Author: anu sanya

Hi!My name is Anu. I am somewhere in the evolving world of the digital eco-system, trying to make an impact. Using technology to simplify customer experience is what gets me excited, expert define it as Digital transformation or Digitalisation. I call it making life simple for the everyday man using technology. I have also recently launched a Wedding Gift Registry for cash gift only: www.ournuptialchest.com.

Data & AI Series; Without the Jargon

November 16, 2025

(An attempt at educating non-techies and Business decision makers on AI-related topics)

I’ve been immersed in data and AI discussions over the last couple of years, through hands-on projects and continuous self-learning. It’s clear that every business problem these days seems to require an AI solution. It’s the hottest topic everywhere, and because an “AI project” sounds innovative, many leaders are pushing for “AI in all we do.”

However, the more time I spend in this space, the clearer it becomes that AI isn’t the solution every business problem (or process) actually needs.

When You DON’T Need AI

If your process is repetitive, predictable, rule-based, structured, or happens the same way every time—it’s an automation problem. Examples of Automation Problems:

  • Pulling weekly reports from a fixed set of sources.
  • Notifying teams when a ticket changes status (e.g., from ‘New’ to ‘Assigned’).
  • Assigning tasks based on fixed departmental rules.
  • Moving data between two systems in a set format.
  • Approving expenses that are consistently under a certain monetary threshold.

No AI is required for these tasks. This just needs simple automation and process clarity. I know, “Automation cleanup” sounds boring, but here’s the reality: AI on top of broken processes just speeds up the chaos.

So, When Do I Need AI (Especially Agentic AI)?

AI (and Agentic AI) is useful ONLY when the work involves genuine uncertainty, context, or judgment:

  • Interpretation: Reading, classifying, or understanding nuanced meaning.
  • Judgment: Deciding between options based on context, not fixed rules.
  • Handling Ambiguity: Dealing with inputs that have no clear rules or structure.
  • Multi-step Reasoning: Planning and executing multiple sequential steps.
  • Dynamic Adaptation: Adjusting behavior when situations change live.

Agentic AI is just a term for AI that can plan, act, adapt, and complete tasks end-to-end—it doesn’t just answer questions; it drives to a conclusion.

Here are the questions to ask before proposing an AI solution:

Is the task repetitive and predictable? → If yes, automation, not AI.

Are there clear rules you can write down?→ If yes, automation.

Does the task require interpretation or judgment?→ If yes, you’re leaning toward AI.

Does the process depend on context or changing conditions?→ Agentic AI might be helpful.

Does the task involve multiple steps that change depending on outcomes?→ Consider agentic AI workflows.

I am the first to admit AI is powerful. But using AI for every problem is like hiring a lawyer to assemble IKEA furniture—it’s expensive overkill. As a business leader, you need to match the right tool to the right problem. Often, the smartest AI strategy… is no AI at all.

Happy to answer any questions you might have. If I don’t know the answer, I’ll happily consult my network of experienced colleagues and friends to get you the right information.

xxxxxxx

Anu Sanya

I wrote a book!

March 31, 2025

You see, some immigrants can afford to buy a property within their first year, or at least within a couple of years, often because of a financial benefit like a well-paying job or family support. But for me, that wasn’t the case. I had to work harder, and with a few sacrifices here and there, of course.

While I do wish I could have bought my property earlier, I am incredibly grateful that everything happened at the perfect time.

It is available on Amazon worldwide: https://shorturl.at/xR0CJ

Now, I want to help more people, especially single ladies and gents, achieve this milestone in even less time than I did. And I’m going to show you how to use some of the lessons I’ve learnt along the way.

I wrote this book particularly out of experience and observation. Even though there is no shortage of resources out there for buying your first property, in most cases, these guides are often geared toward couples or people who have pooled their resources to make it happen. It can be confusing to find guidance as someone who is trying to buy alone, and it can be even more overwhelming if you don’t have abundant finances.

At the end of this book, I want you to feel empowered, knowing that owning property in a foreign country is within your reach. No matter where you start from, rest assured that YOU can make it happen.

Dont forget to get a copy from Amazon worldwide; https://shorturl.at/xR0CJ

Immigrant Money Stories XIV: The Journey of the Immigrant Who Became An Illegal Resident (II)

December 6, 2024

This is a continuation of our last Immigrant story. If you missed it, you can catch up here.

As I transcribed this part of my chat with her I could not be amazed at her grit to keep aiming for higher and putting in the work to make dreams come true for her career. I think it might be safe to say she had a lot of catching up to do and she kept doing everything in her capacity to catch up!

Profile​​​
​Gender: Female
​Country of Residence: United States
​Profession: Medical Software Analyst

……….The person I married wasn’t making enough money plus he had two kids before our marriage and was paying child support. This meant I could not submit my immigration application with him as a sponsor because he didn’t meet the financial benchmark

I had to start searching for a sponsor.

Around this time a good friend of mine and then my boss, at a time, agreed to be a sponsor to my application. Both of those applications were rejected. Again on financial grounds.

All of these processes got to me because it was such a painful experience. I learned a whole lot of immigration policies, laws etc just going through this experience. I had to do a lot of these things myself because I couldn’t afford to pay a lawyer.

Eventually a friend who had just became a citizen offered to sponsor me …..

Please let me ask what exactly does this sponsorship involve?

In this case, it means someone who is making enough money to support your documentation, which essentially means providing financial support to the immigrant and proving that the immigrant will not become a public charge.

After I submitted it was taking a little bit longer than expected to get a response which was supposed to be my work authorization. The turnaround time was supposed to be 45 days but after waiting 45 days I wasn’t hearing anything.

I got reading again and I found this site www.avvo.com. I was going to have to pay $50 for a simple consultation call. But for me it was better than paying $2,500 plus I was spending endless amount of time searching for information but I wasn’t getting anywhere.

This might help someone in the US, I found out that you can actually contact the Congressman of your district to help with expediting any issues with whatsoever. In this case, immigration.

So I reached out to the Congressman of my district and they responded quickly and they told me to fill out a Privacy Act release form so they can contact immigration on my behalf. And they did, and in a few days I got my work auhtorization in my mail.

Oh, fantastic.

Yeah, I got my authorization but then I still continued with what I was doing for the medical logistics company. But I was also talking to people who were already professionals and asking how I could get into a more professional role.

I was really frustrated at this point because I was still at that company doing a whole lot more but my pay hadnt increased since day one of my working there. I needed to get out of there but nothing was coming forth.

Around this time I joined a group of professionals that mainly had my high school mates and a few friends. In fact the friend who sponsored me was also in the group and he encouraged me to speak up about looking for a new role and mention my experience in the medical field.

As I did, one guy asked for my cv.

Side jist, I just could not stand this particular guy. I just felt he was quite arrogant and full of himself. So when he asked for my cv I ignored him because I thought he was just showing off as usual. Until he reached out to me directly and asked me for it again. This time we got talking and he happened we actually knew each well from way back.

Luckily for me, he was delivering training for this new healthcare application all hospitals across the country had to implement as part of their business processes. He helped people get trained and also got contracts from these hospitals to supply trained talent for the application implementation.

He gave me the training schedules he was currently running and allowed me to join th training for free. I did join the training and in a few days he told me “Oh, you know what? There’s an opportunity for an implementation for a big hospital coming up in Idaho. You don’t know this application yet, but do you want to try? Let me submit your resume and prep you for the interview, and you might just be lucky to get picked. “

So he did all of that, and luckily, I got hired for that project! So I went from earning $50 a week to earning at that time, I think, $60 an hour. The role also came with accommodation (hotel) paid for and a per diem of $70 per day.

I temporarily handed over my role at the healthcare (medical logistics) company to a friend’s wife who just came into the country and was trying to find her feet. My boss agreed.

I went to start the new journey of my new life as a professional in Medical software. It was not an easy one but I was ready to push it through! And as someone who loved to research and was hungry for more I found out that making more money is equivalent to how good you are in understanding the application and the end users of the application; end users, in this case, are doctors, nurses, clinicians in general. Also how diverse you are with different applications, because every department of the hospital has its own special application.

So while I was there, I was awlays asking questions about, “hey, what’s the toughest application?” And everybody will say, “Oh, it’s the offtime application if you can know this application, you will be indispensable.”

So guess what I did?

I became the person always asking questions, wanting to know more than just what I was tasked with. Combined with the experience I gained working with the Medical Logistics company over the years, I knew how to navigate the different kinds of people. Of course there were signs of racism. But I need my money and no one was going to stand in the way of my money.

I developed customer service skills, communications skills, appealing to their ego etc. It paid off because at the end of the project I was inititally signed up for, I went back home for just one week to come back for another several months worth contract.

This time when I went home, I could officially tell my former boss I was not coming back.

You have come a very long way!

I am still in that line of work with an upgrade, if I can put it that way.

I did the training consulting for another three years, if I remember correctly I did this up until 2019. I gathered enough experience knowing multiple applications inside out. I got to the point that my training consulting was one of the best in America. I went from just consulting with hospitals within the United States to consulting with other countries. My job found me in Canada and multiple countries within Europe.

By this time I had my green card.

I started getting bored of being on that level, so I started aiming for the highest level.

I was doing the front end, training end users on this application. But then I found out that there were people who are actually the software analysts. People who built these application.

I started to think “How do you get to build the applications? You’ll have to get certified. You have to go to school to learn how to build and get the certification. How do you then get the certification? Because it’s not something you can go online.”

