Living in the diaspora, far from home, comes with a huge responsibility for the individual. Requests for financial assistance from family, friends, and acquaintances can be rife, overwhelming, and stressful. Here are 4 ways Tina reduced such requests:
Communicate boundaries
At the start of her life in Canada, financial requests regularly buzzed Tina’s iPhone 8+ she left Nigeria with. Most of the financial requests made were those to cater for things like healthcare, school fees for younger siblings in university back home, rent, general upkeep, etc.
Communicating boundaries means being objective about your financial limitations. It comes from an understanding of what you can give back without hurting yourself as you’ve got needs in the country you currently reside.
Tina had to explain to her parents in one family meeting that she had some bills to pay too and her resources were not unlimited. She shared how sometimes, although she wanted to provide for all their needs and ‘abroad’ can feel like a place to do that, she needed to prioritize her needs to be able to continue earning to provide for them.
She communicated that she may not be able to help every time they called for help, and that should be okay.
See also: How to claim back tax back on money you sent home from Ireland
Invest in a money-generating venture
This means putting money in ventures back home that could generate income and take care of some of the financial requests made by the family.
For Tina, she encouraged her siblings to be on the lookout for investment opportunities that helped them make money that could cover some part of their university education. It cost an average of 40,000 Naira monthly to care for their needs so she thought to them “what business could we do that would give you this amount monthly?”.
This essentially was to avert the chance that some bad month could mean that she would not be able to send anything home at the exact time they needed it.
They ended up building a 2-bed property at the back of her father’s home, which gave the family an extra 620,000 Naira yearly.
Read also: How to send money and claim it back from revenue
Pay for necessities for your loved ones
Tina, like many others before her, learned that there are some constant things that are requested from family back home. It is usually rent, healthcare, food allowance, school fees, etc. that is mostly requested from her loved ones.
For instance, one can pay for rent ahead of time or use savings tools to plan for that expenditure.
However, paying for a necessity that could become an emergency like healthcare one cannot really determine when a rather healthy person may become very ill, and if after such illness has been managed, they’d relapse and require regular checks.
To prepare for this type of cost and reduce multiple requests for the same item that may have been taken care of by you, you can get a health voucher from WellaHealth
Source for opportunities
Information is the real currency today. Several programs and opportunities are available for Nigerians to pursue.
There might be scholarships you are privy to or government programs that could help provide some extra income for your loved ones back home. Be liberal with information and share it with them on time so they can prepare before the deadline.
Remember to mention to them that this is your plan to get them to get extra income and reduce financial requests from you.
That’s all!
We hope this blog post helps you reduce reduce financial requests from home while you hustle abroad. Want to send health home? Visit WellaHealth Diaspora Platform here
