₦50 Rice, ₦50 Beans: Living in Lekki on a Surulere Salary

It might not be as bad as having to buy ₦50 rice and beans yet, but for some, it’s a tear-jerking story. If you live in Lagos, this post is for you. If you don’t, well it is still for you with a little Wikipedia study.

What happens when you live in Lekki on a Surulere salary? What happens when you live in Banana Island and work in Victoria Island on an “Apapa Island” salary? When you live in Park View on a salary where the only view you can afford is Oshodi Bridge?

I wish I had a quick fix list for you, but I don’t. However, what I have I think is barely adequate, just like the relationship between where you work and where you live. Since you survive there regardless, let us then call this the survival checklist for living in a neighbourhood you can barely afford.

 This typically happens when you are “squatting” and “living-off” a family member or friend. Am I judging you? Absolutely not! I have no right to (Don’t tell anyone, but I am a working adult who still lives with a family member myself).

So if you’re in this predicament, accept my sincere and heartfelt sympathy and now let us look at how to deal with this dilemma.

1.    Do not think of this as a disadvantage. The thing is that you can let this bother you into a hole or you create a network of people whose weekend budget is higher than your annual net worth. Just be smart about it.

2.    Invest in how you look. The quickest way to feel out of place is by looking out of place. Investing in your time here does not mean invest your money (you don’t need to do that, thank God for Balogun market). You just need to invest your attention and focus on how you look. Take it as a priority. How else do you intend to have a network of people of higher net-worth?

3.    Don’t be an overzealous social climber. You will end up wrecking yourself. Like the saying goes you will spend all the money you do not even have to buy things you do not need, to impress people who honestly do not care. Establish genuine relationships on actual values and honesty.

Don’t be a leach or a pest, don’t try to be smarter than yourself, don’t try to use people, and don’t feel inferior or feel the need to over-compensate.

4.    Believe it or not, “poor people” still have things to offer “rich people”. Rich people have everything, they don’t need anything - WRONG! There really isn’t much I can do for them as a favour that they will appreciate and value – WRONG AGAIN.

5.    You are not where you work, where you live, what you earn or who you are friends with. All these things are simply temporary manifestations of the person you are inside. That person has the capacity to grow or to become stunted in growth, the capacity to become rich or to lose money, to become sick or be healthy, to become wise or stay simple-minded. How you are keeps changing, but who you are stays the same.