So while at the job in San Diego, I made friends with some of the surgeons and in the course of my interaction I let them know I wanted to be an analyst. You see to be an analyst you cant just go get a certification, you needed an hospital to sponsor you.

There was this particular older surgeon who struggled with understanding computer systems and I became his go to person. We built a relationship over time and at some point I asked if he could endorse me so the hospital could agree to sponsor me. He ageed.

With some additional admin activities, I was able to get the hospital sponsorship. This sponsorship just meant the hospital recongnised me as a training consultant within the system, I still had to pay the cost of the certification myself.

At the same time, I had enrolled back in school for my masters studying data science and analytics. So I was working during the day for 12 hours, get off work to focus on some schoolwork, and at the same time, study for this application.

I eventually got my certification for the application and almost immediately starting applying for the next role as a clinical software analyst even with no experience. But I was quite confident with my consultancy background of knowing the front end, mixed with the new knowdlege of data science and all my time at the Medical Logistics Company.

I started to get interviews but never getting the role because it was clear to the interviewers I didn’t have depth. But I didn’t stop trying! I kept applying for many more opportunities as I saw them. Until finally I got an interview from this random company in Silicon Valley California. They loved me, gave me this six figures offer with some juicy benefits I could not turn down.

By this time, I had six applications certifications combined with some fields and clinical expertise. I had graduated from school managing to combine my data analytics knowledge experience with healthcare. I was working in Silicon Valley, something I have always wanted for my career.

Your dream came true!

It did come true, yes, and with God, because I never stopped praying.

One thing about me, I always get curious. When I’ve done something for a while, I start getting bored. After about four years at this organization as a clinical software analyst,I was tired. I saw a position with Stanford Hospital. I introduced myself to the hiring manager. I interviewed and again they loved me. I got hired.

So right now I work as a Senior Medical Systems Analyst at the Standford hospital. And this was a dream I had back in 2018 when I wasn’t close to being qualified, but I went from that to having the confidence to contact the hiring manager and getting an offer within three weeks of making that contact. And this is because I kept improving myself. Self investment every step of the way.

So as you were earning higher you were investing back in yourself. But aside from the self investment, which other key financial investments, are you doing?

I invested back home for a while. I co-invested in a cashew farming business; I mean a 10 acres of land farm. It was a situation with a guy that was I dating back then, when the relationship didn’t work out I got my money back.

Stocks?

Yeah, I invested in stocks. In fact in 2020, I traded very heavily.

I also registered an IT solution company in Nigeria that was able to get contracts from the US and I had a team of people in Nigeria executing. The model has been financially rewarding because my cost for running the team that was getting the work done has been significantly less than the income.

Did you do any of the conventional investments that people do? I mean buying a house, buying multiple real estate, and stuff like that.

So I am looking into buying a property now. I did not buy a property before and reason being that I wasn’t sure where I wanted to live. In California or go back to Texas.

Buying a house in California means having a lot of money for the deposit because real estate in the state runs into millions and it has taken me a long time to save enough to have the right amount in place.

The last question I always like to ask is, if you were going to advise any new immigrant coming into the US or to UK, to Canada, any immigrant……

Always have a plan. Always, always have a plan. I cant emphasize this enough.

Read people! You have to cultivate a habit of reading, research and ask questions. Information will get you further and faster. You can be going around and going the route longer route but someone knows a shorter route.

Don’t limit yourself to the same community. Another major problem with Immigrants, not wanting or making effort to make friends with other people who don’t look like them, you never know what information they have that will help you.

​

Don’t forget to share this with your friends/family and tell them to SUBSCRIBE HERE.

My Christmas Gift To You………

November 24, 2024

Every Saturday via a newsletter, I have been sharing my money mistakes and lessons as an Immigrant with several people over email.

The content below was shared with my newsletter subscribers on Saturday, November 23rd, 2024. You can also  SUBSCRIBE HERE

I created a monthly budget tracker for you.

Why?

My personal finance took a significant positive change when I started to use a well-detailed budget someone shared after a finance webinar. With the tracker, I have been able to track what comes in and what goes but more importantly, I have used it to track where most of my money goes and make financial projections for major purchases.

I would like that as you enter 2025 you can actively begin to do the same.

What is included?

I created two types of budget trackers.

One for couples, i.e., couples that jointly run their finances. I worked with two close couples who I know document their monthly income, spending, and analysis in detail. I have used their insight to create something that covers every aspect of household income.

The second one is for single individuals. I have used my own experience to create the different areas of your life that are key to your financial spending/expenses.

Across both of the trackers, I included a chart that helps you capture your spend in percentage against a set goal.

But you can edit / customise to what is important for your own unique situation.

How do I use it?

I admit it is quite manual. Meaning you would need to manually input your figures as you spend. This is what I currently do for myself.

I am definitely not technology agnostic but I have found that the manual input into my tracker helps me achieve two things:

  • Take ownership of properly allocating my spend into the various buckets. While my bank has this functionality on their app, it frustratingly allocates my spending randomly that are not a true reflection of my spending. Eg my bank app can not help allocate a purchase of a gift for a friend’s birthday properly.
  • Be conscious of my spending as I type into the various spend bucket. Somehow I continually have a mental image of my tracker every day I bring out my card to spend.

How much does it cost?

It’s free… (I had to include an amount as the payment platform I used needed a minimum amount).

Okay, maybe it’s not free. You can pay anything between £1.50 and £I Trillion for it.

If you don’t want to pay anything for it. No pressure to do so. But please make sure you actually use the tracker.

Where do I find this budget tracker?

Budget Tracker for Couples here.

Budget Tracker for Individuals here.

I would like the budget to reach at least 100 people, please share the links above with friends and family.

I would appreciate your feedback once you access the trackers. Can you do me the favor of letting me know what you think and if you find it valuable?

xxxxxxxx

Anu Sanya

Immigrant Money Stories XIV: The Journey of the Immigrant Who Became An Illegal Resident (II)

October 5, 2024

This is a continuation from our last Immigrant story. If you missed it, you can catch up here.

As I transcribed this part of my chat with her I could not be amazed at her grit to keep aiming for higher and putting in the work to make dreams come true for her career. I think it might be safe to say she had a lot of catching up to do and she kept doing everything in her capacity to catch up!

Profile​​
​Gender: Female
​Country of Residence: United States
​Profession: Medical Software Analyst

This is a continuation of our last Immigrant story. If you missed it, you can catch up here.

As I transcribed this part of my chat with her I could not be amazed at her grit to keep aiming for higher and putting in the work to make dreams come true for her career. I think it might be safe to say she had a lot of catching up to do and she kept doing everything in her capacity to catch up!

Profile​​​
​Gender: Female
​Country of Residence: United States
​Profession: Medical Software Analyst

……….The person I married wasn’t making enough money plus he had two kids before our marriage and was paying child support. This meant I could not submit my immigration application with him as a sponsor because he didn’t meet the financial benchmark

I had to start searching for a sponsor.

Around this time a good friend of mine and then my boss, at a time, agreed to be a sponsor to my application. Both of those applications were rejected. Again on financial grounds.

All of these processes got to me because it was such a painful experience. I learned a whole lot of immigration policies, laws etc just going through this experience. I had to do a lot of these things myself because I couldn’t afford to pay a lawyer.

Eventually a friend who had just became a citizen offered to sponsor me …..

Please let me ask what exactly does this sponsorship involve?

In this case, it means someone who is making enough money to support your documentation, which essentially means providing financial support to the immigrant and proving that the immigrant will not become a public charge.

After I submitted it was taking a little bit longer than expected to get a response which was supposed to be my work authorization. The turnaround time was supposed to be 45 days but after waiting 45 days I wasn’t hearing anything.

I got reading again and I found this site www.avvo.com. I was going to have to pay $50 for a simple consultation call. But for me it was better than paying $2,500 plus I was spending endless amount of time searching for information but I wasn’t getting anywhere.

This might help someone in the US, I found out that you can actually contact the Congressman of your district to help with expediting any issues with whatsoever. In this case, immigration.

So I reached out to the Congressman of my district and they responded quickly and they told me to fill out a Privacy Act release form so they can contact immigration on my behalf. And they did, and in a few days I got my work auhtorization in my mail.

Oh, fantastic.

Yeah, I got my authorization but then I still continued with what I was doing for the medical logistics company. But I was also talking to people who were already professionals and asking how I could get into a more professional role.

I was really frustrated at this point because I was still at that company doing a whole lot more but my pay hadn’t increased since day one of my working there. I needed to get out of there but nothing was coming forth.

Around this time I joined a group of professionals that mainly had my high school mates and a few friends. In fact the friend who sponsored me was also in the group and he encouraged me to speak up about looking for a new role and mention my experience in the medical field.

As I did, one guy asked for my CV.

Side jist, I just could not stand this particular guy. I just felt he was quite arrogant and full of himself. So when he asked for my CV I ignored him because I thought he was just showing off as usual. Until he reached out to me directly and asked me for it again. This time we got talking and he happened we actually knew each well from way back.

Luckily for me, he was delivering training for this new healthcare application all hospitals across the country had to implement as part of their business processes. He helped people get trained and also got contracts from these hospitals to supply trained talent for the application implementation.

