Caroline Njunge: Shock of planning for money which you don’t have yet

As she looked at her letter of appointment, she deflated like a balloon, and never again would the term ‘manager’ mean the same to her again

Recently, a friend’s younger sister was offered a permanent and pensionable position at work. She was over the moon because she had worked on contract for four years, and could not wait to enjoy the perks that would come with her new position at work.

She was not given her letter of appointment immediately, and since she hadn’t interviewed for the position, she had no idea how much her new salary would be. All the same, she expected a significant change in her pay, after all, she had leapt from a sales executive to a sales manager, and managers have bountiful salaries, don’t they?

Anyway, the first thing she planned to do was move to a bigger and better house, and even more important, to a better part of the city. She lived in Ongata Rongai, diaspora if you may, and could not wait to move closer to civilisation, (I apologise, if you live in Ronga…). She was eyeing Ngong Road and began to hunt for a one bed-room house in earnest — goodbye dingy bedsitter.

She managed to get just the right house, shy of Sh30,000. It was a big leap from the Sh6,000 rent she had been paying, but she told herself that she deserved to finally live well, and hey, she was a manager now, and it would be sacrilege for a manager to live in a bedsitter. She borrowed the deposit for the house from her sister and booked the house, awaiting end month when she would move in, and thereafter throw a house-warming party.

Letter of appointment

It was with shock, therefore, when she was handed her letter of appointment – her salary had gone up by a ‘mere’ Sh25,000, and just like that, her dream of leaving diaspora behind and living on Ngong Road in a one-bedroom apartment went down the drain. As she looked at that letter, she deflated like a balloon, and never again would the term ‘manager’ mean the same to her again. True, with the rising cost of living as the country tries to shake off Covid-19, any additional coin that comes your way is welcome, so Sh25,000 is a big deal. But she had expected much more, and planned for it in advance, hence the disappointment.

That story reminded me about another one that I overheard at work sometime back, that of a colleague who got a promotion and immediately pulled his children out of the school they were in and enrolled them in an expensive private school. And then he got the pay slip at the end of the month. He immediately pulled them out of the private school and returned them to their old school.

When I completed high school, I got a job as a dental assistant at a dentist’s clinic in town. Part of my job, besides holding the suction in place while the dentist worked on a patient’s teeth, was to clean the dental instruments after use, clean the room and order for dental supplies. For this, I got paid Sh3, 600 a month. When I was told how much I would get paid, I was breathless with wonder and could not believe my good fortune. To a young girl fresh out of high school, that was a sackful of money. I immediately began planning for the bounty. The first thing I would do, I told myself, was to get myself a pair of brand new shoes at Bata.

Colourful shoes

I walked past the outlet on my way to work every morning and would admire the colourful shoes on display, but I’d never had the courage to walk in for a closer look because I knew I couldn’t afford them. Finally, I would. And then came pay day.

Tightly holding onto my bag of riches, I walked into the outlet with a spring in my step, my plan to buy not one, but two pairs of shoes. I will save you the suspense and simply say that I walked out, minus shoes, less than three minutes later. I realised that if I bought a pair of shoes there, the money left would only be enough to pay my bus fare for five days, seven days if I was lucky.

I am all for optimism because optimistic people lead a better quality life and are happier, but when it comes to money, it is the height of folly to plan for that which you don’t have yet..

The writer is editor, Society & Magazines, Daily Nation. Email: cnjunge@ ke.nationmedia.com