Diarist 15
Diarist 15 in the year to November 2024:
Status: husband, father, household manager Household size: 4 (he, wife, son & daughter)
Occupation: tailor. Education: finished class 7
Major assets: house and homestead plot and 1/3 acre of farmland; sewing machine
Net income year to Nov 2024: 178,000 taka (USD 1,495 PPP$ 6,214, or PPP$ 4.25 per day per person): Income in kind: c 3,000 taka annually
End Sep 2024 balances at formal FSPs: Savings 11,000 taka, Loans 0
Diarist 15 is a tailor. He shares a rented space with another tailor, but that is a recent development, before which he used to set up his sewing machine in a clothing store run by someone else. That shop owner used to oblige Diarist 15 to on-lend to him loans from the Cooperative. Diarist 15 fell victim to what was probably a scam (but may have been his own carelessness) in his Mobile Money (bKash) account, in which he lost 15,000 taka. In early 2017 he told us he was nervous about giving us data, so we stopped collecting from him, but he came back a couple of years later saying that he'd decided his fears were groundless and that he rather liked the contact with us and the way that giving data made him think about his money management.
He and his wife are educated and are raising two children, the second born in 2019. His health is not good - he has a heart problem. His mother died some years ago and his father - who used to live with them - in 2021. As well as their home and the plot it sits on he has a small plot of farmland (0.06 acre) from which, in 2024 for example, they got and consumed 100kg of paddy worth around 3,000 taka.
As chart 01 shows, the first period of data collection (to early 2017) was not very eventful, and he made a surplus from his tailoring most months. The later period is notable for his wife's inheritance of land after her father died, which came in two tranches in 2021 and 2022 as the land got sold off, and their extensive rebuilding of their home.
Diarist 15 (l) in the new premises
Diarist 16, chart 01, balance
Diarist 15, chart 02, gifts
Gifts
Gifts play a fairly modest part in their affairs. They got cash from family members (outside the household) for their home rebuilding, and from time to time for other needs. Diarist 15 has a brother overseas who does not remit to him regularly but sends the occasional cash gift.
They give occasionally to religious causes and family.
Loans and savings
Diarist 15 has been a regular and intensive user of loans and savings, as charts 03 and 04 show. At one time his wife had accounts at three MFIs, but had abandoned them by 2018, paying off the loans and taking the accumulated compulsory savings. Diarist 15 didn't like the way Grameen Bank pressured his wife to take a loan in late 2016.
Diarist 15 has long held an account at the Cooperative, which became his only formal financial partner and has been intensively used for both borrowing and saving. The Coop differs from the MFIs in being much more flexible (there are no fixed dates for repaying loans which can be repaid as and when the borrower desires) and offering a daily collection service at Diarist 15's workplace. Of all our Diarists, Diarist 15 has taken most advantage of this flexibility. He often repays loans in lump sums and immediately takes another, for example. He runs saving and borrowing alongside each other, often making a loan repayment and a savings deposit each day for days on end. He has made 1,687 daily repayments, and 2,881 daily savings deposits, during the period we have been tracking him.
The Coop loans he takes, and the savings he withdraws, are not used in his business, the costs of which are small. They go to his building work and other domestic needs, and the savings withdrawals sometimes go to pay loan interest and loan repayments. As of the time of writing he has 11,000 taka in his savings account and no loan.
He also uses informal devices. For example, he takes howlats (interest free loans) from family and friends. There have been several instances of using the rehan device (see Diarists 10 and 14 for an explanation): for example in early 2021 he took a rehan loan, letting the lender use his land for a period, and using the money in the home construction work, before repaying it. He has also taken local informal farm loans to cultivate his land.
Diarist 15, chart 03, loans
Diarist 15, chart 04, savings