Diarist 08

Diarist 08 in 2025:
Status: widow, mother, mother-in-law, grandmother, household manager Household size: 5 (she, daughter, son-in-law, two grand-children)
Occupation: brick-breaker (plus truck driving by son-in-law). Education: none
Major assets: house and homestead plot
Net income in 2025: 63,360 taka (USD 565, PPP$ 2,136, or PPP$ 1.17 per day per person): Income in kind: none
End Sep 2025 balances at formal FSPs: Savings 0 taka, Loans 0
main worry about her family, May 2025: my youngest daughter's survival after I'm gone (I have no son)

With Diarist 08 we leave our run of shopkeepers and go back to someone more like Diarist 01 - a widow surviving through unskilled labour. In this case she breaks bricks by hand for use as aggregate for concrete (Bangladesh has no stones).

Her husband had been a fisherman, and died about a year after we started tracking the household, though he had been too sick to work for almost a decade before that. They held no assets other than their simple home and the land it stands on. They had five daughters and on his death all but one were married and living away. The fifth girl was in school, and getting her married became 08's main preoccupation until she did get married in late 2021. In the picture the daughter is with her son and her mother (08) outside 08's shack.

08 with daughter and grandchild

Diarist 08, chart 1, balance

As we see in Chart 01, there have been two big events requiring abnormal spending - the funeral of her husband in late 2016, and the marriage of her last daughter in in late 2001.

In mid 2022 the fourth daughter and her husband and children moved in with 08. They had previously been renting. The husband's income as a truck driver started to come into the now 5-person houehold. Before that, 08's income as a brickbreaker had been insufficient in many months to cover her expenses.

Diarist 08, chart 2, incomings and outgoings on a daily basis

Managing on daily basis

We can get an idea of how she manages on a daily basis from chart 2, which shows each day for May and June 2018.

Diarist 08 was working as a brickbreaker, getting work most days but paid in arrears fairly frequently though not regularly. In late June for example more than a week goes by between payments.

As a result, there are many days when her outgoings exceed her income, and she has to take to manage this. The chart shows two examples of large but necessary spending - a stock of rice for the period, and the electricity bill. Somehow, these are paid for out of short-term home-based money-management, with the help, as we'll see, of gifts from family.

Note: The median value of the payments she gets from brickbreaking (that is, several day's pay) has been 300 taka, worth in 2018 about $5, or about $10.70 on a PPP (Purchasing Power Parity) basis.

Diarist 08, chart 3, gifts

Gifts
In this third chart we see the considerable support in the form of cash gifts that 08 has been getting from her four already-married daughters and their spouses. This culminated with gifts for the marriage of the 5th daughter - some of which 08 had to gift on to the new son-in-law's family as dowry.

Neighbours also helped with the funeral costs in 2016.

08 has given a few small gifts herself.

Diarist 08, chart 4, savings

Savings

In another similarity with Diarist 01, Diarist 08 saved consistently in order to achieve the marriage of the last daughter.

In her case, she chose to use a DPS (Deposit Pension Savings) account offered by ASA, a major MFI. She made monthly payments of 500 taka and almost never missed.

She also had some 'ordinary' MFI savings which she transferred to a fixed account.

When the marriage occurred the savings were withdrawn, after which she stropped saving in any formal vehicle - again like Diarist 01.

Diarist 08, chart 4, loans

Loans

The reason Diarist 08 held a DPS Savings Account at ASA (chart 04) is that she had been an ASA borrower several times when her husband was working, many years ago. When he fell ill, she stopped taking loans, fearing she wouldn't be able to repay them.

In late 2018 during a difficult period of low earnings, she took a small ASA loan again, and repaid it regularly within 10 months. But repaying wasn't easy, so she hasn't borrowed there again.

She also once took a very short-term interest-free loan from her brother in-law, again during a difficult period.

on to Diarist 10

back to Diarist 07

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