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Let me share another story but first……thank you for the feedback on the first immigrant money story I shared.

I am lining up more people across various life statuses and various countries as well.

I met today’s subject in 2021 through a community-like group I have been volunteering with. It has been quite interesting to see how his journey has transformed financially.

Let’s call him Mr Thames.

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Profile

Gender: Male

Country of Residence: United Kingdom

Profession: Senior Sales Executive

Why did you choose to leave your own country?

It was not an intentional move. In fact, when I think about it, I would like to say God tricked me because it was not in any plan for me.

I met my now-wife in my home church choir. We clearly liked each other but we didn’t talk about anything romantic for a long time. When we finally did and started dating in 2017, three months later she left for the UK for her Masters degree. For me, at that point, I wanted to further my education or at least get a better job.

About that time I got a job at a consulting big four but I requested to defer it and I chose to go back to school in 2017 for a Masters degree as well. I was able to secure a loan from an individual for the school fees on the agreement that when I started working again I would start re-payment.

I finished in 2018 and went back home to get married to the same lady.

The plan was simple. My wife will go back to the UK, I will remain at home and resume my job at the big four. Nothing worked out that way. Nothing.

First, my wife did a master’s in Public Health so she could switch from pure medicine as a career to Public Health. She finished and started applying for jobs in Public Health but she wasn’t getting offers. So she made the difficult choice of taking the PLAB (qualifying exams for doctors) so she could at least stay in the country along the medical line. She passed and she immediately got a job as a Doctor with a sponsored work permit.

With her work permit, I applied for a dependant visa so I could visit her as frequently as possible.

In preparation for my new job, I had gone home and resigned my former job (they had actually granted me a study leave) and went to visit my wife just before the agreed resumption date. The following week the big four offer was retracted. No actually the resumption of the job was put on hold till further notice for reasons they refused to share.

I found myself in the UK with my wife (newly-wed) with no job or means of income.

Goodness! What a twist!

I was just shocked.

Your life begins as an Immigrant. What happened next?

I started Job searching but the market was brutal! This was at the peak of Brexit. Companies were relocating their headquarters to other parts of Europe, and there were so many uncertainties so employers put hiring on hold.

I had to start the networking activities; attending conferences, connecting on Linkedin, be part of professional calls……everything. This was now 2019.

A few weeks into the year, I got a call from the big four to come back to Nigeria and resume in June. Then they called again to resume earlier in April. At that point I realised I didn’t think properly about how we will run the family from a long distance. So I turned down the offer and decided to stay in the UK

I was more confident in my job search.

But I didn’t get a job until November.

How many months was your job search?

I really started looking for a job like February of that year. Yeah February was when the Big Four told me to come resume and I turned it down. So nine months.

But in that nine months how were you earning? how were you making money?

Great thing is that my wife was earning and we were also very careful with spending. This was our first year of marriage and we lived in a studio with just basic amenities; I mean like bed and then a table/chair, no TV kind of basic. I couldn’t even afford to watch TV anyway.

Everyday, I sat on that table looking for jobs, improving myself, making mistakes correcting myself, signing up for different things. It was just a whole lot of self-development.

I’ve never been tested like that before in my life. I mean when I finished school, I went on to national service, I got into Stanbic Bank almost immediately after. I never really had to look for a job. This was my real test of life, trying to navigate the job market in another country. It was very tough.

You lived on your wife’s income. I mean you just got married! Like brand new marriage! Do you think this affected your marriage in any way or it made you closer to  your wife?

You know what people normally say about your first year marriage; that it is tough, you fight alot etc Infact the mindset is that the first year could be chaotic.

So I was looking for it, I was waiting for it to happen to us considering the additional pressure. But it never came. If anything it made us closer. An adversity that helped us fight as one.

It was a nine to ten-month journey of trying and trying again. My wife was there to keep encouraging me as she held the home income-wise for the period.

What was clear for us was that I was better in handling money, so it was easy for her to allow me make sure that we used our money for the best things. And it was easy for us to manage things that way. We were not stressed.

During that time I decided I was not going to do any of the survival jobs because I kept thinking I am good enough to get a proper job in this country. I didn’t want to settle and then it will affect my mentality in trying to get into the corporate work.

Okay so next question, this first job you finally got, was it at the same level of the last job in Nigeria you left or you had to start all over again?

I had to start again. When I applied for jobs at the level I was told I didn’t have enough experience. When I went for the junior roles, I was told I had too much experience.

It was a sales role; far from my experience of pure finance. But I took it because I had to learn how to talk. At that time, I truly was an introvert.

I know that you’re kind of a manager now, so it has taken you about four years to get back to get back to the same level you were when you left Nigeria.

Actually, there was some drama in that job. I lost it within four months.

Wait what?

Yeah. Looking back now, one thing I will say is, put your best wherever you are no matter the circumstances. You see when I took the job there was another one in the horizon and I was working with the hope it will come through. So I carried the attitude of “this is temporary”. So I gave the wrong impression right from the beginning.

This was plus there was somebody that exposed me to UK work politics. There was this somebody in that team that kept poking me and will go to the manager to tell some funny stories. But the manager will just go ahead and document the things without even asking me. When I challenged it, the manager will then say “oh sorry, this is already recorded. How can I change this now?”

I never had any kpis as I was still onboarding and I thought I was doing well. By month three or so I was having my one on one. My manager was saying you should have been doing this and that within one month. I didn’t have the boldness to challenge any of these things as it was my first job here. I kept going hoping for things to change.

