You are the Main Character, but who’s the villain in your life? Is it your job or your coconut head? This quiz will tell you.
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Adulthood is a scam and we’re all sick of it.
Take this quiz and we’ll guess the worst part of adulthood for you.
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Hear Me Out is a weekly limited series where Ifoghale and Ibukun share the unsolicited opinions some people are thinking, others are living, but everyone should hear.
I believe in having a healthy saving culture and putting some money away for when I ever need some immediate cash; it’s always good to have a backup plan. Take some of the money you get paid, put it away, watch it grow and spend it on whatever you saved it for.
However, if I save money, I’m going to perish. I need my money now. I need to spend it now. If you’re like me, who earns just about enough to last a few days, you realise that putting some cash aside is easier thought about than done.
Adulting comes with responsibilities like paying bills, saving for a master’s, thinking about your future, and for parents, your children’s demands. Luckily for me, I don’t have a lot to worry about. I live with my family, and most of my bills are taken care of (not like the people I live with have a choice).
All the money I earn is mine, and it’s not shared except I’m feeling generous. But like I said earlier, it’s not enough for me, which means it’s not enough to be shared. My mum talks about the importance of prudence, why I need to have better habits and how I’m privileged to be earning even though all I do is complain about how I could be making more. She’s Nigerian and has the Nigerian “be grateful for what you have” mindset. Please, don’t get me wrong, though. I am grateful for what I have.
A week ago, I realised I started using one of the pioneer saving apps for Nigerians in 2017. I told my sister about the app, and she got on it; she’s an avid saver. My sister went on to tell my mum about it, and my mum also got on the app, all of us saving for the rainy day. I opened the app to check how far I’ve come since I’ve been on this journey. It’s safe to say, all I’ve saved so far is my life.
When people ask me what my mantra for making bad decisions is, I say, “I’ve been broke before, and I didn’t die”, and that’s a fact. This won’t be my first rodeo, spending all my money for my immediate happiness. I like to look forward to deliveries, and I love when I spend money on things I like. A new dress, some skincare, and occasionally, food (I’m a couch potato who lives with family, so I rarely have to worry about food).
I know it’s unhealthy, but my happiness is tied to the things that cost money, the things I can’t save for. People who save money like to know they have a fallback; if they find themselves out of a job, there’s money somewhere, and if there’s a medical emergency, they know there’s money for it. It’s a shame to admit that my fallback option is “hello, dad”.
I have friends who pay rent, live by themselves, figure their shit out, and make enough to do all that, and sometimes, I feel like I’m not doing enough. I wonder how much I have to save and how many things I have to get rid of to be able to do that. Would earning more improve my saving culture if I balance my needs and wants better? I know myself. Earning more would make me want more things.
No matter how much money I save, I won’t save myself from my current tax bracket. I can’t save my way to becoming the wealthiest black woman in the world. All I can do is push my wants and needs to a later date and deprive myself of things. Holding off on gratification doesn’t mean it still won’t be done, so why don’t I get it done instantly?
I want to reward myself for a job well done, for a stressful week, for surviving, and I can only do that if I have money to spend right now. Don’t get me wrong, you can reward yourself as often as you like and still have some money left to save, but that’s not me. If I save this money, I will perish, and my happiness and productivity will tank. I feel good when I’m happy, I work best when I’m happy, I’m the best to be around when I’m happy, and when am I happy? When I have money to spend on things I like.
At the end of 2021, I checked my score on the saving app I use. I saw a C6 and laughed because I’d attempted to save some money during the year to avoid getting that exact score. Many things happened in the first two months that made me stop. But it was the end of the year, and the score was there, and at that moment, I was glad I’d saved my life at least. I’d had Covid twice in one year, and surviving it was more important than saving some cash.
I’ve heard from several people about the importance of women having their own money. How it’s imperative that women save and have a fallout option, how women are more respected the richer they are. And I agree with those ideas; I believe them too. But again, how will I save what I don’t have?
Maybe I’d eventually figure out how to earn more and save more. Maybe by getting a job in tech or selling one of my kidneys. Perhaps, I’d give up my wants, put the cash in an app and see how much it brings back to me. Invest the little I get into something fruitful and spend days leading up to a yield in a permanent state of unhappiness, knowing I have no deliveries on the way.
All I know is that saving any money will make me unhappy, and I don’t want to participate.
Hear Me Out: Why You Should Eat Your Sorrows Away
Hear Me Out is a limited series from Zikoko, and you can check back every Saturday by 9 a.m. for new episodes from Ifoghale and Ibukun.
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There are no awards for people who spend time suffering or trying to figure things out. Sometimes, it’s ok to quit when the going gets tough, and you no longer want to participate.
Don’t be ashamed to quit any of these things.
