Money Matters – Part 1

We are glad you are here and thank you for reading our blog.

If this is your first visit on our blog, for a bit of the background and the journey so far, we would suggest that you read first blog post, The Meeting, Ndine musikana wangu (I got myself a girl), Dating & Courtship , Meeting the Families , Cultural Hurdles, FAQ & Wedding Preparations, The Wedding Day Part 1 , The Wedding Day Part 2 , The Rest of the Wedding Day Honeymoon & Early Days 1, Honeymoon & Early Days 2 , Our Encounter with COVID-19, I’m Pregnant and Parenting – they don’t come with manuals, Parenting – they don’t come with manuals (cont) and Reflections from the youngest, Tim’s Musings, The Great Move. For introduction of our family and categories of topics to be covered please visit the About Us page.

Today we are tackling a subject that most people find uncomfortable, but which is so key in achieving happiness at home. Money Matters. We have learnt a lot over the 30 plus years of our marriage – from our own mistakes as well as while we observed others.

To cover our experiences to date, we will discuss this topic under two broad time periods – In Zimbabwe and In the UK. We hope that as we share our experiences it will initiate conversations in your relationships to review your own situations.

Early Years

As we mentioned in an earlier blog, Jabu and I extensively discussed money matters during our courtship. After some research and discussions, we decided that each person’s money will be OUR money – family’s money. We chose this model because we felt that as we got married we needed to be united in all matters including finances. We needed to work together from the word go. We do have a combination of joint bank accounts and personal accounts, well knowing that the money in there is available for the family.

We encourage those who are in a serious courtship to discuss money matters as research shows that this is a potential source of conflict in marriages. We urge you to have a calm, honest conversation where you freely discuss each other’s finances (including full disclosure of debt), goals, habits and anxieties.

We remember during our courtship we just had one book as a resource, but nowadays there is loads of information online. It is a worthwhile investment to your relationship and future marriage, to read, research and discuss this important subject to find out what suits you. There are many models out there, with their pros and cons.

When we started our family, Jabu was a student and I was the sole bread winner. My earnings and Jabu’s uni grant and loans was enough to sustain us. Thankfully, the gifts we received at our wedding helped make our life more comfortable, but not luxurious. What also helped us was the hope of what we anticipated our income would be once Jabu completes his studies and gets a job.

When Tim was born, our financial situation became a little more stretched. We needed a bigger place to live as we also needed to employ a nanny to help look after Tim whilst I was at work and Jabu at uni. Normally the nanny would live with us.

We had to live a frugal lifestyle and we were managing.

Lesson 25: Use a budget and live within your means

I bet you have heard about this many times – easier said than done, you would think. We found budgeting to be really helpful and key in managing our finances. Over the years we have further improved effectiveness of our budgeting as previously we realized that we had left out some important items.

In the early days our budget was tight with small or no wriggle room at all. Any small financial shock would throw us off. A couple of times we fell on hard times and literally ran out of money and food. I remember one instance where Jabu had to go to ask help from my brother to see us through to the end of the month. I didn’t support his action as I felt embarrassed – “What would my brother think?” I wondered. I couldn’t stop Jabu as he went anyway and got what we needed.

One thing to note is that even with a tight budget we ensured to put God first – tithe and offerings were always the first item on our budget. Tithing was something both of us had practiced from our youths – even before we started working. (Tithing is returning 10% of income back to God, through the church, to support God’s work). God has been faithful to us.

After Jabu’s post graduate training, he secured a job and we had to move to Chinhoyi – his hometown, where he was born and raised.

In Chinhoyi

Getting my first job in Chinhoyi was a game changer. There was a sudden increase in our income and the perks were good – free housing, free electricity. I could not believe the change in our situation – coming from the deprived high density Gadzema Section and now moving to the other side of the railway tracks – to the low-density suburbs.

I grew up during the tail end of the colonial rule in Zimbabwe and I remember the days when I could not walk, let alone live in that part of the town just because of the colour of my skin. I vividly remember a day when a security guard set a dog on my brother and I, because we were walking on the wrong side of the pavement by Sinoia Hotel.

Now that was me and my family moving into this “unreachable” area. God is good. Incidentally, the house we ended up staying at in Chinhoyi was adjacent to my high school where I did my A Levels (actually the house shared a fence/boundary with the school). For two years, I had walked past this house on my way from school back home to Gadzema Section – now it was us living in this house.

My Dad must have been a proud man.

Our family finances were stable in Chinhoyi.