It got worse. It was a very very bad experience. They let me go in February of 2020 as Covid was starting.

To be frank I wasn’t overly pained because this time I was confident; I felt like I’ve done this before.

But the timing was off. Around this time my wife had gotten pregnant and was due soon. She decided on a one year maternity leave because I had got that sales role. This meant less pay. She was getting the full salary for the first three months and then 60% 50% for the next three months then 30% for the rest.

It was going to be back to square one but this time it was going to be three of us living on 30% of my wife’s salary.

One thing I am grateful for is that when I got that sales job I was able to quickly look for another accommodation; a two bedroom because the baby was coming.

What a season…Back to the job market with more domestic pressure.

Yeah. I went back to searching, applying, interviewing.

My wife had put to bed so I was helping her alot and I took time to also volunteer with some non-profit organizations.

I remember I had to speak to my Landlord to discuss a payment plan for our rent. I said to him, “I have lost my job and unable to pay my rent in full but we will pay you 50% of the rent sum every month until I get a job. I can also be sending reports on my job application to show you that actually been looking for a job.”

Imagine moving into a new accomodation and months later, we couldn’t pay. We were running out of cash. Thankfully the Landlord agreed.

I also went back to speak to the person who loaned me money for my masters fees. I had to pause repayment because immediately I got the first job I was paying back but I went back to explain the situation of things and the need for me to pause payment.

In July, I got a freelance role as an operations associate for one of the organizations I volunteered with. Not a lot of money pay-wise but it was good money considering the stage we were. It was an initial contract for a few months but that continued until December of that year.

We began paying our rent again. But we had to also clear our outstanding rent. So we came up with a payment plan with our Landlord to pay a percentage of the outstanding rent every month in addition to the standard rent.
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​So the next thing was to focus on house purchase?

We now had a stable income but the first priority was to sort out all debts – rent and loan for masters.

After that, we looked at our finances. I didn’t have to pay back anymore loans, we now have two sources of income that was now a constant flow but I also felt like I was already behind on so many things. I was a little beat up. I knew that we needed to maximize this thing and use it properly because you never know when the season will shift again.

The next things was to attack the goal of buying a house. Because we have always had it as a goal, once I got that initial job in November in 2019, I had started putting away £200 in an account but not the LISA.

Why not the LISA? That would have gotten you more money?

I wanted the money to be accessible so I can have it in case life happened and we needed money. You know the limitation of accessing the LISA.

Yeah. True that.

Even when I lost that job, I insisted that we didn’t stop. But God saved us because we were just looking at the money and could not touch it. We knew we could cut down expenses and live a minimal lifestyle.

Now with the savings combined with the help to buy scheme we had some money to do a deposit and get a mortgage. But nothing else for all the additional cost e.g extras for the house, fees for solicitors & broker…..all those side things that came to almost 5% of the house cost.

Honestly it was a bit of a shocker for us.

They build the house and you have to pay for flooring. For example, they will build the garage quite alright, but everything inside you have to pay for it as extra. There is fridge/freezer, cooking burner and washing machine to buy. My wife even wanted a wood like worktop, we had to pay for that.

We ended up paying this cost from our salaries monthly.

So the next project after the house was visa visa renewals. 

Yep. It’s a lot of money. What we did was instead of spending money on decor for the house, we got the house to a point where it is habitable. We had the basics, windows have curtains etc and that’s all. We moved in and focused all monies towards visa renewals.

See I am a firm believer that God is our source but that also means we can do things with wisdom and practicality. A simple system of putting 200 each pounds aside even in the midst of extreme pain is what has helped us to get things that we have now. Sometimes you don’t got one lump sum from somewhere, that simple discipline turns out something beautiful later.

This conversation will be read immigrants, if you will give them a word of advice or perhaps two things you did wrong that you don’t want them to repeat, what will those be?

Something I did wrong was, I should have fought my mindset at the time I got my first job. I know they did me wrong in a number of ways but this is me being self-critical now because I try not to always put the blame on the outside all the time.

Whatever you get to do, do it well. You must give it your 100% commitment. Let people see you as well being 100% committed the way you are getting the job done. I don’t know if it is just my own personal self-critical experience and I know it might just be that they had their own candidates but I should have done better.

Another thing most important advice I’ll give them, if you are coming over with your wife or husband, whatever you do, make sure one person is working.

I mean a lot of people say that let the spouse with the job go first no matter what it is. And I agree. Because the way this country is, every month you must pay bills. As you land money needs to be spent. Back home you can borrow money and pay your rent in a year so you can rearrange yourself.

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When it comes to children that is a different ball game.

You have to think about it well because children will restrict your movements; you cant go out and just work any shifts because somebody has to be with them. You have to think about it well. If you can keep your children with family, please consider it. I mean it’s not easy to give this kind of advice because I don’t know the kind of connection existing at home.

If you have some support and people can help you initially to settle that’s great. At least try and be sure that there is a flow of income otherwise you can put pressure your marriage. I remember my family the period when my mother in-law came during covid, that was a blessing because she was there to help take care of our son. So I could go full out looking for my job. During that period my wife also started baking cakes to sell. We really needed the extra hands.

It’s quite interesting how you managed your journey because people’s marriages would have been destroyed. I mean coming from a place where you were getting offers to a point you were going back to ground zero, somebody telling you’re not good enough too…..it’s great to see where you are now. Thank you so much for sharing.

What is the next goal for you?

I know this is very ambitious, but the plan is to pay off our 35 years mortgage in 5 years. The how, I don’t know, but we will do it!

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