Other than first time visitors who can learn about it here, every one of my log readers knows about the #52WeekChallenge. We are in August, week 32 and this week’s update is exciting. Zahra (awowoderia on Twitter) has been updating me about her savings all year, then a few weeks ago she hit me with great news. She broke her M-Shwari bank and used the…
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Have you joined the #52WeekChallenge powered by M-Shwari? To join, set up an M-Shwari Lock Savings Account, start saving and you just might get a cash reward. As I post this, we are kicking off Week 4 of the #52WeekChallenge, use the MoneyBox App (for Android) to calculate how much you are supposed to save on a weekly basis and start today! Ahead of Valentine’s Day, I asked Koome Gitobu…
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Earlier this month, Safaricom announced the launch of Fuliza, an overdraft facility available to all M-Pesa users. This product is supposed to make it possible for customers to fully pay for goods and services via Paybill and Buy Goods and to send money, even when they do not have sufficient funds. How it works Fuliza works like a bank overdraft facility. Basically, if you need…
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As a young family, I am keen to adopt certain holiday rituals that I hope will eventually build happy memories, especially for my 6-year-old. One of those is the Christmas lunch. We get dressed up, preferably in new clothes because we are Kenyans, and we eat a fancy lunch away from home. Last year, this worked out perfectly. We had booked our lunch at an Italian…
Read MoreIf you have dealt with a bank outside of Kenya (especially in Europe, US, and Canada), you will admit that while our banks have done a lot, sometimes a lot more than their peers in developed countries, to make banking convenient for us, the power dynamics here are heavily in favour of financial institutions. Our banks charge us a lot more for basic services which…
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A while back, I shared how I managed to negotiate interest-free installments for my insurance premiums with the insurance company and also got a discount. I have since changed insurance companies and when I moved, I asked again, and they said yes. Businesses that are sensitive to customer needs will tend to be responsive to the things that matter to their customers. This is why…
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In 2012, I wrote about why I do not have, and had no plans not get home internet. It simply did not make sense then, both financially and practically. That has since changed. For the last two years, I have had a fibre connection to my house. So what caused me to change my mind? First, fibre internet got cheaper. When I wrote that article,…
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For a long time, using M-Pesa on your phone was not a pleasant experience. If you had a feature phone, you had to access the M-Pesa menu, then navigate it using a USSD menu. Some smartphone users (especially iPhones) had to dig deep into their phones, to even find this SIM Toolkit menu. As if that was not hard enough, you then had to be…
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Have you called a call centre recently? The most annoying part of all call centre calls is usually the authentication process, where they try to figure out if it is really you on the phone, or it is a fraudster. In my experience, most call centres will ask for my phone number (I always wonder why they haven’t embraced caller ID), my ID number, email…
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NIC Bank (which has been my bank for the last 7 years), recently launched their newest innovation, East Africa’s first Video Teller Machine at their branch at The Mall, Westlands. In addition to the VTM, the bank now has also upgraded their NOW SERVE ATMs, which allow customers to deposit cash and cheques instantly into their accounts – unlike with other banks, where the ATM…
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