean-up exercises, the disagreements with their folks are getting out of hand, etc. Something’s got to give.
There’s a point when you just know it’s time to move out but moving out must be dealt with cautiously. You don’t just get up and find a place, if it was that simple no one would live with his or her parents that long.
Take Nii Lantey for instance. It all started when he decided he had had enough and moved out three years ago. He found a place that cost GHS800.00 a month. The rent sounded manageable until his landlady did the usual landlord or landlady thing, “Young man, I really like you so I will only ask for two years rent advance”. That was GHS19,200.00, which of course Nii didn’t have. Fortunately, or maybe unfortunately, his bank was happy to lend him the money. For the next five years, he would have to pay GHS541.00to the bank every month for a home he’d rented for just two years.
Nii is optimistic and believes he would have saved up to build or buy his own place before the two years are over-he has his eyes on bonuses and raises. But two years isn’t such a long time. Two months before his rent is up for renewal madam landlady shows up with a smile “My son I like how well you’ve kept this place but you know things are hard, let’s do GHS1200.00 a month so grandma can still buy her medicines on time.”
Nii is angry but his savings are still not enough to buy a home and, even if he had enough cash he couldn’t possibly build a home before his rent expires so what does he do? Well he remembers the bank called earlier offering him a top up on his loan so…
Nii’s old debt combined with the new one and interest now set him off by about GHS70,000.00 and he is not saving up as quickly as his optimistic self had hoped. So no one can tell how soon he’s going to get out of this cycle of borrowing to pay rent advance with hopes that things will get better before his rent is due again and with rent rates consistently spiralling out of control, Nii’s indebtedness could overwhelm him faster than he ever thought – saving is ever becoming something he can only hope to do whiles his loans keep digging at his income. The struggle is real!
Moving out of home without first getting a good grip over your finances can expose you to many risks and put you off to a bad start when it comes to wealth creation. Getting good financial advice and access to high-performing savings products as well as flexible mortgages early makes all the difference. So if you are planning on moving out of home soon or you are yet to figure out how to wriggle out of the rent cycle, get in touch with a relationship officer at Petra today to explore how you could use Savings Booster, our high-performing savings product,in combination with a zero deposit mortgage to ensure moving out doesn’t become your worst nightmare.
- Petra Trust provides pension, provident fund, high-performing savings and tax-efficient discretionary savings products to both institutions and individuals.
- Petra Trust’s leadership has over 60 years of combined world-class experience in managing institutional and sovereign funds in excess of 500 billion USD.
- Petra trust is in partnership with Leapfrog Investments – a specialist investor in financial services in Africa and Asia with a distinctive investment strategy backed by some of the world’s leading institutional investors, including J.P. Morgan, Prudential, Swiss Re, and TIAA-CREF.