Money questions, answered

Yes, and the arithmetic is not close. Starting ten years earlier with a small amount usually beats starting later with a large one, because the early shillings compound for the longest. The common mistake is waiting until the amount feels dignified — by which point the thing that was doing most of the work, time, has been spent.

Three to six months of expenses is the usual answer, and the more useful question is how quickly you could reach it. If your income is irregular, lean toward six; if you have dependants relying on you, lean toward six as well. Keep it somewhere it can be withdrawn in a day — its job is availability, not return.

Probably not. PAYE rises in bands, and NSSF, SHA and the housing levy are all percentages of gross — so a raise increases four deductions at once. Only the portion above the band threshold is taxed at the higher rate, though; the whole salary is never re-taxed. If the net went DOWN, that is worth querying.

No. This is the most persistent myth in Kenyan pay, and it costs people promotions. Only the shillings above the threshold are taxed at the higher rate. Earning more always leaves you with more after tax — the increase is just smaller than the headline.

It is a statutory 1.5% of gross pay, matched by your employer, under the Affordable Housing Act. It is not optional for salaried employees. What matters for planning is that it comes off before you see anything, so every budget and loan-affordability sum should be built on the figure after it — not on your gross.

Compare the rates honestly, after tax. A digital loan or Fuliza balance costs vastly more than any legal investment returns, so clearing it is the highest-return thing available to you. A cheap SACCO loan can be different. The exception in both cases is a small emergency buffer — without one, the next shock puts you straight back into the expensive debt you just cleared.

It is about 365% a year — on a Ksh 600 balance the daily fee works out to 1.0% a day. A daily rate is accurate, but it is quoted over a period short enough to look small. Fuliza is genuinely useful for a true emergency; used every month to bridge the same gap, the gap ends up costing more than it did. A small buffer built up over a few months is usually the gentler way out.

Ask whether that 12% is flat or on reducing balance. A flat rate charges interest on the full original amount for the entire term, even though you are paying it down — so a 12% flat loan costs roughly what a 22% reducing-balance loan does. Both are legal, both get quoted, and only one of them sounds expensive.

Your own savings are pledged as security, so that portion stops being available for your own borrowing even though it still appears in your balance. If they default, it is taken. The realistic question is not whether you trust them — it is whether you could absorb the loss and the frozen borrowing capacity at the same time.

Since 1 September 2025, Kenyan banks price variable-rate loans as a published benchmark (KESONIA, the overnight interbank rate, or the Central Bank Rate) plus a premium for the bank's costs and your credit risk, plus fees. Existing loans moved across by the end of February 2026. Banks must publish their rates, premiums and fees on the Total Cost of Credit website, so you can compare offers before you sign. For context, the average bank lending rate was 14.82% in December 2025 (CBK Bank Supervision Annual Report 2025).

The Central Bank of Kenya licenses digital credit providers — 195 of them by December 2025 — and publishes the list. Check a lender's name against CBK's directory before you borrow or share your contacts. A licensed lender must disclose its full cost of credit up front; if an app cannot tell you what you will repay in total, that is reason enough to pause.

CBK's mortgage survey put the average rate at 13.5% in 2025, down from 15.2% in 2024, over an average term of about 11.5 years — though individual rates range widely around that. Lenders refinanced by the Kenya Mortgage Refinance Company offer fixed-rate home loans at single-digit rates to qualifying buyers, so it is worth asking any bank or SACCO whether it takes part.

Not necessarily, because those two numbers are not the same kind of number. The fund figure is gross, so 15% withholding tax takes it to about 10.2%. The bill quote is a simple annual rate on the price you pay: hold a 91-day bill and roll it four times and you earn a little more than the quote, then the same 15% takes it well below. Whether the fund wins depends on the gap after both adjustments — and on this app that gap is usually smaller than the advertised headlines suggest. Comparing headlines directly is the most common investing error in Kenya, and this app computes both on the same basis so you do not have to.

