On The Money is a Piggyvest editorial series that explores the personal stories and lived experiences behind the data points in the annual Piggyvest Savings Report.
For this episode of On The Money, we spoke to Dele*, a 35-year-old media and communications professional in Lagos, about the slower, steadier version of the Nigerian dream. He grew up with no room to call his own, hustled through scholarships, worked multiple jobs to fund his way through university, and is still building, year by year, toward a number he’s tracked on a spreadsheet since 2021.
*Name and other details have been changed to protect privacy.
What was your family’s financial situation growing up?
We didn’t have much money growing up. My family of five (my parents, three kids, and two of my cousins) lived together in a mini flat. My mum was a secretary in the civil service, and my dad was a junior officer in the army. They’re both retired now, but because neither of them had a secondary school qualification, their career progression was limited.
All my siblings went to public schools, but as the only son, I got an exception to attend a private secondary school. I use “private” very loosely though. It was a heavily subsidised missionary school.
And how did that influence the way you approached money?
I’ve always had an entrepreneurial streak, which I think I got from my mum. While she was in the civil service, she also sold soft drinks in our compound for extra income, and we (the kids) also had to help sell them.
We would take a cooler of drinks to a church near our house after Sunday service and sell them to people on their way out. When we ran out of drinks, we would go home to refill.
If we sold five crates in a day, we’d get a ₦30 bonus. I was about 10 years old at the time.
What did “making it” mean to you as a young boy?
Honestly, I just wanted my own room. At school, friends would talk about their rooms, and I had no idea what that meant.
So what was your game plan for getting your room?
As a teenager, I read a novel where the protagonist’s rich uncle was a gas engineer. That was enough for me. I was a science student, so I believed that if I studied that course, I’d be rich.
So, from around SS2, I was set on gas engineering. Only two universities in Nigeria offered it at the time: University of Port Harcourt & Niger Delta University, Bayelsa. Everywhere else had either petroleum or chemical engineering. My family pushed for other schools, but I’d made up my mind.
I passed JAMB on my first sitting and got into both. I chose Rivers State because I’d spent part of my childhood there, and Port Harcourt felt familiar.
Did you get any opportunities to make money in university?
Yes. I was in uni between 2007 and 2013. During this time, I had three income streams. My allowance was ₦12,500 a month.
Then I worked at the fast-food chain Chicken Republic as a waiter three days a week. That job paid about ₦8,000 a month.
I also had a scholarship from Mobil because I’m from an oil-producing region, and it paid about ₦100,000 a year as long as I maintained a 3.5 GPA. This scholarship actually helped keep me disciplined about my grades.
A hustler.
Yes. By 300 level, I was also in SUG, and my state government ran a bursary scheme, which became another source of income.
So what was your plan after graduation?
To go straight into oil and gas, since that’s what I’d studied for. I completed my industrial training at NLNG, and they offered me a position there during my service year. But I only lasted about two weeks before I got bored.
What?
Yes. Even during my IT, I remember thinking this couldn’t be the life. The pay was good, but the work was mechanical—check a valve, and not much else. Coming from a sales background, I couldn’t see how to transition from that to doing a single repetitive task.
While waiting for my NYSC posting to NLNG, a friend asked me to take on social media management at a marketing agency, since I had already been blowing up on Twitter. This was way before “banger boys” were even a thing.
And you did?
Of course. I told myself I’d done what I needed academically. I had the grades and could always go back to engineering. So I planned to do media for a year.
13 years later, I’m still in media.
That must have been a big pay cut. How much did you have to forfeit to move to the agency?
During my IT year, I was on about ₦60,000 a month, which would likely have risen to ₦150k–₦200k if I’d resumed formally. At the agency, I started at ₦15,000 and only moved to ₦20,000 after two months.
Why did you purposely choose less money?
Fulfilment. Imagine a 21-year-old doing PR for Wizkid and meeting celebrities at the peak of their fame. Agency work was a lot more fun than oil and gas. And I genuinely thought I’d only do it for a year.