He gave me the training schedules he was currently running and allowed me to join th training for free. I did join the training and in a few days he told me “Oh, you know what? There’s an opportunity for an implementation for a big hospital coming up in Idaho. You don’t know this application yet, but do you want to try? Let me submit your resume and prep you for the interview, and you might just be lucky to get picked. “

So he did all of that, and luckily, I got hired for that project! So I went from earning $50 a week to earning at that time, I think, $60 an hour. The role also came with accommodation (hotel) paid for and a per diem of $70 per day.

I temporarily handed over my role at the healthcare (medical logistics) company to a friend’s wife who just came into the country and was trying to find her feet. My boss agreed.

I went to start the new journey of my new life as a professional in Medical software. It was not an easy one but I was ready to push it through! And as someone who loved to research and was hungry for more I found out that making more money is equivalent to how good you are in understanding the application and the end users of the application; end users, in this case, are doctors, nurses, clinicians in general. Also how diverse you are with different applications, because every department of the hospital has its own special application.

So while I was there, I was awlays asking questions about, “hey, what’s the toughest application?” And everybody will say, “Oh, it’s the offtime application if you can know this application, you will be indispensable.”

So guess what I did?

I became the person always asking questions, wanting to know more than just what I was tasked with. Combined with the experience I gained working with the Medical Logistics company over the years, I knew how to navigate the different kinds of people. Of course there were signs of racism. But I need my money and no one was going to stand in the way of my money.

I developed customer service skills, communications skills, appealing to their ego etc. It paid off because at the end of the project I was inititally signed up for, I went back home for just one week to come back for another several months worth contract.

This time when I went home, I could officially tell my former boss I was not coming back.

You have come a very long way!

I am still in that line of work with an upgrade, if I can put it that way.

I did the training consulting for another three years, if I remember correctly I did this up until 2019. I gathered enough experience knowing multiple applications inside out. I got to the point that my training consulting was one of the best in America. I went from just consulting with hospitals within the United States to consulting with other countries. My job found me in Canada and multiple countries within Europe.

By this time I had my green card.

I started getting bored of being on that level, so I started aiming for the highest level.

I was doing the front end, training end users on this application. But then I found out that there were people who are actually the software analysts. People who built these application.

I started to think “How do you get to build the applications? You’ll have to get certified. You have to go to school to learn how to build and get the certification. How do you then get the certification? Because it’s not something you can go online.”

So while at the job in San Diego, I made friends with some of the surgeons and in the course of my interaction I let them know I wanted to be an analyst. You see to be an analyst you cant just go get a certification, you needed an hospital to sponsor you.

There was this particular older surgeon who struggled with understanding computer systems and I became his go to person. We built a relationship over time and at some point I asked if he could endorse me so the hospital could agree to sponsor me. He ageed.

With some additional admin activities, I was able to get the hospital sponsorship. This sponsorship just meant the hospital recongnised me as a training consultant within the system, I still had to pay the cost of the certification myself.

At the same time, I had enrolled back in school for my masters studying data science and analytics. So I was working during the day for 12 hours, get off work to focus on some schoolwork, and at the same time, study for this application.

I eventually got my certification for the application and almost immediately starting applying for the next role as a clinical software analyst even with no experience. But I was quite confident with my consultancy background of knowing the front end, mixed with the new knowdlege of data science and all my time at the Medical Logistics Company.

I started to get interviews but never getting the role because it was clear to the interviewers I didn’t have depth. But I didn’t stop trying! I kept applying for many more opportunities as I saw them. Until finally I got an interview from this random company in Silicon Valley California. They loved me, gave me this six figures offer with some juicy benefits I could not turn down.

By this time, I had six applications certifications combined with some fields and clinical expertise. I had graduated from school managing to combine my data analytics knowledge experience with healthcare. I was working in Silicon Valley, something I have always wanted for my career.

Your dream came true!

It did come true, yes, and with God, because I never stopped praying.

One thing about me, I always get curious. When I’ve done something for a while, I start getting bored. After about four years at this organization as a clinical software analyst,I was tired. I saw a position with Stanford Hospital. I introduced myself to the hiring manager. I interviewed and again they loved me. I got hired.

So right now I work as a Senior Medical Systems Analyst at the Standford hospital. And this was a dream I had back in 2018 when I wasn’t close to being qualified, but I went from that to having the confidence to contact the hiring manager and getting an offer within three weeks of making that contact. And this is because I kept improving myself. Self investment every step of the way.

So as you were earning higher you were investing back in yourself. But aside from the self investment, which other key financial investments, are you doing?

I invested back home for a while. I co-invested in a cashew farming business; I mean a 10 acres of land farm. It was a situation with a guy that was I dating back then, when the relationship didn’t work out I got my money back.

Stocks?

Yeah, I invested in stocks. In fact in 2020, I traded very heavily.

I also registered an IT solution company in Nigeria that was able to get contracts from the US and I had a team of people in Nigeria executing. The model has been financially rewarding because my cost for running the team that was getting the work done has been significantly less than the income.

Did you do any of the conventional investments that people do? I mean buying a house, buying multiple real estate, and stuff like that.

So I am looking into buying a property now. I did not buy a property before and reason being that I wasn’t sure where I wanted to live. In California or go back to Texas.

Buying a house in California means having a lot of money for the deposit because real estate in the state runs into millions and it has taken me a long time to save enough to have the right amount in place.

The last question I always like to ask is, if you were going to advise any new immigrant coming into the US or to UK, to Canada, any immigrant……

Always have a plan. Always, always have a plan. I cant emphasize this enough.

Read people! You have to cultivate a habit of reading, research and ask questions. Information will get you further and faster. You can be going around and going the route longer route but someone knows a shorter route.

Don’t limit yourself to the same community. Another major problem with Immigrants, not wanting or making effort to make friends with other people who don’t look like them, you never know what information they have that will help you.

​

Don’t forget to share this with your friends/family and tell them to SUBSCRIBE HERE.hat will help you.

Immigrant Money Stories XIII: The Journey of the Immigrant Who Became An Illegal Resident

September 7, 2024

Today’s immigrant had an interesting journey that I would like to split into two; the first you will read today and the second first Saturday in October.

In today’s piece, my key takeaway is “even in the midst of things where things are not going according to plan there are opportunities”.

Profile​​
​Gender: Female
​Country of Residence: United States
​Profession: Medical Software Analyst

The first question I always like to ask is, why did you decide to leave your home country?

It wasn’t a specific decision for me. I was already out of school, and I wanted to further my education. I had been working for a while, and so I traveled to the US to get an admission and continue with my further education plan. But the plans were taking longer than expected, and at some point, I couldn’t go back to work at home.

So I decided to have a plan B by just staying back. It was never an initial plan to immigrate to the US at that time.

I see. Okay, so let me take it back one step. The plan was to come to the US, have your master’s degree, then go back home?

That is correct.

Okay, so how did you plan to fund the MBA, sorry, the master’s degree?

Family. My family was responsible for funding the entire thing; tution, accomodation, upkeep etc

Okay.

So the actual reason that I didn’t bother to go back was I had lost my job back home, and I also was struggling to get my official transcript for my school.

And at the time, the national university body was on strike, so it was taking longer than expected, and my school kept trying to tell me; “Hey, you have to send your transcript in by so, so, so” the deadline passed. I couldn’t get the transcript sorted.

I then lost my job back home.

At this point, I had to make another decision. In fact family and friends out here were like, “why do you want to go back now? You don’t have a job to go back to. School is already out of the question. Why don’t you have a plan B of staying behind?”

So I had to drop out of school and pause the idea of furthering my education at that time.

Wow. Before I ask the next question, why did you lose the job? I am assuming that the agreement was you are going to be on study leave and then come back. Why did they renege on that agreement?

My path was kind of different. So I did not get a student visa from Nigeria. I came to the US on a visiting visa and I had taken a month off of work. The plan was to come here and process my student visa from here, by which time I will have to stay in the country within 30 days, and also speak to an academic advisor for whatever school that I am trying to work with. Get the necessary papers and then go back home to get the actual visa.

That was my plan.

Unfortunately, when I got out here, I realized that it wasn’t going to be that quick, so I kept extending and asking for more time from work; one month became two months and then three months. At some point they just let me go.

To be fair, 3 months was a bit of a stretch. Okay, cool. So what then happened? So I’m assuming that by this time, you had had your student visa.

The school had issued my I-20 which I needed to apply for the student visa. All I needed to do next was to go out of the country and get that visa stamped on my passport, but technically on file, I was already a national student.

However I had to drop out because I could not produce the transcript.

Around this time, a family member out here had started talking about starting a business (a medical-focused one), and needed someone to help with running the business. I was like, oh, “you know what I can do that”. I mean, I have some work experience. At the time, I was about 25.

They were paying me very little money. To be fair It was supposed to be for the short term and pay under the table because I wasn’t qualified to be working visa. For me I wanted to use that time to restrategize with some income to cushion costs for any daily needs.

How long did you do this for?

I did that for three years.

Oh!!

In the early weeks, I started talking to people about the options available to me and everybody just kept pointing me in the route of, “You need to get married to an American”. I was actively meeting people, and the putting myself out there.

In fact I had met someone I was introduced to and started dating. But after a short while I thought, no, this would not work. So I stepped back.

By this time, I had become an overstayer. I could only stay in the US for up to a maximum of 6 months on a visitor visa, which had lapsed. I was not able to get my transcript sent over so school was out of questions.

Two and a half years into the US, I didn’t have legal documentation, no social security, and my driver’s license had expired. I was getting frustrated. A lot of things happened in between; trying to date somebody else, talking to other people. It was just a mess.

