Managing your finances easily

Enter the telecom companies; coupled with the emergence of a middle class and all this has changed. I can now transact anytime, anywhere. 

By Charles Katongole

A few days following pay day, I strolled down to the ATM slipped in my card and the machine only put up all the options that existed but didn’t really care to use that moment.

As I could not get the one leading to the cash withdrawal, I selected balance inquiry hoping to get an answer to why the only option I needed was missing. As I had suspected, my balance was zero but I just could not remember how it had run so low so fast.

The mini statement inquiry didn’t provide much help either, as all it showed was the date; time; amount and location of the transactions; I just could not recall what I had spent my hard earned money on!!! Getting increasingly frustrated, I thought a trip to the banking hall might provide the answers to my predicament.

As I sat through the traffic; I kept reflecting on how frequently this scenario keeps playing itself out a few days after pay day. I could vaguely recall the wedding contribution, the fuel payments; rent; the advances/repayments to/from friends/family but I just could not put a finger to where the funds had evaporated to. I remembered promising myself time and again to keep a log of all my expenditures and I always seemed to do this immediately after the resolution but a few months down the road it would slip away.

In the banking hall, the smiling teller agreed to provide a statement of my account so I could revisit my financial past for answers. Perusing through the statement, I could easily reconcile the one entry on the credit side and a few significant debits, with the rest just a hazy memory. I folded my statement back into the envelope and headed back to my desk almost an hour “wasted” but still none the wiser as to where my funds had disappeared to.

I resolved to start recording my expenses again!!! There is a common quote, “The reasonable man adapts himself to his environment to meet his needs; the unreasonable man adapts his environment to himself to meet his needs. Most of the human advances are credited to the unreasonable man.” I kept thinking how corporations and organisations (most which employ us) have us tracking and building systems to record / measure their expenditures; so why not draw on that exposure into our personal space.

A good number of them had even taken it a step further and linked the payments systems to their bank accounts; that way all expenses are recorded as they are incurred. Imagine if one could record their expenses in a similar way. Wouldn’t that just be awesome and nail it?!! I capture expenses as I spend…imagine the numerous hours that would be saved (not to mention the reduced trips down to the bank).

Over the past years in Uganda, most financial services/systems have been built around satisfying the corporate need with the retail/personal banking business built around supporting that corporate agenda. This has been in part due to the high cost of providing the traditional brick and mortar (branches) and in part due to the high cost of technology.

Enter the telecom companies; coupled with the emergence of a middle class and all this has changed. I can now transact anytime / anywhere (yes anywhere….thanks to the internet) and best of all; I can capture the narratives the way I do understand them.

That way not only do I have the convenience of paying that wedding/social savings contribution at the meeting itself, but I will record who am paying and that’s the record on my statement. I can pay utilities, transfer funds locally and internationally, check / query transactions or even buy forex at the comfort of my desk.

It’s now apparent that I have to step up my exercise routine to compensate for the calories that I used to burn walking to the bank not to mention the reduction in frustration from not knowing where my funds have been slipping to thanks to on line /internet banking.

The writer is head of assets and liabilities management at Standard Chartered Bank Uganda.