According to the 2025 Piggyvest Savings Report, 3 in 10 Nigerians earn below ₦100,000 monthly. A recent conversation about what Nigerians earning this amount do with their money has made us wonder: What does life look like on ₦100,000 a month?
So we spoke to six Nigerians who live in Lagos and earn around this amount, to learn more about their lives. Some pay rent. Some live with their parents. Some are the parents. Some spend half their income getting to work, and still worry about supporting their families. What they all have in common is little room for mistakes, emergencies, or pleasure.
Grace, 45, Nanny
I live in Oshodi, and I used to pay ₦72,000 a year for rent. Since last year, it’s gone up to ₦120,000. So that’s ₦10,000 a month, although I have to pay six months at a time or the full year upfront. Next year it goes up again, to ₦15,000 a month.
My salary went up last year too, from ₦80,000 a month to ₦100,000. It’s still never enough.
I save for my rent through contributions. I put in ₦50,000 every month from February to November, and after the ten months, I collect my share: ₦500,000. You can withdraw early if you need to. I took ₦250,000 two months ago to buy a fridge, so what I’ll collect in November is ₦250,000, not the full amount.
From there, I’ll pay my rent, take care of my family for Christmas, and do the Christmas shopping. It’s not easy. I sacrifice half my salary every month so the rent is settled and my children are taken care of, and from what’s left, I still pay for transport to work and back every day. It’s always tight, but I’m managing.
Gbenga, 24, Lawyer
I earn just a little over ₦100,000 a month. I don’t pay rent because I still live with my parents. They live in the Redemption Camp, on the outskirts of Lagos, but I work in Victoria Island, so every workday starts around 4:00 am, hoping I find someone heading into the island early enough to give me a lift.
Transportation alone costs about ₦5,000 a day. Some weeks I manage to stay with a friend who has a boys’ quarters on the island, so I don’t do the full commute, but even then, it adds up to around ₦80,000 a month. That’s before food. I spend roughly ₦1,500 a day just eating at work, another ₦24,000 gone. Add these two together and you’re already past what I earn in a month. I’m not managing money, just surviving the best way I can.
The commute itself is incredibly stressful. It’s not really the distance; it’s the traffic — island to mainland, mainland to wherever. Sometimes, a trailer falls down and the whole road stops moving. I get home by 9 or 10 pm most nights and ask myself why I’m doing this. But law school didn’t guarantee me that anyone would pay me more than this.
I’ve finished school, but I still have two younger sisters in school, and I can’t pretend that’s none of my business. I might not send money home every month, but I assist by buying toiletries, sorting out light bills, replacing whatever breaks. My parents gave me everything to become who I am, so it would feel wrong to act as if I owe them nothing back.
People in government keep talking about affordable housing in Lagos like it already exists somewhere. I don’t know where. I don’t know anywhere in this city where a self-contained apartment goes for under ₦70,000 a month, and that’s before you’ve eaten or moved an inch.
Sekhani, 25, Freelancer
Right now I dabble in a bit of everything — ghostwriting, operations work, whatever comes my way. My income isn’t stable, so some months are better than others.
I live in a two-bedroom apartment in Ikorodu that I share with someone else, and we split the rent between us. It costs about ₦750,000 per year.
I’ve been job hunting for about nine months now. I was keeping a record of every application and every response for a while and then I stopped counting in June because it got overwhelming, somewhere past 105 applications. Out of all of those, maybe three or four ever responded at all. Two got as far as an interview. I didn’t get either of them.
The one offer that did come through had a base salary of ₦60,000, and it needed me in the office three times a week. Leaving Ikorodu to get into town is expensive on its own. You need a bus just to get to where the other buses are, and if you’re even thinking about ride-hailing apps, then your entire day’s pay is gone before you’ve done any work.
That’s part of why loan apps get so many people. They advertise everywhere and then the interest they charge is triple what they actually lend you. If I had two million naira sitting somewhere, do you think I would be borrowing two hundred thousand from an app charging me back double for it? People don’t take these loans because they enjoy debt. They take them because they’re desperate.