Because this is a newsletter more focused on the finance side of things; In that period when you were undocumented, how did you cope financially with the little pay you were earning?

Because I had been working back in Nigeria, for a few years before I came out here; I had some savings. I was working for a multinational organization that was paying quite well so was able to save about $20,000.

I also had stipends from family coming into my account every month. At that time the exchange rates were not so bad. It was about N150 to a dollar.

Then the little income I was earning here.

However, after about a year of living in my studio apartment, the first place I lived in, I got the idea to rent a two-bedroom apartment; a luxury one.

The goal was to rent out the second bedroom to people who were coming in from wherever to have their babies in the US. Around this time it became a thing

Because of my exposure to the medical field, healthcare in general, I could help them with finding the hospital out here, the doctor, pointing them in the right direction, etc so that as soon as they landed from whatever country, they had everything sorted. Including accommodation and transportation.

So it was a concierge service?

Yes, a concierge service with a contractual agreement.

That’s really interesting. And what were the numbers like? You don’t have to give me specifics, a bracket is fine.

It depends. If they had all the hospital side of things sorted and needed just accommodation, I charged $1,500 per month. At this time my rent was exactly $1,500 but I needed to bill this person that high to cover utilities, damages etc. Feeding was not included.

But if they needed the full concierge service, meaning finding the hospital, getting hospital appointments etc then the fee was much higher.

I was able to subsidize my rent, and also with the little income that I was earning I could live comfortably.

I did that for a while, actually did that well into when I had my documentation sorted, and up until the time I actually relocated from I used to live in Texas to California.

What was that transition like? I mean, this is you who used to work in a multinational in Nigeria. Clearly, they were paying really well. You were quite comfortable. To become somebody who was undocumented, now working for a startup healthcare company. What was that like for you?

Oh, it was tough. It was very tough. I came here at a very young age and it wasn’t the initial plan to end up an undocumented immigrant. I didn’t have a roadmap for this. This was something that just happened and had to pick myself up.

I remember that initially, I didn’t get the support of my family for staying back and going through all of that. Emotionally, I was constantly unhappy. I was depressed. I didn’t know who to trust, I didn’t have friends. I felt like people had too many bits of advice.

I also dealt with a lot of, when people don’t know where you’re coming from, they don’t know your story, and people tend to talk to you or advise you based on where you are in that phase.

It was a lot of struggle for me, because I was comfortable while I was back home, visited a lot of countries for work. And at that age, too, I was pretty young, so I got pretty exposed to things early on in my life.

To then deal with someone who’s a truck driver; who had never had a corporate experience, happens to find themselves out here because of visa lottery, have American citizenship, and because of that, think they are better than you.

I had to snap out of it. I asked myself “Am I going to settle in this space forever, or am I going to make something out of it”?

Yeah, so it was tough. I’ll tell you that much.

But one thing I’d say, though, on the flip side, is getting introduced to medical healthcare system logistics was one of the best things that happened to me. I didn’t know the importance of what I was learning,

Even though it was not a major corporate America but a very small office, it helped me to understand the importance of documentation, accountability, being a leader, and being a manager, in a very different world that I was not used to. I was able to gather those experiences when I had my documentation sorted and I was ready to plunge into real corporate America.

Let’s now talk about the journey back to corporate life; even while you were undocumented, you still had that entrepreneurial mindset, and you were able to carry on. What was the journey to getting the papers sorted, and then how did you move on from there?

At some point, I was dating someone who was from Nigeria, and the talk of marriage was actively on the table.

One thing about me is, I never lost sight of my faith. I’m a Christian, so I would always pray before I took any steps. With this particular person, something was just off but I couldn’t place it for a long time.

A couple of days, or, I think, a couple weeks before our planned wedding date in the US, I found out that this person wasn’t even an American citizen. He had outrightly lied to me that he was.

What was he trying to achieve by doing that?

I think he wanted to marry me and just put me there

That’s another thing I would say for anyone coming to this country; if they’re not good with research or like reading, they need to get themselves well-informed by developing a habit of reading or asking questions that would take them further.

This person had goofed by asking me to print out their social security number card for something we were trying to put together, and as I printed it out I noticed the date the social security card was issued.

And I was like, wait a minute, this person came in a year before me. I began a mental calculation from the many research I had done; I knew that if you got your green card through your parents, you would need to have stayed five of residency before you become a citizen. I had that information from my own research, so when I saw the date on that person’s social security number, I realized that they were just three years in the country.

What does that mean for you?

That means if I had gone ahead to marry that person I would have just been in limbo for another 2 years just waiting for him to get his citizenship before we began the journey of sorting mine. We had been together maybe a little over a year but I didn’t like the deceit, and I felt if you can deceive me on something like this, I wonder how many of the things you’ve deceived me on. So I ended the relationship.

Remember that person I dated when I initially stayed back? We got back in touch. I remember the first thing he said to me was, “are you ready to be my wife now?”

One second, this is a personal question; What was your concern in those early days that you broke things off?

For context, remember I was just fresh from Nigeria and was a bit of a church girl.

The guy was covered in tattoos and wasn’t working in corporate America. He was working at some manufacturing company or something as a floor worker. For me, it didn’t match what I had in mind for myself as a spouse

We met up and started dating again. Going out this time around I got to know that, oh, this person is actually really cool. He treated me so well, significantly better than the men from my own country.

Before long I got married. And he was the kindest human ever (I say was because we divorced after about 7 years together). But this man was just a nice human being, and I am thankful to God that I did not judge a book by its cover, by its appearance. Oh, my goodness, the love, the care……it was such a breadth of fresh air being treated so well.

I am assuming, of course, that meant you could then have your paper sorted?

Correct.

What did that do for you from a financial point of view, as in, how did that then propel you to move forward?

Oh, it did a lot eventually. But I had to cross another hurdle.

By this time I had about $10,000 saved, and never touched the money because it was supposed to be for rainy days only. In my head, I thought if I ever had to sort out my resident documentation, I wanted to be ready for all the associated costs. So the minute we got married, I waited about a few more months, I filed my application, and …

…..to be cont’d.

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Immigrant Money Stories XII: The Immigrant who Prioritised Buying A House Before Getting Married.

July 5, 2024

I talked about this person in my newsletter on the 8th of June. Coming out of that interview I could not be amazed at how much the subject achieved in partnership (or maybe the word is strong alignment) with their significant other.

Profile​ ​Gender: Male ​

Country of Residence: United Kingdom

​Profession: Business Analyst

I always like to start the question with why did you decide to leave your own country?”

I had the opportunity to take a second degree, my masters degree. something that was almost like, “yep that’s the next thing to do”.

How was it funded? Did the Bank of mommy and daddy fund it, or was your own savings?

It was the bank of the village: Mummy and Daddy, Uncle…..

O wow, how old were you around this time and do you think it is because you were young that they had to pull funds together for you?

I was around 23/24 if I am not mistaken. I was 25. No it wasn’t because I was young. It was mainly because an uncle could and was willing to pay for it. I asked and he said yes so…..Masters Degree it was.

Ha I see. Why the UK though?

America was where I wanted to go for a while. I wanted to get into an Ivy League university because my dad went to Cornell University and his brother went to Harvard University and Oxford University. So it was my goal to continue on that path. But I didn’t get admission into any plus I applied for visa to the US once or twice for just holidays but I got rejected.

The UK was the next best thing.

So how was your settling down in the UK? If you remember, was it hard…….

It was harddddd!

Wait wait, was it hard from a finance perspective, or ………

Ok so the main hardship came from the transition of post studying and entering the job market.

School was just school for me. My routine was classes, library, church, thats it. I did understand the importance of using that period to gain significant UK work experience as much as possible and so I was working in the school library as an IT trainer.

But then after school I found myself working in a factory for a couple of months.

Ha, wait how did you go from IT training in the library to factory work?

So the rule is, you can only do that kind of job, I mean the library job only if you are a student and once school is done you need to resign.

That makes sense. But were you under financial pressure that you have to go and do factory work? O yes, I had bills to pay!

This was the period in between finishing school (aka dissertation submitted) and the actual graduation ceremony that wasn’t until a few months later. So it was either going back home and be asking my parents for money (which was not on my own agenda) or rely on my uncle who lived in London at that time and on paper was my guardian. But throughout school,
we did speak once or twice and exchanged messages occasionally. I remember visiting his home in London once and also after securing the role in Woking, I stayed over at his house (while looking for a flat to share, which was closer to work) a tier one visa . 

Funny side story I remember this uncle was very upset with me for not inviting him to my graduation ceremony when it eventually happened. Honestly, all I was thinking at that time was “Why should I be disturbing all these people, I need to get on with this graduation and get a job asap! Came with some small family drama.

Anyway back to the question; I was in school accommodation during my degree so I had to move out after my dissertation to a shared apartment. I needed to pay for the bills attached to that. And it definitely didn’t cross my mind to ask any family for the money.

Growing up, uncles and aunties bought me stuff all the time and that to me meant they had tried enough. I didn’t want to be that family member. who was always collecting. My learning from that period was “don’tthe wait until you need something to reach out to family to check in on them”. It is something my mom says all the time.

You did the warehouse job for two months. Was that two months because you got a job within that period?

Yes! In fact I remember it like yesterday. I was so grateful for the good news of getting the job while I was out that I knelt down at the bus stop just saying “Thank you God”.

Haha, I can imagine! Ok let’s call that your first job post masters degree. When you compare it to your last role back at home before you traveled, was that like for like, or was it a demotion?