In shillings, yes. In what those shillings buy, not quite. Inflation is 6.8% (CBK, 30 Sept 2026, via Mwangaza Yield), so a 3% account — less 15% withholding tax — loses a little buying power each year even as the balance rises. For comparison, CBK measured the average bank deposit rate at 7.13% in December 2025, about 6.06% after tax. Your emergency money belongs somewhere instantly available; money you will not need for a while can usually do better.

Bank deposits are covered by the Kenya Deposit Insurance Corporation up to a limit per depositor, so small balances are well protected and large ones only partly. At December 2025, insured deposits were 19.5% of all bank customer deposits by value (CBK Bank Supervision Annual Report 2025). SACCO deposits have no statutory guarantee yet — the fund the law provides for is not operational — which is worth weighing alongside any rate.

Different, not simply safer. Tier-1 SACCOs are SASRA-regulated and often pay materially better than bank deposits, but your money is less liquid and your shares are not a deposit you can simply withdraw. Read which pool a quoted rate applies to — dividends on shares and interest on deposits are different rates on different money.

Recognise what is actually being allocated. In pure cash every member ends the cycle identically — everyone pays every month and receives the same pot once. What differs is timing: receiving in month one is an interest-free loan from the group, receiving last is an interest-free loan to it. That gap is real money, so rotating who goes first between cycles, or drawing lots each cycle, is the fairness mechanism rather than a formality.

SHA is a floor, not a plan. It is built around accredited public facilities, so if you or your family currently use private hospitals, SHA alone is a change in the level of care rather than a cost you have covered. Decide deliberately which you are planning for — the mistake is assuming SHA continues whatever you have now.

Because it moves the opposite way to everything else. School fees end, the commute goes, the house gets paid for — ordinary costs drift down in real terms. Medical does not: premiums are banded by age and climb steeply, on top of general inflation. A household spending 6% of its budget on cover today typically needs around 19% of its retirement capital set aside for it. That amplification is invisible in a monthly budget.

Often not. Kenyan insurers commonly decline NEW members past their mid-sixties, admitting older people only where cover has been held continuously. So the decision about retirement medical cover expires BEFORE retirement does. If you intend to have private cover at seventy, the time to hold it is well before sixty-five.

Not without adjustment. It comes from American market history and sizes a pot meant to last forever. Two Kenyan realities change it in opposite directions: retirement spending does fall in real terms here too, but less than the Western literature assumes because extended-family obligation does not retire — and medical costs climb steeply while everything else falls. This app prices those streams separately rather than applying any multiple.

Statutory figures — PAYE bands, NSSF, SHA, the housing levy — come from the Acts and are cited on each calculator. Treasury bill yields come from each CBK auction (currently the CBK auction of 22 Oct 2026, via Mwangaza Yield), and inflation from the official reading (CBK, 30 Sept 2026, via Mwangaza Yield). Banking-sector figures — average deposit and lending rates, mortgage costs, mobile money and digital lending — come from the CBK Bank Supervision Annual Report 2025. Every figure carries its date and publisher, and where a number is our estimate rather than a published one, the calculator says so.

Treasury bill yields update with each weekly CBK auction and are always shown with the auction date — at present the CBK auction of 22 Oct 2026, via Mwangaza Yield. Inflation is the latest official reading (CBK, 30 Sept 2026, via Mwangaza Yield), and banking-sector averages come from CBK's annual report. If our rates source ever falls behind, the affected pages say so plainly rather than let an old number look new.

It is free, and nobody is paying us. There are no affiliate arrangements on any product listed and no advertising or tracking scripts. Every calculator runs in your browser and sends nothing anywhere. There is no account and nothing to sign in to; moving a plan to another phone is an exported backup file you carry yourself. Even the action plan is generated on your device by a deterministic engine; nothing is sent to any AI provider. The privacy notice sets out the details. If any of that changes, it will be stated plainly rather than discovered — a tool that quietly earns from steering you is worth less than no tool at all.

No. JiPange is not a licensed financial advisor, and everything here is arithmetic plus published rates — it does not know your circumstances. It is built to let you check a claim somebody else has made and to arrive at a conversation with a bank, SACCO or advisor already knowing what the numbers are.