Diarist 22

Diarist 22 in the year to July 2025:
Status: husband, father, household manager Household size: 2 (he. wife)
Occupation: laundryman, some farming. Education: grade 4, wife grade 6
Major assets: house and homestead plot; half acre farmland, cows
Net income year to Jul 2024 : 63,554 taka (USD 530 PPP$ 1,978, or PPP$ 2.71 per day per person): Income in kind: at least 50,000 a year from farming
End Sep 2024 balances at formal FSPs: Savings 0, Loans 0
main worry about his family, May 2025: my poor relationship with my son and daughter-in-law

Diarist 22 is a mild-mannered rather retiring middle-aged man who runs a small laundry business, washing clothes at home and then ironing them in a very small rented booth in the market. They have a bit of land which he and his wife farm, and they rear cows. They have a married daughter and a son who almost fell out with his father during his adolescence but who is now working in Sripur, a town not far from our area. That relationship is still shaky (mid 2025).

Just before Covid struck, Diarist 22 received money from the sale of some inherited family land in India. This came as a surprise as he thought he had no title to the land, but a brother living in India arranged for him to get a share. It not only helped them survive Covid, but allowed them to rebuild their home during 2020 and early 2023. In 2022 his wife was found to have a tumour of the stomach: they spent money on medical fees and the son contributed largely to this. Diarist 22 spent generously on his son's marriage in 2023.

2024 was not such a good year: a cow he bought for rearing and on which he spent money for medicines died and the carcass had no value.

D22 in his booth

Diarist 22, chart 01, balance

Gifts

Gifts have not been a major element of their money management. The only notable amount was the receipt of 100,000 taka as a dowry payment when Diarist 22's son married. Other than that there were a few, small, gifts in and out.

Diarist 22, chart 02, gifts

Loans

Nor have they relied at all on loans. Diarist 22's wife held an account at the MFI Grameen Bank for some years, but used it to make some savings: when the loan officer insisted she take a loan, she closed their account, and they have had nothing to do with MFIs since then.

At the time of their son's marriage they took a howlat (from the family of the bride) and quickly repaid it.

Diarist 22, chart 03, loans

Savings

Chart 04 shows that their lack of interest in financial services extends to savings, too. After they closed the MFI Grameen account because they didn't want to be forced to borrow, they made no effort to find another partner. Nor did they use any informal means to save, such as a moneyguard or savings group.

We show what is really a commercial transaction but can be considered a 'forced' saving. He had previously given a deposit (or perhaps a security payment) to the shop owner and got some of it back when he closed that shop and moved to another, in early 2021.

Diarist 22, chart 04, savings

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