Worried about the Economy? We love blaming rising prices, bad government, dollar exchange rates.. Honestly thats fair.. In all that noise a harder truth is getting buried.

⏱ 4 min read

December I sat across from my friend Kemi at a small restaurant in Ikeja. The jollof rice was great. The plastic chairs were a bit uneven. She told me for the time that year how broke she was. She said the economy was ruining everything.

Her phone. She glanced at it. Then she. Spent 45 minutes scrolling through a flash sale on a fashion website. She bought three things she didn’t plan for. Then she looked up sighed and said, “This economy.”

I love Kemi. I didn’t say anything.. I thought about that moment for weeks.

The thing is, she’s not alone. I’ve done things. Many of us have. We have financial stress, frustration with the cost of things and anxiety about the future. Then we make decisions that quietly go against our goals.

The economy is tough. That’s true.. For many people the economy is a convenient excuse for choices that are within our control.

“The economy affects your circumstances.

Your habits determine what you do inside those circumstances.”

The Real Problem Nobody Wants to Admit

It’s unconsciousness. In terms it’s the gap between what you say you want financially and how you behave with money when no one is paying attention.

Think about the seven days. Do you know what you spent money on? Not a rough guess. An account of where your money went. Most people can’t reconstruct it. That invisibility costs them more than inflation.

Consider this: If you earn ₦250,000 a month and have no picture of where it goes you’re managing a business with no records. You wouldn’t run a shop that way.. We run our personal finances that way every day. And then wonder why the numbers don’t add up.

I’m not talking about people who genuinely don’t have enough. Real poverty is a problem. I’m talking about people earning salaries running businesses with real revenue who are still financially stressed. Always at zero before the next payday always one emergency away from chaos.

For most of them the economy is a factor.. It’s not the main factor. The main factor is their relationship with their money. And that relationship has never been honestly examined.

What Financial Unconsciousness Looks Like

It doesn’t look like recklessness. That’s the part. It looks perfectly normal:

* Buying things on impulse because you “deserve it after this week”

* Paying for subscriptions you forgot you signed up for. Three months running

* Lending money you can’t afford to lend because saying no felt awkward

* Upgrading your lifestyle the moment your income increases, before its stable

* Avoiding checking your account balance when you suspect it’s low

* Spending emotionally. Shopping when stressed, eating out when lonely, gifting when guilty

These things don’t feel dramatic at the moment. That’s what makes them dangerous. They add up invisibly. By the time you feel the weight of them they’ve been building for months. Sometimes years.

So What Do You Actually Do About It?

You start paying attention. Deliberately daily without flinching from what you see.

Not a complicated spreadsheet. Not a finance app with a learning curve. Just this: at the end of today write down every naira that left your hands. Every single one.. Do the same tomorrow.. The day after.

Within two weeks you’ll see your financial personality. Not the one you imagine you have but the one your spending reveals.. That visibility, uncomfortable as it sometimes is is the beginning of genuine change.

The one thing to do today: Open your Notes app. Title it “Money. July 2025.” Write todays date your balance and every transaction you made today. Set a phone reminder for 9:30pm to do it again tomorrow. That’s it. That’s how it starts.

The economy will keep doing what it does. Prices will rise exchange rates will. There will always be some external factor making things harder. Thats not going away soon.

The people who come through this period with actual financial stability won’t be the ones who waited for the economy to improve. They’ll be the ones who stopped looking for explanations and started looking honestly at their daily choices.

Kemi is still my friend. Shes started tracking her spending. She texted me week to say she found ₦18,000 in monthly subscriptions she’d forgotten about. She sounded shocked. Then a little annoyed. Then slowly, like someone who just found a door. Curious.

That curiosity is where it begins. For her. For me.. Maybe if this post landed the way I hope it did  for you too.

Which of the habits on that list hit closest to home for you? Drop it in the comments. No judgment I promise. We’re somewhere, on this journey.