Definitely like for like. In fact I got introduced to different types of work experience at that job; I immediately became responsible for a project acting as the go-between a consulting company and the government agency I was working for. It required me to be very independent. The most important thing the job offered me was the pay that allowed me to switch to Tier 1 without a sponsor. This was years ago when you had to earn at least £26,000 and at the time (2009) Expat immigrants could apply for Tier 1 visas in an individual capacity without sponsorship from a corporate organization.

Okay, okay, you have come to school, you settled down. You’ve done two months of warehouse. You got your first job. I mean, looking back now, your story seems to be a bit……..

Rosy?

I don’t want to use the word rosy. It almost seemed like you had a good landing, is what I would say.

Maybe. But mentally and emotionally it was quite difficult for me. But yes compared with other stories I hear these days I would say privilege has its hierarchy. For one I didn’t need to work and study, and I knew worst case scenario I had a place to go for a roof over my head and eat at zero cost. I even remember coming into the UK my mom & dad gave me £3,000 cash and my uncle also gave me £500, plus the money I earned from working, this sustained me for the entire year. For context, this was from 2007 to 2008 but I know I did a good job of managing that money well so much that it lasted me for the entire year of school plus paying for the visa fees after school. Actually I don’t remember accurately but think mum recently told me I called to get money for post study visa application fees.

Right! Looking back now, from where you were as a new settler in the UK and where you are now, what has been your top five money mistakes and your top five money successes?

Good question!

The first money mistake was, not saving. I always thought saving was a lost opportunity because you need to either invest or spend money. I didn’t believe in having cash in reserve. But that should have been a priority.

So you didn’t have an emergency fund somewhere?

No, I didn’t. And to be fair I was in a emergency situation for about six months in between that first job and the next one. This was something my now wife, could not understand while we were dating. She made me set up something almost immediately she heard.

Second is, not understanding the financial markets or will I say financial landscape early enough which meant a lot of lost opportunities. Especially during those periods when I had a lot of excess cash with a lot less expenses. At some point, I started contracting and was earning up to £250 per day and living in a shared house, so was paying about 500 a month on rent which meant I had a lot of disposable cash at the time. I guess that’s a function of the people I had around me. Those who knew shared. While some just didn’t know much as well.

The third thing is not getting on the property ladder early enough.

Getting on the property ladder is not cheap. You need money!

Yes, but I know how much we spent on our wedding and how much the deposit was back then. At the very least we should have spent money on purchasing one property as early as possible.

Actually, that’s not true, because I did get on the property ladder before I got married. But that house was for just me. I cant explain it, but it was a big thing for me to buy a house before I got married.

Oh, so you bought a house by yourself before you got married, or it was a “we’re going to get married” so you both contributed towards the house?

No no. I bought it by myself. It took me 10 months to save up for the deposit and the other expenses.

Oh, you were contracting already by this time, right?

Yes, So I could build the deposit faster. Plus my expenses were very low. My rent was about £500 or there about. And as a guy living alone, I could live with the bare minimum.

Another mistake was not staying on top of credit card payments. After I had gotten married, my wife and I were trying to get as many points on our Amex card so we moved all expenses to the card. At some point, we changed how we made payments to clear it all up but somehow I messed things up so much that we had unpaid payments of up to £4,000. You can imagine the amount of interest that had gone in. Because the interest is calculated daily, interest plus capital added up to 4k.

The key lesson is to understand the credit card payment cycle and make sure you pay off any outstanding just after the statement is generated. I didn’t automate this payment and did not notice it wasn’t being settled monthly.

Just hearing that 4k has my heart pumping. So those were the five wrongs, what were the great money moves you made?

Without a doubt, paying more than the minimum into my pensions. At the time I had a plan to have more than a £1m pounds by the time I am 60 years old. So I had to sit with my accountant / financial adviser, working backward from 60 years he showed me the value of compounding interests and gave me a roadmap of what I needed to add to my pensions every month.

But that has slowed down though because childcare fees are not cheap!

Ok. No 2?

Deciding to invest in property. After marriage, my wife and I made it a goal to focus on building a portfolio of properties we put out for rent.

Ok. Cool stuff. Next is focusing on earning more. Going down the route of contracting is one of my biggest advantages. Because it gave me more cash aka Liquidity.

No 4?

Having a spouse that is on the same page as me. Getting into a relationship and having conversations about money is one of the best things that happened. Actually having conversations about money, values, and children are absolutely key matters.

And the last thing?

Doing our finances together as a family. We have a spreadsheet we both control that shows our income, direct debits etc and then we both agree on what gets spent after paying bills for the remaining sum left. We both have current accounts, a joint savings account (which we both have access to), pension accounts, and savings accounts.

We both have independent money pots but that spreadsheet is the kicker because it has a view of everything we are earning: income from your salary shows up on there, bonus from your salary shows up on there. Any extra income except business or side hustle.

So it’s a Profit and Loss of thing?

More like a balance sheet. At the end of the month, there is a view of how much we have earned, how much we have spent, how much we should be saving etc

Impressive. I don’t think many couples have this kind of money conversation so it is impressive.

We didn’t start off like that. It became important as we started to earn more and more. We would start working together on finances month on month and then stop. Then start again. Until we became consistent.

But wait when you do investments, do you do investments as Mr and Mrs. or as individuals?

You have to look at the financial advantage. Because we need to be careful of the tax implications. We don’t have joint investments but we make joint decisions. Whenever I am about to buy a property we discuss it first; is it a good time, is it the best option to invest in etc

But we do have protections in place in case of my demise and vice versa we are the sole executors of the estate of assets owned. And then we also have life insurance.

You guys are very smart. You’re making a lot of sound decisions. What’s your next big financial goal?

In the immediate, we have a domestic priority for us to focus on. It is something that we know historically requires significant financial investments. After that, we want to invest in more properties for sure.

One last question, what is your greatest lesson to share with any immigrant?

Surrounding yourself with the right people is key. We get most of our tips from conversations with people around us. In particular, people who are doing well because they are happy and willing to discuss money. Not sure but think some research shows that people who are in poverty rarely ever discuss the subject of money.

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xxxx Anu

Immigrant Money Stories XI: Becoming Homeless Two Weeks After Arriving in A New Country.

May 31, 2024

Why did you leave your own country? Or should I say why did you decide to emigrate?

I think for us, there were many reasons, one of which was security in the country I’ve had a couple of near misses that were dreadful to even think about. And then the healthcare system that I had happened to fall victim to pure negligence on the part of the medical staff.

Also specifically for me, career-wise as a chartered accountant I was also thinking of what next. I felt like I had gotten to a point where I felt stuck and was actively thinking of how to navigate my situation so that I could access more opportunities.

But that was for you, was that the same thing for your husband?

So in our case, I was the major push on relocating.

So you made it a ‘We are going, you just need to follow me”.

Hahaha well yes!

The question I always ask people is, how did you fund that? It couldn’t have been cheap, because you came in through school, right?

Yeah.

So how did you fund that?

We had some savings and also got some loans from the bank in addition to our savings.

Okay. So now you’ve arrived, you have your savings, you’ve gotten the loan, you’ve come to school. What was the settling down journey for you?

That’s where the difficulties started.

As I mentioned earlier, I was the major driver for this decision to move and so I read so much. I was always on blogs reading about other people’s experiences of relocation so I thought I knew everything to expect.

That was a lie!

I was always listening to people’s stories, watching YouTube videos, and doing everything, to learn as much, know as much as possible, of what to expect about everything.

But it was still so challenging for me. I never believed I’ll be able to survive the weather until now. Because we came in January, at some point, I asked myself, and I said, “Are you sure that we will not go back? I don’t want to die in the cold like this. We might just have to go back and re-strategize or something.”

So that was one, then also, having to do all odd jobs, that was something that I read about. So in my mind, I thought I was prepared for that. But I never believed that I’d find myself in some situations. You know I can’t start talking about the individual scenarios that played out in that one area, then settling in was another part.

I mean, you had savings, you had the loan, why did you still need to do the old jobs?

Yes, we had savings. But we had to pay school fees and all of that, but we still had to work to pay rent or these other things.

Some people came and didn’t do anything at all throughout, to be fair but tha was not out case. The plan was to sort ourselves out as we went along.

How long did it take you to get your first job?

Ah, it didn’t take long at all. Immediately we got in. Because I was relating with people in school before we arrived and also was getting information about so many old jobs around. So even before we got in, even before I got my first proper job, a care job, I had done some stints as a security officer.

Wait, security officer?

O yes. I started with a stint as a security personnel in a stadium during a football match. There was that one and after we took up another one before we got a proper job.

Because to be honest we didn’t have a choice but to get anything done to pay our bills especially as we were in a hotel for three months.

What?

O Yeah. We were in a Travelodge hotel because we couldn’t secure accommodation, and you know how much you end up paying in a hotel per night!

God, that means you are using all your money to pay hotel bills.

Oh yes, and we couldn’t even cook. We couldn’t wash anything. I think a couple of times we gave our clothes to some of our friends to help us wash. It was just terrible.

Anyway, that was a major reason we had to pick up any job. Anything that could pay. Also because for main jobs they needed, permanent addresses, things like that, which we didn’t have. So it kind of delayed things for us. But the security jobs could pay cash straightaway.

I remember we even had to travel to Glasgow one time for a security gig. That one was some experience!

Those security job owners were very rugged and they expected to have rugged people on their staff. Those guys spoke to you anyhow. They don’t treat you like humans.

