My name is Francis. I am married with three children aged 10, seven and three. I have always been bad at setting and realising resolutions. I am determined to change this with an ambitious goal. In the coming year, I want to build a three-bedroom home in Thika. My estimated budget is Sh3 million. I already have the plot.

My net income is Sh60,000. My monthly budget is as follows. Rent Sh10,000, food and groceries Sh20,000, KPLC, water and GOtv Sh4,000, chamas Sh5,000, tithe Sh6,000, wife allowance Sh5,000, bank savings account Sh4,000, minor debts Sh3,000, parents Sh2,000. My wife works in the education sector and earns around Sh23,000 but I don’t really follow how she spends her money. How can I achieve my goal by December 2025?

Inziani Khasiani, financial consultant and the executive director at Klientele Kenya

Starting your financial investment journey can be difficult, especially if you do not have prior investing experience. A solid financial plan ensures you are well-prepared for the challenging investment journey.

Commitment is the reason you start, consistency is the reason you finish. If you are not committed at the beginning, you may not get the desired results.

Commitment equals persistence, which equals daily, weekly, monthly and yearly habits designed to build wealth according to a strategic plan. Building wealth is a continuous process until you achieve success. The key is to start right and persist long enough to succeed.

Why do some people desire success, yet they do not get to experience it? The problem is their lives get overrun by urgent matters that take time, money, and energy away from their goal.

Life is a daily battle between your most important, internally driven desires competing for scarce time and resources against all the clutter of life. The winner of this epic battle is determined by your commitment.

You need to handle your finances objectively but in a smart way so that you can see the truth of the situation. You then accept it, and act in your best interest. Avoid dwelling on emotional baggage from your past or wishful thinking about your future.

You must proactively make room for building wealth by adopting daily habits that will lead you towards your goal. Investing is not just about you. It is also about the environment you are operating in.

You must structure your environment to literally pull you towards the goal. Sharing your goals with other people, for example, makes you more accountable.

That can only happen through a properly designed plan that prioritises and strategically focuses your daily activities to produce the desired result. An investment journey without a plan is a waste of time.

Back to the basics. What financial goal are you trying to achieve? Is it a long-term or short-term goal? During periods of financial turbulence, it is hard not to focus on immediate needs at the expense of long-term goals. You need to avoid the temptations of short-termism.

For a high-level capital project, a long-term approach will always yield better results. Not aligning your investment decisions within the long and short-term context may be an exercise in futility.

Closely related to timelines is the amount of investment. As a general rule, the higher the amount, the longer you should expect the project to mature. “Higher” is used here relative to individual financial situations.

Depending on your background, you may not have financial knowledge in making personal investment decisions. As you start your investment journey, take keen interest in financial matters and invest in improving your financial literacy. You should use financial advisors to provide guidance on what you consider complex financial decisions.

Let’s move to your specific investment project. There are several things you should consider as you pursue the goal of building a residential house.

I note that after meeting all your expenses, there is only Sh1,000 left, which is not enough to meet your goals. Option one is reduce your expenses and put aside more money in savings and other financial channels.

Building a house without borrowing will be a big challenge given the short period you wish to actualise the project. Consider scaling down on amounts spent on tithe, wife allowance, savings account and parents, and save.

If these items are scaled down by 50 per cent, the net income position improves to Sh9,500. The amount being used to pay loans should also be channelled here once the loans are fully paid off.

You have not given enough information on the chama item, so I will make some assumptions to come up with a final recommendation.

I will assume that there is no loan, and that the funds accumulated in the chama account so far are minimal. I therefore recommend investing the current figure of Sh5,000 plus our rationalised figure of Sh9,500 into a chama.

Let’s round the total amount to Sh15,000. Investing Sh15,000 monthly and eventually using the deposits to secure a loan of Sh3 million will take 48 months.

The second option is for you to approach a commercial bank and try to secure a loan using your current payslip. The bank will require you to show that your current income is not committed towards any other loans.

They will also compute the total amount you commit in loan repayment. This amount must not exceed three-quarters of your net income. You must undertake the rationalisation exercise that we went through above before approaching the bank.

Different banks have different interest rates and different loan repayment periods. The computed monthly repayment figures range from as low as Sh35,000 to as high as Sh55,000.

Purely from that point, you will need to review your expenses to set aside adequate funds to realise your goal. Using the numbers as they are now, you will most likely qualify for an amount less than the figure you are looking for.

Using the numbers and taking into account some of the factors we have looked at above, you may wish to amend the timelines within which to actualise your dream of building a house. All the best.