Ask someone how they are preparing for December and there is a good chance the answer will be, “I’ll just use my salary.” It makes sense. Salary comes every month, so what could go wrong? Quite a lot, actually.
There is a pattern around the ember months. As the year winds down, fraudulent activity and financial losses have historically shown spikes around this period. More people are spending, doing business and looking for ways to make money before the year ends. This is what the year-end rush creates. It creates an opening for scammers, giving them plenty of room to make a fraudulent offer look like exactly what someone needs.
... Food is already taking a significant share of household spending, and recent data shows that the pressure has not disappeared. The National Bureau of Statistics reported food inflation at 20.31% year on year in July 2026. More recently, the SBM Jollof Index put the average cost of preparing a pot of jollof rice for a family of five at ₦29,578 in June 2026, a 14.6% increase from the same period the previous year.
This check-in is less about asking, “Did I achieve everything I planned?” and more about looking at what has changed and whether the plan still makes sense for the months ahead.