The Asset Called You

You know exactly what you send home each month. The amount. The date. The reference on the transfer.

Now a harder question. Do you know what was sent into you?

Spend an evening with young professionals in Lagos, London or Houston and you will hear two habits. The first is a complaint about black tax. The second is a comparison. Someone else started with property. Someone else's parents left a title deed and a portfolio. Why are you the one carrying the weight?

Both habits make the same mistake. They read half a ledger. One column shows what leaves your account. The other column, the one that explains why you have an account at all, never gets opened.

So do not compare. Check. Open the other column. This is what I found in mine.

The farm that did not last

My grandfather built a farming business in Akure. Land, cash crops and the labour of his family were his assets, because those were the assets his time offered.

It lasted as long as his children stayed. They did not. One by one they walked towards the classroom, because education had become the new way up and nobody wanted to stay bound to a hoe. Inheritance did the rest. In a large family across more than one household, land can split into pieces too small to matter, and the argument over them can turn bitter.

The children with schooling left to start from nothing. The farm business ended there. A different kind of investment began.

The bet my parents made

My parents had no land worth fighting over and very little cash. They had to decide where the little they had would go.

They bet on their children.

They did it the way many families did, through Ajo, Esusu and cooperative thrift societies, where people pool money and take turns to receive it. A small part met urgent needs at home. Most went to school fees and textbooks.

In my case, they paid my education fees through their labour. I was the asset they chose to build.

The reasoning was simple. When money is that tight, you back the asset you trust most. They trusted that children do not forget their parents.

Read the ledger again

Now read it again from where many of us stand. We have laptops, global bank accounts, company shares and jobs that pay in strong currencies. From up here it is easy to look back and judge. We call the monthly transfer black tax. We decide our parents were poor with money because they left no portfolio.

That misreads the story. If you came from a modest home and now earn well, you did not start from zero. Your parents did. What you earn today is partly what a risky bet paid back, funded decades ago by shared savings and skipped meals.

Your parents started from zero. You started from them.

This is why comparing fails. You can see another person's house. You cannot see the years behind it, or the years behind you. Looking sideways tells you almost nothing. Looking back, carefully, tells you where you really began.

The fair objection

Black tax can be heavy, and sometimes it is unfair. Support without a plan can crush a young person's savings, and some families ask for more than anyone can give. I do not dismiss that.

But a limit is different from a grudge. Honouring where you came from does not mean giving without boundaries. It means deciding on purpose. Talk to your family early. Make the support a planned line in your budget, not an emergency every month. Give what you can sustain.

Not every parent invested well either, and some left almost nothing. The check still helps, because it asks a better question than who has more. It asks what was put into you, and what you will do with it.

How to check

Ask for the story. Sit with your parents and ask how they paid for your schooling. You may learn what it cost.

Write the ledger. List what was spent, given up and borrowed on your behalf.

Plan the support. Decide what you will give and how often, and say it openly.

Build what outlasts your labour. Own assets that earn when you are not working, so your own children do not carry the same pressure.

Stop comparing starting lines. You cannot see anyone else's ledger.

My grandfather invested in land. My parents invested in us. The tools change with every generation, from acres to classrooms to businesses, shares and property that earn without you. The rule does not. Wealth is built by owning assets that produce value beyond your own labour.

Somebody will stand on what you build, the way you are standing on what was built for you.

Respect the lineage. Look after the people who paid for your start. Then build something sturdy. For the other side of this idea, read The High Cost of Being Only a Consumer.