In this day and age, the Nairobi hustle is real and it’s hard to live a simple life here.
Getting a job in itself is hard, and once you do the returns are so small, you start to wonder if it’s worth it…But all in all you need to be determined and focus and believe that sometimes you don’t need all the money to actually still survive.
You first need a reality check that this is not a lot of money but it’s something to work with. With enough planning you can survive on a 10k salary with these pointers.
1. Rent a place with a few friends
Get a single room for about 10k and then get two friends so you can cost share. Split the amount into three and you will probably use 3,300 shillings for rent and spend 150 shillings for electricity when you cost share.
2. Transport
Transport takes a lot of money but you should create a walking culture where you either do evening walks to save on transport money and use boda’s and matatus. Forget about Ubers and cabs for a while because your budget wouldn’t fit into this unless you and your house mates always cost share for an uber if going in the same direction. Use 3k for monthly transport.
3. Personal care
This is your hair mostly, buy a shampoo, conditioner and treatment and just wash your hair at home. Don’t keep going to the salon if you don’t need to. Also don’t forget to buy pads and other essentials. Put 1500 shillings for buying the shampoo and cheap hair products plus other personal things.
4. Airtime
Buy airtime only when you really need to, stick to WIFI zones, for the sake of saving subscribe to weekly Safaricom bundles as they have great options to fit any budget. Spend 400 shillings on airtime in a month because this makes more sense, download mySafaricom app and look for an affordable plan that works for your budget.
5. Food
Food can be expensive or cheap depending on your appetite and taste. You can’t exactly eat meat everyday with this budget but you can spend 2,000 shillings for food but on a very low budget. Eat things like sukuma(15 bob), eggs, beans for 30 shillings a cup. Also when you’re living with other people you could put your money together and buy food. A vegetable option will make sense for you and if you have your personal care items you can add 700 here for food.
Nevertheless you need to plan on making more money eventually. If you can get a side hustle the better for you because you don’t need to just survive life you need to live life.