Lesson 26: Avoid keeping up with the Joneses

One thing that we have always tried to do is not to “compete” with our peers, family or keeping up with the Joneses. From the start we have always viewed our situation to be unique and we felt that there was no value of comparing ourselves with others. For example, right from the beginning and for years our family had mainly been a one income household, with Wim working around raising our children. On reflection, we are very happy that we took that path, as Wim was always there to provide a steady hand at the key development stages of our children.

We know it can be tempting, but we encourage you discuss and agree your own journey from your own unique starting point. Obviously, you may get inspiration from other people’s journeys, but we found out that it helps to stick to yours.

It was whilst we were in Chinhoyi that I applied and was awarded a NORAD  fellowship to go and study in Norway. Nomsa was born a few weeks before I left home for the 10-month post graduate course. It was hard to say goodbye to Wim and family at such a challenging time. Wim did a great job in looking after the children on her own, whilst I was away. God gave our children a great mother.

My stay in Norway was interrupted as I had to briefly return home when my Dad sadly passed away. I had a short time to see how my family was doing before I went back to finish my studies.

Financially, Norway was a great benefit for us, although I sorely missed Wim and the kids. Back home I was receiving full pay, whilst getting an additional allowance/stipend in Norway, in foreign currency. It was upon my return that we bought our first car – a biege Nissan B1600. By this time our friends and peers had been enjoying their own cars or company cars for years, but this did not unsettle us at all.

I remember an incident when I was going through my post graduate training in Harare, a certain church brother, who was a manager at his workplace, approached me advising that there was an engineering vacant position at his company, encouraging meto apply and emphasing that the position had a company car. I politely declined and thanked him for considering me, as I was already on my training. Tim, in his recent guest blog post, alluded to this as delayed gratification.

In Marondera

Less than a year after returning from Norway, I was seconded to act as District Manager in Marondera and eventually got the job when it was advertised. This was a big promotion and came with big responsibilities; I was in my early 30s. The position came with, in addition to other previous perks, a company car and fuel, with a generous private mileage allowance. As always, we knew it was a blessing from the Lord and we handled it that way. We also remembered that God would use us as channels to bless others – family, friends or even strangers. We had a memorable time in Marondera, using the resources now at our disposal to serve the Lord.

On the personal financial side, things were good. However, this was the first time we started using credit cards. We just saw our cost of living balloon increasing – lifestyle inflation. We were no longer as strict with our budgeting. Wim and I usually quoted a derivative of Parkinson Law to keep us on the straight and narrow.

Expenditure rises to meet income.

Derivative of Parkinson’s Law

The law asserts that “As you earn more money, your needs increase you end up spending more money.” For you to be financially successful, you need to break this law.

We could even borrow on the credit card to help others. I remember an incident that happened. One Sunday a certain church member came to our house and wanted to borrow some money, which he promised to repay the following week, indicating that his wife and children didn’t have anything to eat. Wim and I didn’t have any money to help. After the gentleman left, Wim and I reconsidred and decided to withdraw money from our credit card – a couple of hours later we drove to the man’s house. He was obviously not expecting us when we appeared at his place, only to discover that they were having a meal of sadza and chicken. We couldn’t believe it – this was not a meal of someone struggling. We gave the man the money nonetheless.

It was while at Marondera, that we started using credit cards. However, the credit card debt was small and would be repaid at the end of every month.

God continued to bless us immensely whilst at Marondera. After a couple of years, my company decided to dispose of their housing estate nationwide and offered the houses to sitting tenants – we grabbed the offer with both hands and got a mortgage for our house. (There is a story of how this unfolded and how God showed His faithfulness to us – to be shared later).

Later on, we would get another mortgage for another property in Harare. This happened very quickly. A good friend (the same one who would later inform us about HSMP), passed by our house announcing “Madzibaba (Man), we have just bought a house in Harare.” Apparently, a housing developer had got into agreement with our pension fund which would guarantee the deposit for the houses for employees meeting certain criteria. We had not heard about this housing scheme before and it just looked too good to be true. We took our usual cautious approach.

The next morning, I called another friend at Head Office, who confirmed existence of the scheme and that he had also secured a property there and the available properties were going fast. I immediately called Wim to get ready, took time off and we were in Harare within the hour. By the end of the day, we had signed the papers and awaiting mortgage application approval.

The country’s economy started going through hyperinflationary environment. Costs were going up literally daily. Food shortages were rampart. Thankfully, we were ok and could cope with the increases as my company tried to make salaries keep pace with inflation but that was almost an unwinnable battle.

Then the opportunity to emigrate to the UK came. We sold our car and some household property, repaid our credit cards, cleared our mortgages and left Zimbabwe 100% debt free!

How did the financial lessons and discipline we had learnt in Zimbabwe fare in the UK environment? They were tested to the limit or breaking point and we have learnt many lessons since; which we are happy to share them with you.

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