debt load

The last Sunday of the month, and your uncle is at the dining table with his phone, calculator, and a small frown that everyone in the house has learned to recognise. He is not doing sums for fun. He is adding up the cooperative loan instalment, the balance on his card, the small loan from his colleague, and the rent top up he promised the landlord. That total, the whole weight of everything he owes at once, is his debt load.

People tend to think of their debts one at a time. The ₦150,000 cooperative loan feels manageable on its own. So does the ₦80,000 owed to a friend. So does the card balance. But debt does not visit you one bill at a time from your salary's point of view. It all lands together, and your income has to carry the full weight every single month, more than the pieces you feel like remembering.

A landlady in Enugu with a shop loan, a supplier credit line, and a personal loan for her daughter's school fees is carrying a debt load too, even though none of those three things share a name or a lender. What matters is not how many separate debts she has, but what they add up to against what she earns.

In the UK, a Nigerian nurse sending money home might have a car finance instalment, a credit card she uses for emergencies, and an overdraft she dips into before payday. Lenders there look at all of it together when she applies for a mortgage, because her total debt load tells them more about her real situation than any single debt does.

The number on its own does not tell the full story either. Someone earning ₦2,000,000 a month can carry a heavier debt load comfortably than someone earning ₦300,000 a month carrying half as much. It is always about the weight relative to the shoulders carrying it.