1. School.
If you ever get tired of education and feel like you’re losing your mind, it’s ok to take a break and get yourself together before getting back into it. Easier said than done sha. Especially when you have Nigerian parents as your sole providers.
2. Your job.
It is ok to quit any job that’s trying to kill you. Let your employer do the job themself since they want to kill you over a company that doesn’t belong to you or your father. Even if it’s your father’s company, it’s still ok to quit.
3. Quit checking your bank account.
Whatever you saw the last time you checked is what will be there the next time you check. Don’t be ashamed to admit that you are not very rich. Let your bank app rest.
4. Your relationship.
Heartbreaks are insane, but it’s better to be heartbroken than to be in a relationship that has run its course. Don’t feel any shame choosing your peace. A happier and healthy you is better than thinking of what people are going to say when you make the decision to walk away.
5. Religion.
Feel free to toss that religion or religious belief to the side. Figure out what you believe in and do it. You are an adult now and should be more intentional about the things you’re invested in. Religion might no longer be your cup of tea, and that’s alright.
6. Being celibate.
Having sex is better than being celibate (I said what I said). Don’t be ashamed of choosing orgasms over konji.
7. Having sex.
Having sex brings children, and children steal your peace of mind. It makes perfect sense to want to quit having sex. Sex should be banned by the government and should be banned in your life.
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Everything about being an adult is the freaking ghetto, including making friends. There are a lot of things you’ll experience that’ll be beyond what you could have imagined.
Here are a couple of things you need to know before making friends as an adult.
1. They can try to steal your man.
To be forewarned is to be forearmed. Find a way to make your man unstealable, especially if you live in Lagos. There are a lot of pickpockets going around stealing people’s men.
2. Everyone is 30+ and wants to be home early.
Everyone is too old and wants to be home in bed before 11 pm. Even your friend who isn’t 30 yet is already masquerading as a 30+ man with a bad back.
3. You’ll need to learn your friends love languages.
Being friends with people doesn’t mean you shouldn’t learn their love languages and how they want you to be their friend. Make sure you aren’t the only one learning love languages, the best friendships are the reciprocated ones.
4. Your friends will try to finish your money.
Especially those friends who don’t remember what the four walls of their houses look like. They’ll always expect you to go out with them every Friday till things go south and you are broke.
5. Your new friend might be a crazy person.
This is the craziest part about making friends when you get older. After all, craziness isn’t written on the forehead and you’ll have to find that out after becoming friends with them. Finding out your new friend is not ok in the head is both revealing and stressful.
6. Your friends won’t always be there for you and vice versa.
You won’t always be available for friends and vice versa and that’s absolutely ok. But not being available for your friend and being a shitty friend are two different things.
7. They may have shitty tastes and opinions.
I can’t even imagine being friends with someone who doesn’t like Beyonce or someone who thinks the earth is flat. It’s hard work, but sometimes you have to make peace with knowing your friend has very questionable tastes and opinions. Some opinions however can’t be ignored.
8. They can fall in love with you and make you leave your partner.
Everyone knows a good love story starts with good friendships and every adult needs a good friend and partner all in one person.
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We don’t always mean to lie to our parents but sometimes, shit happens. They don’t exactly make being honest easy, either. Sometimes the lies are small and harmless, other times they are big and problematic. Here are eight lies we’ve all told our parents.
1. When we lie that we missed their call
Sometimes, we really did miss their calls. Other times, we were just in situations that would have gotten us in deep shit if we had picked their calls. It is better to ignore your mum’s call’s all night when you are out late at night with your friends than to pick it up and let her hear loud music when you’re supposed to be in bed.
2. Pretending to be asleep
We’ve all done this, let’s not lie. Like that time your mom was shouting your name to come and help her in the kitchen. A lie by omission is still a lie. Ask yourself how many times you’ve pretended to be asleep to get out from chores or a talk from your parents. If you think moving out is a solution, it’s not.
3. Lying that you weren’t charging your phone and using it
If you’ve ever lied to your parents about this, I can’t even blame you. We get it, radiation poison and what not but must they shout? Is it their life? Abeg, everybody and the one that is doing them.
4. Lying that you weren’t taught something when you failed.
Never take responsibility for your failure or how does that quote go? In all your choosing, choose violence. Why tell them that the course was hard and you were struggling when you can just lie to your parents that the lecture never showed up to class and is an all-around bad guy?
5. Lying about your location
You really shouldn’t lie about this but then again some of you are bold. Here is a tip, if your dad tells you that he can see you in the club when you are supposed to be in school reading, you can simply ask why he carried his married legs to the club without his wife and gaslight him into thinking that he is seeing double.