We didn’t even know the details when we got the jobs, we were just told it was a security job, but they didn’t give full details. We were supposed to be working 12-hour shifts overnight for three days outside in the coldest month of the year, January, in Glasgow!

It was some movie shoot so we needed to be guarding the parameters where the movie shoot was happening.

And you were supposed to stay three days straight?

Oh no, you do 12 hours, go home, and come back for your shift.

When I say outside, I mean out in the open, not like on the streets corner or by a mall. It was rough. You could be the only one at your station and the next person could be like, maybe 10 minutes walk from you.

And then when you get tired, you cant be trying to even lean on something. The security outfit owners will be driving around and if anyone of them saw you leaning on something, you would be immediately asked to stand well. Chatting with other colleagues was definitely out of the question.

I hope these guys were paying you some good money.

Not even close. It was the standard 10 pounds per hour or so.

The worst part of it was that, they had this mobile toilet which you had to beg to use. Because again the owners were monitoring our bathroom breaks. At some point, I went into a pub and pretended to be a paying customer so I could use the toilet.

Wait and you did this thing for three days?

We stopped the second day not because we were willing to go on for the full three days but after the second day when we go back…..

Ha ok, I need to go back a little. I came into the country first and because my school had initially made arrangements for accommodation within high school hostels while the students were on holiday, I took a room for myself, and then a week after or so my husband joined me.

But truth be told, it was supposed to be a room per person, so when my husband joined me a week after, I had smuggled him in and they found out.

Now this was the same time we went for that security job in Glasgow. On the second day shift, as we got back, they kicked us out of the accommodation.

On our way back to the room, I received an email and I thought I would deal with this later, I needed to hit the bed first. I mean I had paid for one month so worst case will ask them to give us till the end of the time I paid for or worst case ask for another room for my husband.

As soon as we got in, two people were by the door and they asked us to move out immediately. I was even trying to explain we had nowhere to go but they didn’t care.

So two weeks after you landed, you were homeless?

Yep, we had to immediately start searching online for hotels around. And that’s how we ended up staying in Travelodge for 3 months.

My gosh.

I don’t even know how we survived it, because we couldn’t do anything. But the only good part was there were a couple of people like us too in the same Travelodge with the same accommodation problems and we bonded over our common problem.

But I think we were one of the last set of people to leave the hotel eventually. At least until we got a space.

We could not have any downtime with not working because we had hotel bills to pay!

How long did you have to do these odd jobs for?

So you know, there’s odd job, there’s odd, odd. Hahaha

There were the odd odd jobs aka the security jobs, and then I moved on to odd jobs as a care worker which came through after about a month.

Did your husband get something as fast as well?

Well, he got an odd odd job within the Travelodge we stayed at and then got a customer service job.

So now you are in school plus the care job. How long did you do care job for?

So I think, relatively for like a year. During during summer of that year, in 2022 I also took up a waitressing job. I was just combining as many paying jobs as I could handle. Just combining so many things,

At some point, I stopped the care job because I got a job in a small accounting firm. The company was just by my house and every day as I went to school or work I used to wonder if I could find an opportunity with them. So one day I went in and asked for the MD. He wasn’t around but I was given his email so I sent him an email with my CV etc. He replied asking for us to meet for an interview and I got the job.

It was a small accounting firm but I was willing to learn as much as possible because I was thinking ahead of job opportunities once school is done. I needed to have the UK experience on my CV.

But it was an entire disaster!

The MD who interviewed was a good man but he was retiring and had sold the business to a younger accountant in the office. I did meet the younger accountant as well during the job application process.

But mehn, working with him and the rest of my colleagues was one of the worst experiences of my life. I mean these guys treated me like I was a leper. I would come into the office in the morning, call people’s names specifically and say good morning but they would ignore me. This was in an office of less than 10 people. But if someone else walked in and did the same they would respond.

The new owner spoke to me like I didn’t deserve to be there. I just could not understand why they treated me that way.

Even If I tried to persevere because of the job experience, that was not even happening either. They kept me working on very administrative tasks; I mean I was answering phone calls, opening letters (remember it was an accounting firm so they had a lot of letters from HMRC, the tax body), and being a front desk office. It was just a mess and a waste of my time.

When I tried to speak to the new owner about it all he said was “What do you expect”

How long did you stay at this firm?

I left after 2 months, No actually after a month and a half but they paid me two full months’ salary.

Do you think it was a case of racism?

Looking back now, It might be. But one thing for sure I think they felt some inferiority complex. As far as I remember I was the highest qualified, a chartered accountant and on the road to my Masters degree, but the most senior person in that firm was still on the road to his qualification as a chartered accountant.

So you left that job to nothing?

No, I went back to the Care job. Actually, I didn’t exactly stop the care job, I simply combined it again. Went to school, worked at the firm 3 days a week and did care jobs over the weekend.

So I just went back to the Care job till I finished School.

Your journey is quite interesting. I know you work for ia multinational company after school how did you land this role?

When I was in school, I think six months after I came in, I stumbled on a Black Professionals Scotland’s post on Linkedin and I registered on their website but I didn’t take it seriously. I just registered and went back to my normal events.

But one day I went to one of their career events and I met someone that I got talking with. She mentioned she just finished an internship. And I was like, I am looking for an internship opportunity. So I asked how she got it and she said it was through the same Black Professionals Scotland.

I immediately went home and registered for one of the events organized by my current employers. As you register you also had to send your CV in. When I got in before the event started, I was chatting with people, there was a woman who came in. I introduced myself and she said “are you the one with so so and so experience?” she mentioned something very specific on my CV and of course I said yes.

I found out from someone else who worked at that company and was also at the event that she heads the team in the department I could find a role in. She said to me “You should have that lady in your network”.

After the event, we were told to apply for roles on their website. I did and I got an invite for an interview, aced the first stage, and at the second stage that same woman was on the panel.

The rest they say is history!

In fact, around the same time I secured three other internships with companies. But the one my current employers were offering was a permanent role. So of course I went with them.

But the funny thing is, when they started the interview process it was a permanent role, only for me to get to the second stage, and without giving a reason they said the offer is now an 18 months fixed term contract and they didn’t offer sponsorship for a resident permit.

I was so crushed but I just went ahead to take the offer and thought I would have them on my CV and gain some experience. But months down the line they offered me a permanent role and also sponsored my resident permit to remain in the UK.

O wow! They sponsored you eventually?

O yes, I thought I told you. Thank you so much for encouraging me back then.

Congratulations. That’s really good news. I am so glad to hear this! So how are things with your husband job-wise?

He has been changing jobs but he has just been getting customer service roles and that is what he is currently doing.

Now it sounds like you have settled down somehow. What is the next big financial goal for you?

That’s quite tricky because I don’t feel like we are settled. Being settled is very different from financial freedom. For me, I didn’t leave my home country to come live paycheck to paycheck. I mean I desire to thrive not just exist.

Even before I graduated from school. I told you about it, right? I knew I wanted to get into business analysis as a profession because it’s also a means to position myself to attract better opportunities.

And my husband has been doing the same, although he hasn’t landed the business analyst role yet. We have been doing all those training, getting certifications, and all that.

Plus my employers didn’t pay for the resident permit fee and associated cost. We had to bear the cost ourselves. This was about £11k. All that came from our savings from the many hustles and so we are back to ground zero financially.

How many years now have you been in the UK? Your second year or third year?

This is our second year plus.

It’s been rough but I must say you are on the road to greater things. Thank you so much for sharing this with me

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Immigrant Money Stories IX: The Journey from £19k to £156k Pay

March 30, 2024

Profile​
​Gender: Female
​Country of Residence: United Kingdom
​Profession: Program Managment Office Executive

Why did you leave your home country?

Because that’s what everyone was doing at that time.

Oh really?

Well, maybe not entirely. As I grew up, anytime I thought of my future, I never saw myself in Nigeria. Even people around me always said “Look you don’t you don’t belong here” and I have always thought that way. So when the time came, I moved to the UK.

Why the UK though? Why not somewhere else?

I don’t know. I’d never been to America or any other country before then so nowhere else appealed to me. Everyone talks about America as the place to be, you know the land of opportunities, but I still don’t see it as a place to live. I have a British Passport now and still haven’t visited the country.

Anyway, I was set on the UK and the UK it was.

So how did you come to the UK? I mean what route?

School. I came in for a master’s degree.

I remember paying an agency N40,000 (£176) to help facilitate the application process. This was in 2006. But before then I remember spending at least 6 months of the year at a cybercafe researching various schools (this was the days when internet-enabled homes were not so common).

Because my dream career was to travel the world as an international broadcasting agent or something of that sort I kept searching for schools that could offer International relations or international development. Or anything related to it. I found several schools and then engaged the agency to help me put together the application, guide me through the personal statement etc. And I got admission to two of the schools.

Funny story; I chose the school to go to because it was near France. When I was doing all that research at the cybercafe I remember seeing that the school I chose was near the beach so I would get seaside views. And the proximity of France nailed it for me because I could speak some small French then.

Please ask me how many times I went to France?

Zero?​
Yep! I never went to France but it was good to know it was nearby.

And of course, this was funded by Daddy and Mommy 100%?

Yep, 100% funded by Daddy which I am entirely grateful for.

You are in the UK and in school. Did you have to work during school?

