{UAH} THE SALARY TRAP (LONG BUT EDUCATIVE POST)

THE SALARY TRAP (LONG BUT EDUCATIVE POST)

By Edris Kiggundu 

I have been off Facebook for two months now. If I am not mistaken, I last posted here in July at the height of the Covid-19 deaths that claimed many people including close friends, relatives and mentors. 

I apologize to friends, relatives and loved ones (like my wife), whose birthday messages I did not respond to or those whose messages of grief went unanswered. I am deeply sorry.

Anyways, the main reason I took a break from Facebook and social media generally was to concentrate on two business projects that I had started. They needed my full, undivided attention. Luckily, they have gained some stability and are moving quite well without my personal input apart from occasional injection of capital. 

Hopefully things will get better as the Covid-19 situation improves.

So I am back on Facebook…and in a big way too!

Today's post is about the salary trap that prevents us from doing the things we want and from exploring things outside our job descriptions.

It about the trap that keeps people stuck in jobs they don't love but need that paycheck to make ends meet and pay the bills. The trap that keeps people glued to the calendar cursing why some months are 35 days long! The trap that keeps many people in the cycle of debt using one month's salary to pay off the debts of the previous month, so that you can borrow again!  

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Four years ago, I sat somewhere alone with a notebook, a bottle of something and pondered my life. The environment was serene, the breeze was excellent.

I was 36 years old, had a plum job with The Observer. I had resolved, in my heart, that after covering the 2016 general elections, that would be it for me. I would move on and do personal projects, related to journalism and also do private business. 

See, I was not tired of journalism or angry at someone at my workplace. I was just fed up of the routine that came with my job. I would wake up at 5.00 am and would be in office by 6.30 am or 7.00 am. I would attend the editorial meeting, pitch a story. I would call up the same political actors or analysts to get their views, write the story and hand it in for editing. The cycle would go on and on.

I believe journalists who have covered one beat for a long time can identify with this. It gets boring but what can you do if you are trapped by that salary? 

I wanted to do something that breaks this routine but also earn good money while at it. 

So I set off to plan my life anew. I Jotted down a few assets that I owned and mapped out how I could survive without a monthly salary. I had saved some little money that I hoped would take me through the rough months as I stabilized. 

I had also bought an old Ipsum car which I deployed as a special hire in Kamwokya. It brought me Shs 150,000 per week or roughly Shs 600,000 per month.

I had resolved to sell my personal car, if need be, to boost my financial position.

My plan was to leave The Observer by December 31, 2016. In fact, I had long written my intention to resign letter (a copy of which I still have on my old laptop). I had not informed anyone, including my wife, colleagues and close relatives about this plan.

But a couple of months to December, I discovered that I was day dreaming. Reality hit me. 

The biggest set back was when I lost my Ipsum car after it was stolen from the special hire driver by someone he 'sort of' knew. To make matters worse, I lost about Shs 5 million to shrewd security operatives who milked me as a I did everything to recover an old car I had purchased for Shs 9 million. 

"Mzee, we traced the car in Arua. Send like 500,000." Gosh! I gave up

In short, I realized that I still needed the job. My biggest worry was not about meeting the basics especially food and rent because I had figured out that one. 

My biggest nightmare was dealing with things like school fees, that call for consistent earnings. I also wondered how I would handle a medical emergency that required millions of shillings. There would be no luxurious expenditure, I resolved.

To cut the long story short, I realized that I was not prepared yet to live without a monthly salary. 

Psychologically I was not prepared to "struggle" because a salary conditions you to a certain lifestyle and society expectations.

So I went back to chasing politicians for the stories i.e political reporting.

Fast forward, two years later (2018), a couple of months after I joined Next Media as founding editor of The Nile Post, I renewed my vow. I said I must be out of here in two years. I was just tired.

This time I confided in some colleagues including Solomon Serwanjja, who left NBS TV in July. I discovered that Solomon, too, had been pondering this but he was trapped (I recently had a two hour conversation with Solomon about life outside formal employment and on his journey and aspirations. It will run in The Nile Post next week).  

I had digressed. So I set out a plan. I made additional investments (outside of journalism) and went back to graduate school (which with hindsight was one of the best decisions I have made in the last 10 years).

After some of the investments started paying off, I decided to carry out a simple experiment about how long, I could survive without touching any penny from my salary. Yes, not even Shs 100.

For seven months in 2019, I did not touch my salary at all. I paid all my bills and even had some good balance which I reinvested in other ventures. Some of them succeeded. Wildly. 

Others, like the money lending venture, failed spectacularly after showing some promise. Reason? Many of the people I lent money coldly refused to pay. I lost about Shs 8 million in this venture. It was a steep learning curve.

Towards the end of 2019, a lady from the bank called me and wondered whether I was dead or alive. I told her rhetorically that she was speaking to my ghost. My account was just accumulating money, she said, and wanted us to have a conversation about taking out a salary loan. I said hell no!

