Managing Stipends and 20-Hours: How Motivated Nigerian Students On Fully-Funded Scholarships Can Save ￡10,000 During Their MSc Program

Introduction

I believe that money plays a critical role in the fulfillment of dreams. As such, having enough financial resources makes it easier to explore certain options that would prove expedient to our aspirations. This is a relatable truth from Mashlow’s Hierarchy of Needs that if fundamental needs are not met, it is slightly difficult to pursue higher determinations.?Hence, for a struggling student before coming to the UK, returning with as much as ￡10,000 would make it easier to forge specific growth directions.

For context, ￡10,000 is almost 11 million Naira in today’s exchange; and it’s an amount able to lift from the economic strata of being called the poor to the middle class in Nigeria. For someone like me who was earning a gross of 100,000 naira monthly, that is equivalent to 10+ years of my salary, ceteris paribus. Making ten years of money in one year is a great feat!

Balancing Scholarship Social Contract With Home Economic Reality

Having interacted with many Nigerians who came on scholarships to the UK, the common denominator in the first six months of arrival is the need to succeed academically. The belief is that someone deemed us good enough to offer us a scholarship; therefore, we must be our cohort’s best, academically, in return for the favor: to make them happy with their investment in us. We envisage ourselves as part of the finest brains in the country and graduating with “distinction” is a testament to this truth. As such, there is this binary thinking that engaging with something other than schoolwork is anti-good grades.?

However, as Alvin Toffler argues the illiterate of the 21st century will not be those who cannot read and write, but those who cannot learn, unlearn, and relearn; and Scott Fitzgerald?insists that the test of first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in mind at the same time and still retain the ability to function; I think that a complete scholar should sustain the ideals of doing well academically and rising to the responsibility of doing well financially in the light of their economic situations back home.?

Getting Started

The first pathway I know of is to do part-time hourly work. The student visa allows you to do 20 hours of work per week. At an average of ￡10/hour, that is fairly an untaxed ￡800 of potential income per month in addition to your scholarship stipends. To get started, below are my advice:

1. Burial Ceremony: Yes, the first thing you should do is conduct a burial ceremony for your shyness and your concerns about what people would think about you when they see you at work. I know you feel so popular already for winning a fully-funded prestigious opportunity and there is that tendency to think everyone is working around with cameras trying to capture all of your single moves to post it on the Internet.?Listen, buddy, no one cares; in the Nigerian lingual of the word, every Mallam with their kettles in the UK. To show you how much people do not care, you would see people smoking right in front of you, eating their meals with excitement as they move on the road, publicly displaying their affection to their partners: they would not be held back because you are looking at them. Legal works in the UK are noble things to do. Almost everyone is on the move looking for their daily bread and moving to not get caught by their bills.?
2. Get Your Documents: Upon getting your Biometric Residence Permit (BRP), you would need to get your National Identification Number (NIN), Share Code, and a UK bank account. There is loads of guidance on how to do these on YouTube. You should aim to get this sorted before September ends to start applying by October.

1. Applying For Jobs: You can apply for a range of jobs from professional office-related jobs to casual ones. Both will pay you roughly the same amount: the UK is a leveler. I focused on the causal ones as I knew my program was demanding mentally, and wanted just a physical activity-related job. To get these jobs, I focused on agencies that were seeking staff for cleaners, kitchen porters, housekeepers, waiters, and general staff among others. To find these agencies, just google search them; some popular ones are IndeedFlex, Maid2Clean, Selective Personnel, and others. In addition, there are care/ support roles and security jobs: to do this, you would need to do SIA training, and there are opportunities afterward. If you fancy a corporate job, you may focus on the career hub of your university’s website, LinkedIn, and Indeed among others.

1. Getting Paid: When starting, I advise you to get a 20-hour contract job over one-off engagements. This would allow you to maximize your hours during term time and work extra hours during holidays. in addition, you would be able to predict your income and plan accordingly. Upon starting the job, I suggest you open a separate account where you would keep the salary and refuse to touch it. If you notice income tax other than just NI tax (and pension, which you can opt-out from) is being taken from your wages thus bringing it down from the anticipated ￡700+ to say ￡600, call the HMRC and inform them and they will fix it. Otherwise, you may wait till the end of the financial year in April and they will make a refund.

