The best parenting advice is from those that don't have an idea about what having children is. At the end of the day, it's just opinions. I have always resisted uttering anything about parenting even when I read and pay attention to the matter. Parenting is something many of us look forward to, but expectations are incredibly varied from reality. Many today start taking out educational insurance schemes even before they have a spouse but at the same time, many grapple literally to see to their children's literary needs.
August has come to an end in Uganda and it is also the start of the last academic term of the year. Normally going by my association professionally with several landlords and landladies during such times we don't expect rental incomes. Sometimes we try to break down the rent into 4 times to cover the 4 weeks that make up the month to make sure people don't create a financial back lag. By the end of the day, I will see off an eviction of three families who are jointly not been able to meet their rent obligations for 9 months, no law can even protect them anymore. The sensibility of salaries being monthly means that if a tenant falls back on their rental obligations they will never cover up.
For parents, the priority at the start of the school term is covering the educational fees also referred to as tuition and the adjacent requirements over rent. Just like any African society the moment you start earning something then the black tax aspect comes to play meaning even those childless tenants will be obligated to pay for someone else or contribute something.
It affects the whole economy even for the few people who got free money to put up properties. If you are African you should have an idea of someone getting free millions of dollars to put up properties. They too are affected because money will not be washed during that period. For those that got property loans from financial institutions, their whole prepayment schedule is altered hurting their earnings in the both short and long term basis. Maintaining properties takes a downturn when they are not bringing money, and wages for the caretakers and property managers takes a blow, spending shrinks in some sectors as only the school Centered sector is given attention. The tax man is hurt most since rental income tax and property assessments can't be justified during this season.
It's during the start of a new school term I can advise anyone to try and acquire property, parents will go to hell and back to ensure their children are in the perceived best schools as per each social status deems. In Uganda, we don't have a vibrant stock exchange so the best option for financial security is land the only asset that doesn't depreciate, so parents will from time to time procure pieces of the earth for their children but because of the state of the economy, many have started to sell them off to secure education. It's the fourth day of the week but the number of parents that have put their houses and plots of land on sale before my desk has surpassed those that did in the last quarter of the year already. You can even feel despair when the discussion is going on. The saddest part is also the number of schools that is up for sale on the other hand.
In the past, I had a friend who died when she was about 13. Before she passed her parents sold properties that ranged from land, to rentals, cars and one of their family homes all through her treatment and a procedure that she was supposed to go for out of the country. In my interaction with her, we talked about death, she was sure she was not going to live for long because she was spending most her time in the hospital. I tried to put myself in her parent's shoes and my folly would deduce against the selling of all the property since she had siblings.
From all these books I (we) read, lines are drawn from a logical point but at the end of the day, they can be redrawn. The economy and parenthood is something that powers like China have tried to take on but failed miserably. In Uganda, we don't have public schools and it costs hundreds of thousands of US dollars to raise a child. How individual parents make decisions on funding education for the lives they bring into this world can't be questioned. But demographics, education and resources in a given society influence everything on the planet. I am a peace with the fact that rental incomes will be affected but it scares me that there is going to be a generation that is going to grow up to nothing after everything has all been sold to the 1500 families that control everything who in turn will be insecure about the highly educated but unemployed.
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