Remember I said I got admission in 2006? I didn’t get to go to school till 2007. In 2006, Daddy had some money issues so he said to me, “I can’t afford to send you to school abroad now so defer your admission for the next year”. I was devastated but It worked in my favor because the next year he said “Let me make it up to you, how much is everything you will need including upkeep for the entire duration of your course?”. So I went on the school website and you know they always have that “typical international students should expect between this and this in upkeep cost”. I took the higher end of the recommended amount and gave my dad.

He gave me the entire amount. I mean the entire school fees sum and the entire upkeep for the year. Not sure that was a good idea looking back now. I was going to be living on my own for the first time in another country and I was awash with cash. I went all out in choosing my accommodation, and paying for the welcome package (you know those packages where they had pots, pans, plates, sheets, etc so you don’t have to buy anything once you arrive). Nobody was checking on me concerning how I was managing the money given to and having so much money all at once was unusual for me.

I was on a spending spree.

​
I went to school in September and by May of the following year, I realized I didn’t have money that would take me into September which was when I would finish school. I realized I had been buying rubbish. Food, Clothes I didn’t need and didn’t wear, just absolute nonsense.

When Daddy gave me the money he told me very firmly, this is it, and no more. I am a very proud person so the thought of going back to him to ask for more jarred me.

I stopped buying nonsense and became very prudent. And I started co-buying things with my friends in bulk so we could share. I also discovered eBay and I used the platform to sell off all the unnecessary things I accumulated; it was not a lot of money but it all came together to make something.

Then I got a job as a call center agent with a bank and boom, I went back to my old ways. I was in a “Oh I have money, I am comfortable so need to be living like a pauper.” mentality all over again. And remember I was still in school with my accommodation and bills paid. So hey, what is money for if not spending? My friends and I were just doing a lot of big girls’ spending, nothing crazy, but just unnecessary and unchecked spending.

No savings. Just spending.

And then I needed to make a trip to Nigeria and the ticket was just £300. Guess what I could not afford it! I mean just £300. I had to put the ticket on my credit card and I eventually paid back £1,500 over a year or something. That was a turning point.

I said to myself “you know what you can do better this girl, come on! what are you doing?”

So I started a savings culture again. I told myself I must have money somewhere or something for any unplanned cost.

How long were you in that customer service job?

Not long after I finished the masters program I lost that bank job. I had sighed when speaking to a customer on the phone and that became a disciplinary action. That made them start digging further into my employment. Guess what? they had been overpaying me and that also became a bigger issue.

What do you mean by overpaying you?​
As a student, I was working 20 hours right. However, someone made a mistake when onboarding me and uploaded my details into the system as a full staff. So I was getting full pay while working part-time hours. Honestly, I didn’t know, I was just too excited to be collecting what I thought was a lot of money back then.

So they brought that up too and called me into a meeting. The meeting went something like this “You resign and we will not ask you to repay all the money. Or you remain and you will need to pay back all the extra money”

I resigned. I didn’t have any money to pay back.

Knowing what I know now, I could have sued them and won but I was a novice.

Around this time too I had moved into a flat-share with a couple of friends. I was broke and things became so bad I couldn’t pay my rent.

oh wow

I had to take in a lodger who was willing to sleep on the floor in my room but pay rent like a full tenant. This happened for three months, wonderful girl I met on one of those many microsites back then. With her payment, I was able to at least pay my rent.

Then one day one of my flatmates and friends said to me “we really can’t continue like this. We should consider taking up a care support role”.

In those three months, I had been tirelessly looking for a job with no joy. In fact I was willing to do anything to survive at this point. So at the point my friend suggested a care job I was desperate plus I was somewhat encouraged we would do it together because we had both been out of a job for months.

I was on that job for about 9 months and it was one of the worst periods of my life. No offense to those who currently do the job but too many gory stories. My friend who started with me didn’t last three months. She quit one day when she got to a client’s home and saw the woman fell down a night before almost dead. She could not get back up and didn’t get help till my friend arrived in the morning.

I kept searching for other roles. I was looking for any role and ever so slowly that dream career of international broadcasting or whatever was out of the window. I became “realistic” because I told myself it was never going to happen. I mean people with similar roles started internships and volunteering as far back as their teenage days, you could say I was late to the “party”. I even tried volunteering with Oxfam to boost my chances. Nothing clicked!

9 months later I got another call center/customer service role with Legal and General Pensions company. They called me on a Friday to schedule an interview for Monday, had the interview on Monday morning and by evening I was informed I got the role. First thing on Tuesday morning I resigned from the care support role.

You didn’t even wait?

Wait for what? I had to get out fast!

So how long did you stay in this call center role?

5 years.

​What!​
Yep, five years.

I had no clue what I wanted to do with my life at this point. I met my husband while at this job, got married, and had my first child within that period. I became very complacent. Honestly, it wasn’t because I didn’t try; I did everything within my means to get a new job; I tried to move to other departments in the insurance company but was never chosen for roles. I got diverse certifications including Prince2. I remember a conversation with one of my managers then who got to know I had a prince2 certification. He said, “What are you doing here? With this certification you should be doing bigger things”. I said I’m asking myself the same question.

And he did try to connect me with some leaders in the organization. I even tried a mentorship program and I was told I was doing all the right things. But nothing came out of it.

Around this time, my elder sister who also lived in the UK was asking me, “Aunty what is the plan? You can’t continue like this”.

It was a frustrating period.

Eventually, I resigned with no job in place.

O!

Yeah, remember I was married at this point. My husband was now a permanent resident and no longer tied to his employers in that area because they had sponsored his resident permit for work. He wanted to explore getting a job somewhere else and jointly we agreed we had outlived where we were, we needed something new. It was just a good time for me to resign and think through what I wanted to do next.

It’s funny thinking about it now. I am very very good at driving people to achieve their goals. Because I was on my husband’s case to get ahead in his career, I pushed him to take more certifications, aim for senior roles etc. I pushed to the point he became the first ever black person to attain a most sought-after certification in his field. I was his greatest cheerleader all the way.

But guess what, pushing myself was very difficult. I just wasn’t picking up myself. I struggled to give myself that much-needed push.

What did you do next?

After we moved, I was home for about nine months or so. Not up to a year but not less than 9 months. You can imagine the pressure on our finances on a single income; child care nursery, bills etc. My husband had to go “Babes, time is going. What is the plan?”

Then I got a job! I remember feeling so excited not just about the job but the pay. It was a £27k pay package. I felt on top of the world.

Remember this is me who was paid £19k per annum for so long, this jump felt like a big deal! It was a small boutique company. I was the only girl on the team with mainly developers & client services guys. I enjoyed my time there.

That job was the beginning of multiple jumps in my pay.

​What do you mean?

I stayed in that role for about 7 months and then went on maternity leave, great employers because I was paid maternity pay in that period. I resumed and only stayed for 4 months.

Not loyal. Hahaha

Well, I got a better offer. Plus my sister used to say something “Move to London or at least look for jobs in London. The perspective of the people there is very different and enlightened.

She was right.

Capita gave me an offer as a permanent staff with a £15k increase in my pay. So I was now earning £42k per annum still as a project coordinator but on a bigger scale now.

You can imagine at this time I felt like I was crushing it, I am making big money. Until I discovered the world of contracting while at my time in Capita. Some of my contractor colleagues were talking about their pay (as they always do). We were doing the same job and their pay was significantly higher than mine. I quickly became friends with them and asked them to show me the ropes.

A few months later I got my first role as a contractor, £450 per day with the Department of Education.

So you can say I went from £27k to £108,000k in about 2 years plus.

Wow

Yeah I hit the jackpot because I have not looked back since then. In fact funny story, when I was leaving my role at Capita, I was transparent with my manager at my exit interview as to why I was leaving: I am doing the same job as these other guys and they are paid much more. I wanted that for myself. Thankfully she saw where I was coming from.

So after that my initial role at the Department of Education, that my manager called me for another role at Capita this time as a contractor with an increased day rate.

Now you are officially balling!​
Yeah you can say so. Hahaha

What has been your highest day rate since then?

£650

How your life has changed financially! I know you bought a house, sold it, and moved to a bigger place and then again to a bigger place. Are you still saving and now investing?​
Savings, well my husband will say no. There are a lot of financial responsibilities now with two kids. Their expenses just never stop. At least for now.

Going back to my initial years, I know for sure if I had done a better job at saving those days when I had no responsibility, I am pretty sure I would have achieved more financial goals eg buying a house as a single girl.

But I know I am religiously putting money aside every month. Maybe I can do more but I save and also do ajo (group savings with a few of my friends).

Investing; not as much as I would like to, to be honest.

Last question, looking back at your own story what would you say to any new immigrant now?

Surround yourself with the right people! I can’t say this enough. The people you have around you is a reflection of who you are or what you are about to become. A while back I went to Peckham to visit my friend’s family for a few days and I felt so out of place. No offense to those who live there but I am glad I didn’t end up because I am pretty sure I will not be achieving some of the things I have been able to. Its a whole different world in that side of the country.

So choose very very wisely the people you will surround yourself with.

Another thing I will say to them is, to have a plan! Please don’t come with a “we will see how it goes”. That is not a plan! Please at the very least have funds to last you for the first 6 months, detail what you will do if you don’t have a job; will you go back home or stay the course?

Sometimes remaining at home country might be a better plan.

Very last question. What is your biggest financial goal?

Father lord from the mouth of your daughter, I need enough money to renovate the new house we just bought. I mean my own standard of renovation and not my husband’s standard. Because left to him we can move in its state. Men!