There are other areas to look at to make extra money.

1. Competition Prize and Grants: As ways of keeping students entrepreneurial (business and social), many organizations constantly ask people to come to pitch their ideas with promises to give outstanding ideas some money to launch. This might be a time to start refining your ideas and presentation skills, and you might be lucky to win prizes and grants to further your work upon returning home.

1. Referral Programs: Many companies have referral program bonuses. For instance, if you refer three friends to download and use a digital bank called Wise, you would be given ￡75. The same goes with a mobile application called Lemonade (now called Lemfy): if you get five of your friends to use your link, there is an opportunity to get almost ￡150. If you research others, you will come across a whole lot!

1. Contract Gigs: If you have a strong reputational capital for something, you can get contracts for it. For instance, I know colleagues who have lots of research writing contracts and that proved to be a lot of money during our program. For me, I would rather get and subcontract than do them myself because of the huge time commitment. Websites like Upwork and Fiverr might be additional ones to get these opportunities.

Aside from the aforementioned, ensure to make friends with self-funding students. Because they have to fend for themselves with their tuition, house rent, and feeding they know a lot more legal opportunities than you, the scholarship student. By having a handful of them as friends and reasonably asking how they are making money. Many times, they would tell you where the opportunities are.

Driving Down Cost

1. Private Co-Sharing Accommodation Over University Accommodation: if your scholarship gives you your full stipend and allows you to rent accommodation by yourself, you may consider co-renting with your friends as opposed to getting the University accommodation. Co-renting brings down your cost compared to the university’s apartment which is generally more expensive (sometimes by 1.5x). However, there are pros and cons to each action. For instance, university accommodations are easier to get, closer to school without the need to buy bus cards (I believe except for work), and with a load of opportunities to meet other international students.?
2. Personal and Communal Social Welfare: Watch buying expensive clothing, constantly eating outside at restaurants, lavish shopping for your partner, unplanned group trips to explore cities, frequent visits to African stores, borrowing, and over-generous helping people with money. All of the aforementioned are important but not planning them well could put strain on your finances.

Investing Your Money, My Lessons

Within my first ten months in the UK, I had sufficient money (in Naira) leveraging on the ebbing exchange rate that moved from Naira 720 (to now 1,150+) per GBP. To invest the money, I focused mainly on Naira investing (as saving money in UK banks came with very little or no interest: I remember I had an account with some thousand Pounds Sterling that returned nothing at month-end).

I took about 20 percent of my savings in GBP and converted to Naira. I then put them in high-yielding digital banks, mostly: Branch (20% interest), Carbon (15% interest), PiggyVest (13.5% interest), Cowrywise (~11% interest), and i-Invest by Sterling Bank (~11% interest).

Furthermore, I bought Cryptocurrencies (which burnt my hands), and invested in a family fish farm which did not work out well (owing to inflation in pelleting fish meals, increased energy costs, and exchange rate at the time of harvesting - all of which did not allow any returns after a year), and bought MTN shares. My idea was to spread my risks across different portfolios while taking advantage of the exchange rate.

Sadly, for me, most of the investment (both the interests and the capital) has been diverted to supporting a few people with critical financial needs. In some aspect, some components of that are investing in human capital: supporting people at the edge of dropping out from school, helping people to enroll in schools, financing people to learn a skill, and pumping some cash into people with dying businesses, among others.

While they are good deeds, I think I did that to the detriment of my financial future which is a topical argument about black tax, prudency, and following God’s words about being an expression of His kindness to people. Right now, I am researching low-risk investments with good returns while ensuring I have sufficient savings amid the current energy crises in the UK, inflation, and other uncertainties that we deal with every day.

Conclusion

I believe that by committing to save at least 50% of their monthly stipend and working at least 15 hours weekly, a scholarship holder can return to Nigeria after their MSc with almost ￡10,000 which would prove expedient in many of their determinations. (This is my view and I may be wrong!)