What did growth look like at the agency?
After three months, my salary moved to ₦25,000. Then we landed this international company as a client, and I got pulled onto that team, and my salary became ₦50,000 plus a $200 bonus. At the time, $200 was about ₦30,000, so altogether I was on roughly ₦80,000 a month.
What did your lifestyle look like on an ₦80,000 salary?
I used to do ajo a lot. Banks had way too many charges, so I relied on Ajo for savings. I was also living in my aunt’s house and shared a room with her son.
I lived with them for over two years, then moved in with one of my best friends. His parents invited me to move in since I was already spending so much time with them anyway.
What happened next?
I wasn’t on that salary for long. By 2016, I moved to a second agency, and my income grew to ₦300k.
That same year, I started saving on Piggyvest because the founders were young, and I never trusted traditional financial institutions. I figured that if I saved ₦1,000 a month on Piggyvest and ended the year at ₦13,000 instead of ₦12,000 or less, that was a better choice. Over time, my trust in Piggyvest grew, and it became my main savings platform.
At what point did you finally get your own room?
I eventually got a place in 2017, in Gbagada. It was a two-bedroom apartment I shared with a flatmate.
Fair enough.
I lived there for six months before the house started falling apart, as it was in a newer estate on waterlogged, swamp-like land.
Yikes!
I’d travelled to Dubai for work, and they could only salvage my TV and clothes. Thankfully, my certificates were at my parents’ house.
What did you do next?
After that, I moved back in with my friend and his family for about four months before renting another place.
When did you feel like you’d made it?
100%. In 2017, I moved to an international home and personal care brand, became a manager, and my salary increased to ₦600k. Working at a multinational mattered, especially since my parents, both civil servants, never really understood what I did working in a media agency. It was the first time my parents were genuinely proud. My mum was frustrated because she believed I had wasted the private school education they struggled to give me.
That’s also when I could finally save more deliberately to get my own apartment.
Were you confident in your media and comms skills?
Not really. I lacked the educational background most people around me had. Sitting in meetings with communications grads made me feel out of place, since I was just a social media manager. I knew I couldn’t stay passive about it; it was either lock in or leave. I chose to lock in and completed a number of qualifications to boost my skills and confidence.
So how did the beverage company opportunity actually come about?
It fell in my lap. After I moved to the second agency, the marketing director at the new company, who’s basically my mentor now, found me on LinkedIn and reached out personally.
Did your responsibilities increase as well?
Definitely. I started sending home ₦200k. I didn’t have my own family to think of yet, so I felt I owed them; I don’t even think I could ever repay them enough.
At ₦300k, I was already sending about ₦100k home. Moving to ₦600k and still sending ₦200k left me with ₦400k, which was still more than enough for me.
What was your wealth-building approach at the time?
I saved around ₦25,000 a month, enough to cover my share of rent, which was ₦300k. My rent sat in the bank. And I used Piggyvest for other savings.
During the lockdown, I took my finances seriously and locked in with my savings and investments. Sales rose during the pandemic, so my workplace increased our salaries and gave bonuses. Also, as a media and communications manager, I travelled a lot and earned bonuses from that fieldwork.
How did your career evolve from then till today?
I moved up steadily. From digital manager to brand manager, to senior communications manager, and then national media and communications manager. My responsibilities, workload, and direct reports grew as well, and at one point, I had 18 people, plus an agency, reporting to me.
This season built my financial and leadership instincts. I learned to plan, start saving seriously, and travel more. Before that, my only travel was work trips to Dubai and London.
I was there till 2022 and left when I felt ready to go full-time with my own agency.
That’s growth.
I set up the agency with a partner. Getting clients was the hard part at first, but my network from my previous company carried some weight. Early on, we ran it like a one-person business, and all the money came into my personal account.
But as we grew and landed bigger clients, we had to get more structure. Big businesses would ask for tax returns, CAC documents, bank statements, and the like. So we had to standardise everything.
Did you have a financial safety net that gave you the confidence to leave structured employment?