6. Lying that you didn’t see something they told you to pick up
This has lowkey happened to everyone at a point except you have an annoyingly good memory. Sometimes your mum might tell you to pick up something that has been on the floor in your room for the past two weeks but you forgot to pick it up. When she comes to scold you instead of saying that you forgot, you[‘d rather say that you didn’t see it. To be honest this is the most unnecessary lie.
7. Lying that you are not hungry after arguing with them
I see you, they see you, you see you and even God sees you. It’s okay to lie sometimes, yes, but not when it comes to food.
8. Lying that you are a good influence on your friends
It’s okay to want your parents to think that you are still the good innocent child that they’ve raised when you are not. We lie to our parents to protect them. Your little charade won’t last long of course but as long as you are not damaging anyone else’s character then, by all means, go off.
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Friendships are harder to form as adults but easier to maintain, especially if you befriend people who understand that you’re both busy and have lives outside of each other but can make time when necessary. Here are seven ways to make friends as adults.
1. Stand on the road and beg people
You can have a megaphone with you so people know you are serious. Maybe two or three people would come up to you. You never really know. Sure, it’ll be to check if you’re mad or not but at least they’ll talk to you. And that’s the beginning of every friendship!
2. Create a Google form
Post it on any of your social media accounts with the most followers. Title it, “The Friendship Document.” Reply to as many people that fill it out. The number one question should be “How do you feel about plantain?” You can tell a lot about a person from that.
3. Meet your friend’s friends
Your friends have friends that have friends. Ask to meet them. Could this end in tears? Yes. But life is pain anyway so don’t be afraid of a little disappointment and rejection.
4. Shoot your friendship shots
It’s so much harder to make friends as adults because everyone is horny as hell and low-key wants to sleep with each other. But if you can keep shooting your shot at that romantic love interest that airs you every day, I promise you can shoot your friendship shot.
5. Join clubs
Book clubs, gardening clubs, wine drinking clubs, hiking clubs. Try to find your tribe. It just makes the work easier.
6. Organise a 90’s themed party
Every day, there’s that one person who tweets about organising a party with bouncing castles, jollof rice, and everything that used to make kids’ parties fun. The number of likes and retweets on these tweets have shown that this is a good plan if you want to make new friends.
7. Upgrade some of your casual relationships
That person you always see at the gym, your coworker that is basically your work bestie, and so on. Message them and ask to hang out in an environment different from where you usually meet. You might be surprised at how much you like them. I say “might” because you might end up hating their fucking guts. The excitement of not knowing what the outcome of a hangout will be is half the fun sha so go for it.
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Breakup hurts so much, but few things hurt as bad as friendship breakups. People spend years building friendships and lose them to very few conflicts. For people who downplay the effect of friendships breakups, here’s a list of reasons why they hurt more than anything.
1.No one to borrow money from without paying back.
Yeah, this certainly hurts. Now everyone would expect you to pay your debt back, if you were still with your best friend, your best friend would understand that Jesus has paid it all for you.
2.No one to have ‘‘we should not be doing this’’ sex with.
A big big loss. Everyone knows that’s top 3 enjoyable sex, the thought of this can make you swallow your pride and ask for forgiveness even when you are not at fault.
3.Nobody to test your sharp mouth on.
This is a real conversation between bestfriends. I recently found out that friends argue for sport. You won’t have anyone to test your abilities on, at least you could playfully insult your best friend. Now if you tell a stranger that they are mad, you’ll be slapped so hard, you’ll see stars. Meanwhile, it’s just friendly jokes to you. Tears.
4.You’ll no longer be able to sleep with their spouses.
No more missions to accomplish until you find a new best friend. One break up for two parties ☹️, it is one person that broke up with you, now you have lost them both. This really sucks.
5.No one to cry to when your 4 boyfriends are misbehaving.
Imagine 4 Nigerian men breaking your heart at the same time and you can only cry to yourself and your pillow. The pillow can’t form alliance on how to deal with them back. Tears x 2
6.No one to turn on their hot-spot for you.
Please, data is very expensive and your best friend would not want you to miss out on hot gist. Now, not only are you without a best friend, you are also behind on hot gist.
We are really sorry if we hit a nerve, please try to fix that friendship or beg the almighty for another one.
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See ehn, to set make plans is human, to not procrastinate those plans into oblivion is indeed divine. There is huge potential to excel at being a professional procrastinator in everybody and if you are one of the people that is always putting that potential to use, this list will hit you hard.
1. When you first get the task and the logical side of your brain tells you to get to work.
You get a task and you immediately push it to the later folder because it will be done but it will be done later. Operating term here being “later”.
2. You keep postponing and extending deadlines.
You tell yourself you are waiting for the motivation to hit so you’ll do it well but who are we fooling? Will you find motivation in your sleep?
3. You see a post with very insightful tips on how to stop procrastinating and you save the post to read later.
Because your village people obviously finished work on your matter.