2020 came with Covid-19 and a different set of challenges. Some of the business ventures have taken a hit but the long and short of it is that none has collapsed.

Actually over the last five years as I have navigated the business landscape, I have come to appreciate and respect people especially the ordinary people, the media often refers to"the Omuntu wawansi.

During the 2020 lockdown when I briefly dealt in tomatoes and fresh food supplies to get a quick buck, one of my suppliers was a simple gentleman, I had known for slightly over a month.

One time when I lamented about how I needed to inject more capital in my business, he offered to lend me Shs 20 million on the spot to boost my business. 

I resisted the urge to take on the loan but what blew me away was how casually he was willing to lend me Shs 20 million. I later learned from his associates that this gentleman supplies food stuffs to several markets in the city and suburbs. And to sustain such a business at his scale, you need a fleet of lorries and have at least Shs 100 million on hand every week. Having been a money lender myself, I wondered how many people at my workplace can lend me that money, on short notice.

Overtime and having dealt with so many business people, I have come to learn that even investing Shs 50 million in some business ventures can be peanuts. 

I have met and talked to a businesswoman who imports a container full of bikwanso (safety pins) once in three months. Yes, there is still high demand for safety pins. I was shocked. She owns three shops in Kikuubo and on the look of things, she is doing very well.

I have also talked to the gentleman who imports Ibon, a popular brand of sweets into the country (Admission: One of my side businesses is sweets!).

Many of these people sink upwards of $400,000 (Shs 1.3 billion) in an item which guarantees them a lot of returns.

When you meet these people on our streets they are ordinary. Many are humble and will not try to drive people off the roads like many Kawundo driving, ID waving corporates, who are always one salary payment delay away from a "major crisis."  

The biggest contentment in my business journey so far is that I have gone a long way in beating the salary trap. I am almost there…if I avoid another big setback.

Nonetheless, I have laid down the gauntlet and very soon, I may not need a formal/salaried job to survive and thrive.

One of the things that financial liberty gives you is the ability to do things that you want, at your pace. I have seen wealthy people donate to charitable causes they like. 

Similarly, if you don't have to worry about paying your bills or school fees for the children, or affording chicken and eggs in the last week of the month, there are so many things you can do.

 

Personally, there is a breed of journalism that I admire but is slowly dying. Some call it feature writing, the one personified by my former editor at The Observer, Richard Kavuma aka Rimkav and my good friend Herbert Benon Oluka now at GIJN.

I call it "patient journalism". It requires one to deeply examine an issue, go to location, live with the community and seek to understand the meanings they attach to that issue. It calls for observation and deep examination of issues. When well executed, the resulting story comes off as a cross between in-depth journalism and academic research.

Sociologists call it ethnography. Many media organisations in Uganda can no longer pursue this kind of journalism because they say it is "expensive." 

For me, I think we simply have 'impatient journalists,' 'impatient editors' and 'impatient media owners.' 

Outside my business ventures, this is one area that I believe will occupy me, soon.

Postscript

Like so many people reading this, I work in an office environment where you can easily tell the period of the month by the expenditure patterns.

At the beginning of each month, there are so many packs of Café Javas, KFC and Chillies littered on the tables. The parking lot is full of vehicles and people are generally productive.

Come 12th, 13th, till mid 20s and suddenly the parking lot is half full (because people have run out money for fuel) and the food packs have disappeared. Staff suddenly call in "sick" because even meeting transport becomes a challenge.

Around this time, one of the easiest ways of "killing" a corporate who is hooked onto a salary is by starting a rumour that salary for the month could delay by a week because a supplier has not paid or the bank system is down.

Recap of the post

What is a salary trap?

This a condition where an employee gets hooked onto a salary that they would barely survive without it. They condition their entire life around a monthly salary (shopping at the end of the month, paying bills at the end of the month, bar hopping at the beginning of the month etc). The condition can however be psychological in that there are many people who just believe that they can't do without a salary yet in actual sense, they can.

How do you beat this trap?

Simply by investing in ventures that bring in money, big or small and growing them over time. One business venture or even two may not be enough. 

One can start a chapati stall and employ someone, it can be a consultancy firm based on your skills and knowledge, you can deal in produce such as beans, rice, a retail shop, a bar, a liquor store, restaurant, service business, you can start a news website (for a journalist) and grow its reach etc… the ideas are so many. What matters is your interest, focus and how much you are willing to lose/gain by investing in these ventures.  Remember one or two ventures may not be enough!

 When do you know that you have beaten the salary trap?

1.When the month ends and you realize that you don't have to check with the finance guys to ascertain whether they have paid.

2. When you ignore SMS notifications from your bank at the beginning of every month without worry. 

3. When your income outside your job (which is not in anyway connected to your current job) CONSISTENTLY doubles/triples or far exceeds your current salary. 

The key word here is "consistently." 

Nice to be back on this platform!

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