You pat your pocket in traffic and it is not there. For about three seconds you are thinking about the phone itself. Then you think about everything inside it. Most people have never worked out the answer to this one, which is strange, because it is far more likely than
Your circle already works. People contribute, somebody collects, the turns go round. The problem is not the ajo, it is the admin. One person is holding everybody’s money in their personal account. The record is a running note or a pinned message. Every month somebody has to go through
You have been thinking about your own December. The travel, the outfits, what you can manage, what you will skip. Somewhere else, somebody has been thinking about theirs, and you are in it. An uncle. A cousin. A younger sibling finishing school. Somebody from home who heard you are doing
You have some money sitting in your account right now. Not spending money, the other one. The amount you quietly think of as what you are saving. It is not savings. It is money you have not spent yet, and those are two very different things. The Difference Is Whether
A survey of nearly 19,000 Nigerian adults was published recently, and one number in it is worth sitting with. Among people who had been hit by a financial shock, about 72 in every 100 handled it in a way that left them worse off afterwards. Only about 14 in
The alert lands and for about four days you feel like a person. You settle what you owe, you buy the things you postponed, you say yes to a few outings. Then you check your account somewhere around the 6th and the number does not make sense. You were not
Money moves faster between now and December. People are contributing to thrift groups, sending money home, paying for travel and clearing debts before the year ends. Fraudsters know this too, which is why the ember months are always their busiest season. In September, the Central Bank of Nigeria warned banks
Every year the same thing happens. December arrives, everybody is travelling, buying, gifting and celebrating, and January quietly sends the bill. This year, CircleFunds wants you to walk into December with the money already sitting there, waiting for you. So we started the December Savings Challenge on Target Savings. It
September opened the ember months. Between now and the end of December there is school resumption, the price creep that arrives every year around this time, Christmas, family obligations, travel and Detty December. Most people meet all of it from the same account that pays their rent. That is why
Ajo is safe when three things are handled: who holds the money, who keeps the record, and what happens when somebody stops contributing. Almost every ajo that collapses fails on one of those three, not on the idea itself. Ajo has worked in Nigeria for generations. People contribute a fixed
Ajo is a Yoruba word for a group savings arrangement where a set of people contribute a fixed amount on an agreed schedule, and each member collects the pooled sum in turn until everybody has had a turn. It is one of the oldest savings systems in Nigeria and it
Anyone who has done Ajo knows saving is not one decision. Sometimes you need money you have not finished saving yet. Other times you need money you already have to stay untouched and grow. Those are two different problems, and CircleFunds gives you a tool for each. What Ajo Actually