Before leaving the company, a friend running his own company needed campaign advice. I jokingly quoted him ₦5 million, and he sent it on the spot, no hesitation. That was about three or four months of my previous salary.
I built him a full plan, drawing on years of exposure to proper agency-level strategy, and he was blown away. Then he asked me to go on retainer at about ₦1 million a month, and a referral followed, paying ₦500,000. Before long, my consulting income alone, as essentially a one-person operation, was about ₦2 million a month. I was basically making this money in my sleep.
What did you do next?
So I locked in fully to earn more. After six months of that, I’d saved around ₦10 million. I was dating my wife at the time, and she valued job security a lot. But I told her I had a year’s salary and, at worst, I’d find another job within a year.
She came around, and I moved fully into the agency.
What did a good month versus a bad month look like for you, income-wise, at that point?
Bad months might bring ₦800,000; good months could hit ₦3 million.
How long did you run the agency before returning to the workforce?
I went back to a 9-to-5 early 2025 purely for security, since I was getting married.
The agency’s still running, with about 16 staff on payroll now. I handle the operational side; my partner runs the creative end. We’ve grown, become more legitimate, with proper contracts and retainers that insulate us from those good-month/bad-month swings now.
How did your lifestyle improve as your income increased?
Bigger house, moved to the island (which I regret, given the flooding). A company car. More savings, more frequent travel, and more capacity to support church and missionary work.
What does your monthly income look like these days?
On average, ₦7–8 million.
On that income, how much do you support your own family?
I support my parents with whatever they need; I give them lump-sum money for bigger things and put them on a regular monthly stipend. I don’t consider providing for those who sacrificed for me as Black Tax. It’s my responsibility.
Before I even bought myself a car, I bought one for my mum. It’s technically for both my parents, but it’s registered in her name, since she’s the one who raised me.
Is there an ideal income you feel you should be earning?
Yes, definitely.
How much is that?
For context, I still have friends who work in oil and gas, and when we hang out or are planning in our WhatsApp group how to fly to Monaco to attend the Formula 1 championship, I feel like the poor one in the friend group.
My friends who have spent 10 years in oil and gas earn around ₦25 million a month. I’m also 10 years into media and comms, and while I get job satisfaction, they get the financial satisfaction. So I benchmark my income against them, since we studied the same thing.
Many would say you’re living the Nigerian dream. Would you agree?
The average Nigerian dream is to have money and be a “baller” and a “helper”. Nigerians carry this hero mindset; being able to afford bottles in the club while taking care of your immediate family is the Nigerian dream.
But that’s not my dream.
What is your dream, then?
My dreams have shifted over the years. First it was my own room, then a car, then a house. Right now, it’s $1 million in my savings and investments portfolio by 50.
The minute I hit it, the dream will shift again, which is probably why I’ve been tracking every bit of it on an Excel sheet since around 2021.
The $1 million figure is very specific. How did you arrive at that as your benchmark for financial independence?
I chose $1 million because one of my measures of success is being a millionaire by a global standard, not a Nigerian one. I don’t think I should set a lower benchmark for myself just because of where I was born.
If you came into a million dollars today, how would you spend it?
A million dollars is a lot of money, but I’d approach it the same way I would approach a ₦1 million windfall.
About 25% would go into long-term investments like stocks and bonds. Another 25% would go into a trust fund for my daughter. The rest will be split between savings and enjoyment. I’d let myself enjoy about 30% of it.
Is that the same strategy you’d have used when you were just starting?
No. The higher you earn, the higher your bills, but the more you can also save. If I’m comfortable spending ₦1 million monthly and my income doubles to ₦2 million, I should be raising the savings percentage.
At ₦100,000 a month, saving 10% made sense. At ₦125,000, I should move up a little, maybe to 11%.
At ₦1 million a month, saving ₦250,000 means you’re saving 25%; but at ₦10 million, I wouldn’t still be saving just 25%. I’d save an even larger share.
