Nobody Taught Us This. And It Shows.

Author: Abigael Wanjala
Date: July 23, 2026

Nobody Taught Us This. And It Shows.

Let us be honest about something.

Most of us grew up in homes where money was either a source of stress, a topic nobody discussed, or something that simply disappeared between the first and the fifteenth of every month without much explanation.

Nobody sat us down and said, “Here is how interest works. Here is what a budget actually is and why it is not a punishment. Here is the difference between an asset and a liability. Here is why the way you feel about money matters almost as much as the amount of it you have.”

We were taught Pythagoras. We were taught the year Kenya got independence. We were taught how to calculate the area of a trapezium, which most of us have never needed since.

But the thing we do every single day of our adult lives, managing money, was left largely to chance, observation, and learning the hard way.

Tulifunzwa mengi. Unfortunately, money wasn’t one of them.

At some point in your twenties, or thirties, or honestly any decade, you had to figure out a few things completely on your own.

Like the fact that a salary that looks impressive on paper can disappear in two weeks if you do not have a plan for it. Like the fact that debt compounds in the same way savings do, except in the wrong direction and much faster. Like the fact that treating yourself is a completely valid thing to do, but it works better when it is a decision rather than a default.

Like the fact that the reason you keep running out of money before the month ends is probably not that you do not earn enough. It is that you have no visibility into where it goes, so you cannot make intentional choices about it.

Like the fact that the friend who seems financially sorted is not earning dramatically more than you. They just started doing something slightly different a few years ago, and the gap has been compounding ever since.

Knowledge is power.

But financial knowledge, specifically, is the kind that nobody hands you. You have to go looking for it.

Personal finance books will tell you fifty things you need to do. Most of them are true. Most of them are also overwhelming, which is why people read the book, feel temporarily inspired, and then change nothing.

So instead of fifty things, here are four. Just four. The ones that actually move the needle for most people in most situations.

Know your number.

Not your salary. Your actual monthly outflow. What leaves your account every month, where it goes, and which of those expenses you chose deliberately versus which ones simply happened.

Most people do not know this number. Once you do, everything else becomes easier.

Pay yourself first.

Before the bills, before the impulse purchases, before the weekend plans, move a fixed amount to savings the moment your salary arrives.

Not what is left at the end of the month. That will almost always be nothing.

The amount first. Everything else after.

This one habit, more than almost anything else, separates people who accumulate wealth from people who do not.

Understand what your money is doing when you are not looking.

Money sitting idle in a current account is quietly losing value to inflation. Money in a savings account with a competitive profit rate is quietly growing.

The difference between these two outcomes over five years is not small. It is the kind of difference that changes the options available to you.

Build the boring cushion.

Set aside three to six months of expenses somewhere accessible. Do not touch it. Do not invest it. Just let it be there.

It is the least exciting financial move you will ever make and also the one that will save you the most times.

An emergency fund does not feel necessary until the emergency arrives. Then it feels like the smartest financial decision you ever made.

None of these are complicated.

None of them require a finance degree, a large salary, or perfect discipline.

They require only that you start and that you keep going.

Here is the part that the spreadsheet crowd usually skips.

Money is emotional.

The way you grew up around money shaped how you relate to it now in ways that are mostly invisible and surprisingly powerful.

If money was always scarce, you might feel anxious any time your account drops below a certain number, even if you are perfectly fine.

If money was something people fought about, you might avoid looking at your finances because it brings back uncomfortable feelings.

If you watched someone you loved be financially irresponsible, you might swing too far in the opposite direction and feel guilty about every small pleasure.

None of these responses are irrational.

They make complete sense given where they came from.

But they can hold you back in ways that no budgeting app can fix.

Relationship yako na doo inaeza change.

But only if you acknowledge that one exists.

The goal is not to have no feelings about money.

The goal is to understand which of your financial behaviours are driven by genuine decisions and which ones are driven by old scripts you absorbed without realising it.

That is the work.

And it is worth doing.

Let us talk about something that does not appear in any financial literacy curriculum but probably should.

Social spending.

The money that leaves your account not because you want something but because someone else has it, or because you feel you should, or because showing up empty handed, unupgraded, or left behind feels worse than the cost of avoiding it.

The event ticket you did not want to buy.

The contribution to the third function this month.

The upgrade you made because someone at work got one.

The dinner that out stretched your budget because saying no felt socially complicated.

Kufake life is expensive.

This is not a lecture about social obligations. Those are real, and in many communities they are genuinely important expressions of care and belonging.

But there is a difference between contributing to something that matters to you and spending money you do not have on things that do not, simply to manage other people’s perceptions of you.

That difference, tracked honestly over twelve months, is usually a significant amount of money.

The most common reason people do not start managing their money better is that they feel too far behind to begin.

They look at where they are, compare it to where they think they should be by now, conclude that the gap is too large to close, and decide, without really deciding, to leave it for later.

Hakuna kitu kama kuchelewa.

The best time to start was several years ago.

The second best time is right now, today, with whatever you actually have and whatever your situation actually is.

Not when your salary improves.

Not when the debt is cleared.

Not when things settle.

Now.

Because the gap between where you are and where you want to be closes only one way. By starting and continuing, imperfectly, from exactly where you stand.

The person who starts saving Ksh 1,000 a month today will, in five years, be in a significantly different position from the person who waited until they could save Ksh 5,000.

Not because of the amount.

Because of the habit, the discipline, and the compounding that begin the moment you start and cannot begin until you do.

Start today. Even a little.

The Conversation Worth Having

If this article has done one thing, hopefully it is this.

It has made you feel a little less alone in the fact that nobody really taught you this stuff.

Because they did not teach most of us.

And the gap that creates in knowledge, habits, and confidence around money is real, and it has consequences.

But it is also something you can close.

Not all at once.

Not perfectly.

But gradually.

One small decision at a time.

One honest conversation with yourself at a time.

One month of actually knowing your number at a time.

Money is a tool. You are the one who decides how it is used.

And the good news, the genuinely good news, is that it is never too late to start deciding more intentionally.

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