Letter 05
Re: Money Will Surprise You
Dear Immigrant,
The salary looks large until you learn what it costs to live inside it. This is the most common financial shock of immigration and it is almost universally underestimated, because the people who told you about the salary told you the number without telling you what the number becomes after the country takes its share.
Tax will take approximately twenty to thirty percent depending on your bracket and your location. Rent will take thirty to forty percent of what remains. Transport, food, utilities, insurance, phone — these costs are not optional and they are higher than you expect. What remains after these fixed costs, in most immigrant stories I know, is smaller than the person imagined when they made the decision to come.
The financial shock is not a reason not to come. It is a reason to arrive with accurate information rather than the number on the job offer. The number on the job offer is not your money. It is the starting point of a subtraction problem. Know what the answer to that problem is before you commit to a lifestyle that assumes the starting number.
Build a budget in the first week. Not a theoretical budget — an actual one, based on the actual costs of the actual place you have arrived in. Find out what rent costs in your area. Find out what the tax rate is. Find out what a monthly transit pass costs. Add these up. What remains is what you have to work with. Plan from that number, not from the number on the offer letter.
Send money home only after you have covered your own costs. This sounds obvious and it is one of the most violated principles in immigrant financial life. You cannot fund two households on an entry-level salary. Decide what you can send, set it as a fixed amount, and hold it steady. The people back home will adjust their expectations if you set them clearly and early.
Financial discipline in the first two years determines the trajectory of the next ten. This is the part that feels like restriction. It is actually construction.
From someone who learned this the expensive way,
A former immigrant
dearimmigrant.com
◆ YEAR IN KENYA SERIES
This essay is part of the Year in Kenya series — twelve months in Nairobi, April 2025 to April 2026.
The analytical home for the series is gabrielmahia.com, where Gabriel writes on power, institutions, and what holds under pressure. The full reading order — 34 essays across 5 properties — is at the Year in Kenya series page.