SHOCKING
One Month Rent in America Pays One Year Rent in Ghana 😳
I’m coming home, I’m coming home
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I live alone in America, so I’ve been contemplating moving back home to be closer to family. It’s always been a dream. As an American and a Ghanaian citizen, to be able to live in Ghana and visit the states or vice versa whenever I wanted always felt like it’d be the best life ever.
I want to live the best life ever!
To live that kind of lifestyle — traveling back and forth — I need freedom. Freedom to go and come as I please. That means working a job that would allow me to work from anywhere.
When I finally quit my job when the pandemic started and focused on my writing career, this dream felt closer and closer as the months went by. Having let go of my 9–5 and being solely focused on writing online, this dream feels like a possibility.
Being in Ghana right now, I can’t help but think of my dreams. I can’t help but think, imagine and visualize what it'd feel like living the laptop lifestyle, traveling, and going where I like.
I can almost touch it.
I know my mother would be thrilled if she could see me more, but I never discussed it with her because I don’t want to get her hopes up. But I couldn’t stop thinking about it.
I finally talked to mother.
“That's a great idea, you really should move closer to home,” she said. “But what's holding you back?”
I said uhm, well, you know, the papers 💵.
Money, cash, dough, Mula, sika.
“Me hia sika, Maa!” (In Twi-Translates “I need money, Maa!”)
“I see,” she says. “But money for what?”
“Money for rent, mostly.”
“You can live here for free.”
My mother owns some flats/apartments in our home that our family does not occupy, so she rents them out. But I need my freedom, so living with my mother is not going to work out very much. I’m a rebel.
“Ok, then rent an apartment in the capital close to the ocean,” she advised.
“That would be the best life ever,” I say. “But those apartments are probably very expensive!”
“No, not really. You can get a really nice place for 500 Ghana cedis a month or a regular place for 100 GHC.”
“Excuse me, what?” I say. “Did you mean 5,000 GHC?’’
“No, 500 GHC,” she says.
My jaw dropped and my eyes were so wide they almost popped out of my eye sockets. I was shocked.
500 GHC= $88. I couldn't believe it.
100GHC=$17. That’s unbelievable.
But she was even more shocked at what I told her.
“That's so cheap! Right now my rent in America is $1,031 a month, and that’s the cheapest I could find for a one-bedroom apartment.
$1,031=5,923 GHC.
Her jaw dropped.
“You pay almost 6,000 GHC every single month?” she said with her eyes wide. “Have the Americans lost their minds? That’s too much!”
Both of our jaws were dropped. We were both shocked. She didn’t know I was literally paying a fortune every single month in rent, and I didn’t know rent was so cheap in Ghana. I was surprised at how ridiculously expensive my rent is and she was at how ridiculously cheap rent in Ghana is.
But we were both excited because it meant one time: Make dreams come true!
My $1,031 monthly rent in America pays 1 full year of a 500GHC luxury apartment in Ghana and even two years of the cheapest place I could find.
That’s insane! It’s crazy! I always wanted to make this move.
This is the time!