Hahaha.

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Immigrant Money Stories VIII: His Financial Goal is Not Having To Work

February 3, 2024

Our Immigrant Stories are back!

Before I kick off with today’s story, I need a favor.

I am looking to interview immigrants who have made money mistakes, fallen into major debt, and successfully come out of debt (maybe still in debt).

Can you please introduce me to anyone?

Let’s call today’s subject “Zoim”.​
​
​Profile​
​Gender: Male​
​Country of Residence: Canada​
​Profession: Product Manager

Why did you decide to leave your own country?

It wasn’t something that I had intended would happen. It was just out of getting married and finding a good place for us to raise kids.

Because for the longest time, I’ve always thought, I’m going to be in Nigeria. I’m going to travel the world out of Nigeria. My dream country was New Zealand. And the plan was to just visit and come back even though it was a three-day or even a week journey.

I felt like yeah, we’ll make it work in Nigeria until I met my wife and everything changed.

She is Nigerian too but lived all her life in the UK. Initially, the conversation was, that she would come to Nigeria and we would make it work. But then I started thinking, would she have to start again, does she understand the cultural shift, the adjustments in terms of salary structures and things like that? And then healthcare was sort of like, really terrible.

She did come to Nigeria for a bit after we got married. About this time she had moved to Canada and took time off work to test waters in Nigeria. But as soon as we found out we were expecting our first child she went back to Canada.

So in terms of transition, things were a bit easier because she had gone ahead while I was still in Nigeria, supporting her as much as I could from afar. I think a few months down the line, about a month before the baby was to come I left Nigeria to join her. This was smack in the peak season of the COVID pandemic.

I thought I’d be here four weeks before the baby came but you know how things were during that season, application taking forever etc. We had to get the doctor to write that I needed to urgently join as she was almost due with no family around. I was a few minutes into Toronto, turned on my mobile internet, I saw my wife had been sending me messages that her water had broken and she was en route to the hospital already.

I almost flew out of the plane!

So, long story short, my first day in Canada, my first very day, I became a father. I had to go and wait at home because this was still the period you had to quarantine for two weeks.

Your wife was already ahead so maybe it was kind of easy, but how did your settling in go? Because you’re landing as a father and that’s an immediate cost. How did you find your financial feet in the first couple of months?

To be honest, this is the first time I’m thinking about it, like, how did we do it?

And there’s no straight answer.

In that moment, there was so much going on, even in my personal life; my mom was critically sick and was in and out of the hospital which was costing me a lot of money.

The luck that I had was that my wife had gone back to work when she came back to Canada and so she was still able to get Maternity pay. That helped supplement things like the rent, bills, groceries, and things like that. That meant the burden was not on me a lot. I was focusing more on my mom and all the costs for her health.

But in terms of funding, once I got the visa I just sold off one of my cars in Nigeria. That was enough money to fund my travel ticket and continue to fund my mom’s healthcare bills.

Honestly, my wife was very supportive. Otherwise, it would have been more difficult than necessary. It gave me a little bit of a gap to be able to do more interviews. I say more because even before I left Nigeria I had started applications and getting interviews. I almost got an offer but the visa delays made them recall it. It was very painful.

I also interviewed for a product manager role at Yelp, as well. I got to the final round of the interview.

So those things were the ones that gingered and I thought once I get here, and I start It would work out.

I was on that journey for almost three months. I had a lot of interviews but I looking back now I was not landing the job because I had not picked up the cultural nuances yet; I mean answering the questions using local lingo, responding the way they know it and not the way I know it in Nigerian terms.

Yeah, I understand it’s something that I think I also struggled with. Because I knew the answers and responded to questions the way Nigerian managers would appreciate. But I had to learn how to say the answer the way they want to hear it and the way they are used to hearing it.

So it took you three months to get a job. You had a baby and to settle in very fast. So that three months and then settling in as an immigrant, how was that journey? Did you face any issues? If yes, what was the issue? And how did you solve it?

Are you referring to issues with work or just finances?

This newsletter is about the money, so the finances. Did you face any issues that had a financial impact Or something like that?

I think the biggest issue was sending money back home even while still trying to figure things out here as well.

But you know, looking back now, I think what would have made it even more difficult is if I had to worry about figuring out the rent and all the bills. The company my wife worked for, paid her a lump sum as maternity pay. So we lived on that. Another thing that also helped financially was that I still had connections with a lot of agencies in Lagos and I was able to push a proposal to one of the agencies that pitched something to Netflix. Netflix bought the idea and the initiative was almost fifteen million naira. But the amount required for me to deploy didn’t cost more than two to 3 million. So every time we needed one or two things, I just dipped into that money.

At this point, I already got a contract role. It didn’t pay a lot but it was, helping. I could I start stepping in on groceries, rent, and other bills using local currency. Eventually, the space became very small for us as a family so we needed a bigger space. We didn’t have to worry too much about finances, because we could just move somewhere that was good for our needs. We just sort of figured things out.

In the early months, let’s say for six months of me being in Canada, that’s how I survived. And even before all of that ran out, I was able to start a business and I landed another deal again, that sustained me.

I would say for almost one year in Canada, my biggest financial support was tied back to Nigeria and the entrepreneurial venture that I started here as well. I looked for contracts that were looking for things I knew I could deliver on as per my skillset but the biggest hurdle was understanding how to talk, how they speak, all those different things.

But if you are sort of entrepreneurial, you would figure out how to add two plus two together instead of just applying for jobs. Because sometimes just applying for jobs can be very tiring. It’s discouraging sometimes; you’re applying for jobs that you know you can do, upload your resume, and sometimes type it manually only to then get an email and you’re just looking for the word, “unfortunately”

Did your contract job get renewed?

No, it didn’t get renewed. After 5 months I was back on the job market. But this time instead of just applying I started looking for companies that I could sell myself to, that would pay as a business. To be honest, the luck that I had as well was the whole COVID thing and how things are transitioning around the black community in Canada. Association of immigrants were able to negotiate with the government to say, that all these fundings given to businesses, you need to be able to demand equity in who they outsource projects to. So, therefore, if you’re awarding projects, you need to be able to make sure X Y Z percentage is given to the black person

And you tapped into that! That’s good information, because thinking about it now, I need to find out if organizations here have that kind of same policy.

That was the break that I had. I was very surprised that out of everybody they picked me. So I went for a presentation, I wore my suit and all. Boom, thats how my company started; I started paying salaries instead of receiving a salary.

Would you say that you’ve actually settled in? What has been the achievement for you and what is your financial goal?

I think the achievement is based on the yardstick or what kind of goal you define as something you want to celebrate.

I think for Canadians or anyone in Canada, the minimum yardstick is homeownership. If we are using that, I can afford to buy the house.

I’ve thought about this a lot of times, my biggest goal is one, I want to go on a break for two years and not work, but also not care about my bills, because they’ll be paid by the systems I have set up.

That’s the number one for me.

My second goal is I want to do the minimum amount of work and get paid the highest. There are literally jobs like that, or businesses like that, or investments like that. You don’t get the best return on investment because you have an amazing 9-5 job. If you work for Google, they can wake up tomorrow, and say that 1000 people need to go, even as directors and VPs they need to dust their CVs and look for a new stream of income.

But what happens if you say, I want to take a break, mortgage will not say okay, I’ll take a break too.

You know, I would just like to wake up on an island somewhere and just rest, think, and even network. That’s the kind of life that I aspire to be by the time I am 40 feel by the grace of God. I want to genuinely not feel I have to work, work, and just work. I would like to be in a position where I can say my wife shouldn’t work. Not like telling her not to work, but she if does not feel like it, she does not have to.

For me personally, I am tired. I just want to groove, enjoy my life, and make good money legally. I think to be honest, that’s when we get the best ideas. You know, that mindset makes things clear.

So last question, looking at your journey and other people that you’ve in your networks in Canada, if you’re going to say to any immigrant that is coming and that is already there, or in whatever country, what would you say to them?

That’s a very tough one.

In retrospect, if I look at my own journey, there are some mistakes.

I married a somewhat high class wife. There are certain standards of life or should I say quality of of life she is used to and we had to continue to maintain that lifestyle. We didn’t start from the basement like most people do. The least rent we have paid has been like $2,300. In retrospect, I would say that some of the decisions that we made, were more lifestyle driven. And yeah, that has meant that we do not have a lot to save. So my advice to them will be if you can start small, start small.

Pick a place where you can start and when the money starts coming in, like in terms of saving, don’t be eager to quickly spend it. Stay there. Because if you’re like, Ah, I have a good job now and you moved to a bigger space before you know it, the money you can use towards the downpayment of a house will be spent on bills. Okay, imagine you’re paying $2,500 in 10 months as 25,000. All I’m saying cut your expenses, like, bring it down. And if anything were to happen, if you lose your job, you won’t feel it too much because you have something to fall back on in savings.

Another thing is, not everybody’s story is the same. Some people will post on Instagram: “I bought a house 6 months after I landed in Canada”. Don’t you dare use them as the yardstick of your progress!

Some people have rich parents. Some come from money. People have different stories and journeys. I can’t compare myself to a single guy, I have other people that I’m taking responsibility for. So ignore that and just say, You know what, before you begin to start making sense, in two years time, three years time, it’s possible that you have started seeing some traction, but don’t adjust your lifestyle immediately to that traction. That traction must be sustainable first before you then proceed to the next level.

That’s that’s very, very deep actually. Thank you so much.

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