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How much money does it take to be affluent in Kenya?
Rank: Member Joined: 1/22/2011 Posts: 322 Location: Chicago, IL, USA
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Hello fellow wazuans.
How much money does it take per year to live an affluent lifestyle in Kenya? I don't mean super-rich, I simply mean a 4 bedroom double story in a nice leafy suburb of Nairobi, a used Lexus GX/Prado, and a used Toyota Noah, a maid, a driver, a groundsman, decent but not top-grade primary schools for the kids, eat out one night a week at a top-level restaurant, drink out one night a week at a top-range bar, four vacations a year.
Also, all due respect to those less fortunate. I understand that for many people this is indeed rich. My aim is to maintain my same lifestyle that I have in the US while moving to .ke, and I need to know how much money that will take, without having to make risky investments. Conservative investments are fine, along with businesses, but I'm not the guy that will dump lots of cash into stocks or Forex.
Thoughts?
Thanks in advance.
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Rank: Member Joined: 7/9/2006 Posts: 79
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@Jasonhill, I don't think you'll get an answer for various reasons. First fact, that you don't have your own place to live, so rent or buy? you saying no risky investments like stocks, but you can do business, means may never have done either and thus might be equally tricky. It's a case of choosing your poison.there are very many variables to this equation that only you can figure out. For anyone one to be precise they'll have to get more details about you than you'd be comfortable giving in a public forum.
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Rank: Member Joined: 11/10/2010 Posts: 281 Location: Nairobi
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Do you want to buy that house or rent ?
Such a hse costs anywhere from 10 - 100 M it depends on the leafy suburb. And rent is from around 100k
The cars.. there are quite a number of websites with this info this days. A noah is around 800k and a prado is 2.5m keeping them on the road will be around 50k a month
Staff - around 25k in total
Kids school.. good private schools 100k a term
Dude you need like 400k a month to live that way.
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Rank: Member Joined: 1/22/2011 Posts: 322 Location: Chicago, IL, USA
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4,800,000Ksh a year madhaquer.... ok. That's a reasonable assessment. Thanks for the breakdown. On a solid, conservative investment... let's say a government bond, how much would I need to invest into the bond? Would an 5% return on such a bond, or a bank fixed deposit seem feasible? Are the returns from investment income taxed? If so, at what rate? If 4.8m is what I need yearly from the investment, that's about 96mil in government bonds or bank CDs that I'd need to invest in order to live off the interest. I guess the biggest question is taxation on the capital gains. It's pretty high here in the US. Is it also high in Kenya?
Fomoney... Thanks for your comment. I understand that my question was fairly broad. Thanks for your input.
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Rank: Chief Joined: 1/3/2007 Posts: 18,380 Location: Nairobi
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Don't forget... Some expenses are 'extra' here vs USA... The cost of many items in Kenya are much higher including good quality furniture, etc [what you take for granted in USA] Greedy when others are fearful. Very fearful when others are greedy - to paraphrase Warren Buffett
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Rank: Member Joined: 8/26/2010 Posts: 124
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@jas-here,paper planning rarely work. Js be flexible to try anything legal, get down to the fryin pan n you will be suprised.
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Rank: Member Joined: 1/1/2011 Posts: 396
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Agree with alot of comments. Actually, 480k per month is soo much money that you should not be spending it all on just living. I went through the same transition and my advice is:
Forget about maintaining the living standards you have abroad, it's just not comparable. You could live in an estate in Kenya and enjoy living there a million times more than the suburban lifestyle you have abroad.
You will still have to deal with things like power blackouts every now and then, thinking about water even if your area usually has no shortages, school bus runs that are completely different from those in the US, mad homework for your kids, insane traffic, cars that simply choke up due to the Tropical environment / roads, hungry cops, etc.
Just source a good income...400k plus, keep your costs down, and focus on re-establishing your network and living life in this lovely country! Once you've saved up 1m or so, you can start to look around for how to either upgrade your lifestyle or invest the chums wisely and watch the money work for you.
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Rank: Member Joined: 8/29/2008 Posts: 573
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JASONHILL: Taxes on returns like government bonds are taxed at 15% if the bond has a life of less than 10 years.If the maturity time is more than 10 years,taxation is 10%.Kenya govt sometimes offers infrastructure bonds for financing infrastructure projects like roads.They are tax exempt.For more on these please go to...www.centralbank.go.ke....
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Rank: Member Joined: 8/29/2008 Posts: 573
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JASONHILL: Taxes on returns from government bonds are taxed at 15% if the bond has a life of less than 10 years.If the maturity time is more than 10 years,taxation is 10%.Kenya govt sometimes offers infrastructure bonds for financing infrastructure projects like roads.They are tax exempt.For more on these please go to...www.centralbank.go.ke....
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Rank: Veteran Joined: 4/16/2010 Posts: 906 Location: Nairobi
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jasonhill, are you white?
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