Do you think you’ll keep working after you hit your $1 million goal?
No. The goal is to grow my pension fund to around ₦200 million; I currently have about ₦45 million. This lines up with my 2041 target for the $1 million USD goal.
I want to actually enjoy myself by 50, since my daughter will be around 18 by then, and they should have roughly $100,000 in their school fund.
God forbid you lost everything today, what’s your next move?
That would be a real gamble, but I’d lean entirely on my network and skills to bounce back, since that’s what got me here in the first place. Usually, when people do bounce back from something like that, they come back even bigger. Isn’t that what happened to Job in the Bible?
Now that you’ve reached a level of financial stability, does it feel the way you imagined it would?
Honestly, it feels mad. I follow Arsenal religiously, and my friends and I already have plans to catch a big Premier League fixture together later this year. I travelled for the UEFA Champions League, and even though we lost, it was a great experience.
I’ve got long-validity visas for the US, the UK, and Canada, so I can travel pretty much whenever. My daughter is a US citizen. The only thing left to pray for is good health.
You’ve spoken about your network many times. How have you managed to build such strong friendships?
I grew up in the trenches, and that experience teaches you something about relationships. When you have no money, you must bring value. I strongly believe in value creation over value capture. I learned this in an MBA class. Creating value means you’re providing something useful; capturing value means you’re maximising that thing to your own advantage.
I was always at the top of my class academically. I did the Cowbell Maths competition in Lagos and placed in the top five in Lagos State. Over time, I learned to lean into that, to punch above my level, to be memorable, to provide value, because once you do that, people genuinely buy into you.
People who come from poverty often carry a fear of returning to where they came from. How do you manage that fear?
There’s something the artist Portable said that I always reference: “If you really knew where I came from, you wouldn’t wish for my downfall.” I sold soft drinks as a 10-year-old. So honestly, going back to that is my biggest fear. Not being able to provide for my family the way they’re used to, not being able to go on family vacations to Disneyland or Paris, or having to say, “We can’t afford this anymore,” are some of my biggest fears.
That’s part of why I try to be smart with investing. Over time, if you’ve invested long enough, dividends alone can sustain you.
There’s also the value side of things. I’m good at my job, so I don’t expect to lose it anytime soon, and I’ve got roughly ten more years before retirement anyway.
You enjoy travelling. How do you fight the part of you that would rather hoard than spend, given your fear of poverty?
I see them as hobbies, and I think hobbies matter. If I genuinely love football, things that spark joy aren’t indulgence; they’re fuel. It’s why companies give you leave. You work, you deplete, you rest, you come back stronger, and then the cycle repeats.
I need that because I missed a lot growing up. I didn’t fly for the first time until I was about 23. I never had a bicycle, or even my own room. So now that I can have those things, I will, because I believe in rewarding my own labour.
I’m also not going to keep saving purely for my daughter’s sake. She’s already starting with 500 times what I had, and nobody has expectations of her the way people had of me. So I’m going to watch my team play and travel with my friends.
Is there a moment from your childhood that you look back on now and think, “Wow, all of this was worth it”?
Yes. While working as a waiter at Chicken Republic, I was once accused of stealing from the till, and even though I tried to explain I’d never do that, I lost the job anyway.
My mum had a boss who talked down to her; people spoke down to my parents and me. In secondary school, I once wore an imitation Cortina since we couldn’t afford the real thing, and a teacher called me out in front of the entire assembly, making a spectacle of it instead of addressing my parents privately. I still resent her for it. Why embarrass a child for their parents’ situation?
That’s cruel.
Another time, my school fees were a month late, and it dragged on long enough that people just assumed I was sick. My friends came to check on me, and I had to pretend. I remember my mum crying that evening before she borrowed money to pay it, and my principal kept me out of football for a month after, still thinking I was recovering.
So, yes, it’s definitely been worth it.
You’ve come an incredibly long way. What do you still want from life?
Now, I just want to be healthy. Financially, I want to be able to provide for my family, my siblings, and my parents.