And when you can’t pay, they come for you. They insult you, message the people on your phone, they send death threats. It’s been super embarrassing. Meanwhile you still don’t have the money for the original loan, never mind what they’ve added on top.
Sunday, 47, Gateman
I earn ₦100,000 a month. I work at an estate in Ikeja, from six in the evening to six in the morning. Six days a week. Sometimes seven if someone else doesn’t show up. My house is in Mushin, and I live with my wife and two children. They just increased the rent to ₦600,000 this year. My wife works in Tejuosho.
Some mornings, I come home when she’s going out and we talk small about what the children need and who will pay for it. ₦100,000 is not enough for a family, so I wash cars for some of the tenants sometimes. ₦1,500 for a small car and ₦2,000 for a jeep. If I wash four cars, that’s a good day.
People think if you’re a gateman you’re just sitting down, but the job is very stressful. Someone comes back at two in the morning, you open the gate. Someone is leaving at five am, you open again. Sometimes NEPA people come, sometimes delivery people come. It’s also not safe like that.
When I get home in the morning, the children are getting ready for school. Everywhere is already noisy. Sometimes I sleep for a few hours and wake up again. I can sleep anywhere but not very well because I’ve been doing night work for a long time.
I think about looking for another job, but I don’t know where I’ll go. At least this job pays every month. It’s ₦100,000, but I know that by the end of the month, it will enter. My son is registering for WAEC, and that costs money. I’ve seen people leave jobs to find something better, then the better thing ends up not working out.
Hanifah, 25, Lawyer
I earn ₦150,000 a month, and I don’t pay rent right now; I stay with family. It sounds like it should make things easier, and in some ways it does, but it’s not the most convenient thing. I really want my own place, no matter how small. I just can’t afford Lagos rent.
To conveniently afford rent here — meaning I can cover transportation, fees, food, everything else without panicking — I think I’d need to be earning at least ₦350,000 per month. And that’s just bare rent. It doesn’t factor in furnishing a new place or the cost of actually moving.
The hardest part is how it affects other areas of my life. I can’t meet the goals I’ve set for myself and career, and it feels like I’m constantly rolling downhill. It’s paycheck to paycheck, and every naira counts. Half of what I make goes straight to transportation to and from work.
Whatever’s left doesn’t do much, so I’ve become a micromanager of my own money. I think ten times before I buy anything, even the smallest treat.
Mental health doesn’t really exist for me at the moment, if I’m honest, because there’s no space for it. Everything demands money in one way or another. You handle one thing, come back thinking you’re fine, and realise everything else has fallen apart.
Fatima, 23, Intern
I currently intern at a Nigerian financial institution and earn ₦100,000 a month. I shuffle between my parents’ house and my grandparents’. I don’t pay rent; I can’t even contribute to it yet. Eventually, I want to move out on my own, but I’d need to be earning over ₦700,000 a month before that actually makes sense.
Transportation is my biggest problem. You can’t afford a dignified way of getting around on this salary. Even fuelling the smallest car would eat almost all of my monthly income. So I take public transport instead, and that alone can swallow half my salary, sometimes more, especially on days it rains or on days you decide to give in and take an Uber ride.
I still have to buy things to eat, even though I live with my parents, and by the time that’s spent, there’s not much room to save. I used to keep Target Savings and SafeLock back when I had a bit more breathing room. Now I can’t put in more than ₦20,000 a month without risking borrowing from someone.
It’s hard to do anything outside the basics with this salary. Even going out requires spending ₦25,000 or ₦50,000 to have a decent time. Everyone I know has gone to see the new releases at the cinema, and I can’t, because I’m trying to be financially responsible. But it’s funny, because being financially responsible is supposed to mean managing your money well. In my case, there’s no money to manage in the first place.
Everywhere in the world, one’s income has to cover transportation, food, housing, family responsibilities and whatever emergency might come their way. For the six people here who live in Lagos and earn roughly ₦100,000 per month, it also has to leave room for the lives they’re trying to build. Unfortunately, it doesn’t.
