Be honest.
If ₦20,000 entered your account right now, how long would it survive?
A week? Three days? One Lagos Saturday?
Because somehow, spending ₦20,000 feels easy.
Lunch. Transport. Data. One quick supermarket run. Maybe that thing you have had sitting in your cart since Tuesday. Then there is the “small” purchase you did not plan for. Before you know it, your 20k has become a collection of debit alerts and one food delivery you are trying not to think about.
But tell someone to invest that same 20k?
Suddenly, we have questions.
“What will I gain?” “How long will my money be there?” “What if I need it?”
“What are the risks?” “Let me think about it first.”
And somehow, “let me think about it” enters its sixth month.
Same 20k.
Completely different energy. So why does spending money feel easier than investing it?
The short answer: spending often gives you an immediate reward. Investing asks you to give up access to money today for a potential benefit in the future. Behavioural tendencies such as present bias and mental accounting help explain why the same ₦20,000 can feel completely different depending on what you plan to do with it.
Let’s get into it.
Why Does Spending Feel Easier Than Investing?
Spending is satisfying.
You pay for food. You eat. You buy shoes. You wear them. You book an outing. You have a good time. Money leaves. Something arrives. Your brain understands the deal.
Investing is different.
You put money away today and wait. No delivery rider is calling you. No package is arriving. No new outfit. No jollof. Your money is simply there, doing its job. The reward comes later, and humans tend to place more value on rewards we can enjoy now than rewards we have to wait for.
This tendency, valuing what you can enjoy now over what you can enjoy later is often called present bias.
It is one reason “I deserve this” sometimes wins against “I should invest this.”
And before you blame yourself, understanding the behaviour is more useful than feeling guilty about it.
Why Does ₦20,000 Disappear So Quickly?
Here is where things get disrespectful.
₦20,000 spent at once feels like ₦20,000.
₦3,500 here? Small money. ₦2,800 there? Nothing serious. ₦4,000 somewhere else? We move.
Until all the “small money” starts forming one large family.
That is how 20k disappears without you ever consciously deciding: “Today, I shall spend ₦20,000.” Instead, it leaves in pieces.
And because each expense feels manageable on its own, you pay less attention to what they add up to.
This is related to a behavioural concept called mental accounting the tendency to treat money differently depending on where it came from or what you have mentally labelled it for, even when the actual amount is identical.
We tend to put money into different imaginary buckets in our heads.
Food money feels different from transport money. Weekend money feels different from serious money. A ₦4,000 purchase might therefore feel harmless in isolation. Your bank balance, unfortunately, does not recognise imaginary buckets. ₦4,000 is ₦4,000.
Why Do We Overthink Investing?
Because investing feels more serious.