5. You get scared of picking your calls because it might be a client calling to find out if you are done yet.
And you don’t have enough materials to properly shalaye at this time.
6. You when your clients finally catch up with you and you start manufacturing excuses detailing why you are not done with the work yet.
You could have spent the creativity
No one takes as much “well deserved” breaks like a procrastinator. You spend more time rewarding yourself for doing the work than actually doing the work.
If you could relate to everything on this list then don’t fight it, accept your status as a professional procrastinator. Then go back and read those procrastinating tips you saved for later.
While you are here, we asked 5 People Share Their Workplace Backbiting Experience And It’s Wild.
What’s up, Zikoko Fam? It would mean the world to us if you spared a few minutes to fill this Reader Survey. It’s so we can bring you the content you really want!
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Here’s some free advice, whatever you do, do not opt-in for the Nigerian adulting package. It is a scam. But I”m guessing it’s already too late for you. And if that is the case please join the line of wailers and “had I known” on the left there. Adulting is an extreme sport on its own but adulting in Nigeria is in a league of its own. But we thought long and hard about it and realized that the 6 things on this list would make the package way easier.
1. Access to a never ending back up cash reservoir.
Nothing teaches the essence of money as adulting does. 20 seconds in you understand exactly how much difference money makes when it is in the picture.
2. A very proactive guardian angel.
Preferably one with the energy level displayed in this GIF and one that we can actually talk to. This guardian angel’s most important KPI (asides making sure we don’t die) is warning us about stupid decisions we are about to make. Like calling an ex because we are bored.
2. An innate ability to cook.
Because food is important and the ability to whip up something both edible and delicious is important.
3. An eternal generator.
Because we both know NEPA a.k.a PHCN lives to disappoint but we need electricity either way.
4. An equally proactive genie.
And we’ll be needing wishes like “rent”, “transport”, “concert tickets”, “data” and “miscellaneous” covered, please.
5. Free Netflix access for one week every month.
To make up for the social life that will keep eluding us.
6. An “UPGRADE TO ADULTING OR REMAIN A CHILD” option.
And most importantly, we would like the luxury of choice please. How do you just shove a person into something like Nigerian adulting simply because they are now old? Be kind please.
What’s up, Zikoko Fam? It would mean the world to us if you spared a few minutes to fill this Reader Survey. It’s so we can bring you the content you really want!
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Let’s throw it back to economics class in secondary school. Right before the voluminous notes you had to write got you wondering if education was really necessary. You’d remember your teacher telling you, “Human wants are unlimited and the resources to actualise these wants are limited, so scale of preference comes into play.”
At that point, you probably thought it was an easy thing to do. Get money, save some, and spend the rest. How hard could it be? Well, how’s that working out for you now? If you are like a lot of young Nigerians, struggling with finding a balance between saving and spending money, this is for you:
When Salary week approaches and you make your budget
You’ve been told that anybody serious about saving money needs to make a plan of how their income will be used. You are serious, or at least, you think so, prompting you to download all the budgeting apps you can find and also using the good ol’ pen and paper to plan how you are spending your next salary.
How you look at the credit alert on your phone when it enters:
Salary has finally entered, and for a moment, you feel on top of the world. Then you start coming back to reality with one thought in mind; the money is yours, but really, it’s not yours.
When you remember all the debts you owe:
Somehow, you forgot all the people you owe money when you were making your budget and the only time you remember is after you’ve come back from the initial excitement of getting your salary or when they start sending you subtle but not-so-cryptic messages.
When your charger spoils and you wonder if deviating a little from your budget will affect your saving goals
Because unexpected expenses make constant appearances in the adulting financial world, something you’d not planned to spend money on but you need will become a situation. First, you do the ritual of debating if you should stick to your budget, but deep down, you know it is futile.
When you see calls from your younger siblings, knowing what those calls are about
Elder brother/sister duties don’t come with breaks. Your siblings can call you any time, but they prefer the end of the month calls, which is a problem for you and your plans.
After you’ve spent a little more than your budget
Life has happened to you again and the money you thought you had has become something of recent memory. Now, the remainder is only enough to get you through the month. You may have failed this month, but we go again next month.
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This Twitter user asked a very important question
1. And the answers will make you say ‘same’
2. Office politics is the worst
3. Watching your weight is an adult problem
4. The problems are uncountable, really
5. Oh wow, certainly wish I could relate to this
6. Draining, but it pays the bills, right?
7. Big problem, especially when you have those heavy ones that well swell like garri inside water
8. Where to work? Who to marry?
9. Who else didn’t see this one coming?
10. *Deep sigh*
11. Feeling inadequate is a requirement for adulting
12. Relationships are like a 24-hour job
13. Saving money is good but it’s so hard!
14. So true!
15. Does anyone ever really grow up?
16. Adulting is just basically a scam
