Ms. ME makes snacks to sell to schoolchildren. She is 30 years old, a primary school graduate, and has her own mobile phone. When the Diaries study started, she lived with her parents but then her mother passed away and her father went back to their home village. Ms. ME’s brother and his wife, and an aunt, also lived with her and, while her mother was alive, shared the same cooking pot. After her mother’s passing the household divided: Ms. ME and her brother and aunt still eat from the same pot, but the sister-in-law keeps some of her business income separate. They haven’t quarreled – it just turned out that way.

Ms. ME’s home is owned (land and building) by the resident aunt, who was relocated here nine years ago by a government scheme and was granted the land. She had to tear down an old structure on the site and build the present house, which cost Ks. 900,000. The home is on two floors, but has very low ceilings. They have a motorbike, one broken TV and one working TV that they have borrowed. She has the gear for making the snacks in the home. The snack business is done jointly with her sister-in-law, who has invested in it by helping to buy some of the inputs. Jointly, during the period of the study (from August 2014 to July 2015) they brought in around Ks. 100,000 a week. They prepared the snacks at home, on charcoal, and sold them in the streets to children.

Cash flow management

When our diaries started and ME’s mother was still alive, the mother managed the household affairs. After her death this duty passed to Ms. ME. The brother did not make any independent income – he helped prepare and pack the snacks, lump the charcoal, and so on. The aunt sometimes sold turmeric in the streets, but not very actively.

When the mother was still alive, Ms. ME earned income from her snack-making and received transfers from her sister-in-law from the income she made from her business. After the mother’s death, Ms. ME’s sister-in-law no longer transferred her business income over to Ms. ME, but kept it for herself—the cash flow chart reflects this change because Ms. ME stopped getting regular intra-household transfers after week 12 (December 2014) . At the same time, Ms. ME’s spending decreased as she no longer spent money on behalf of her sister-in-law. Later in the year, the aunt resumed some turmeric selling and, as a result, she started transferring money to Ms. ME.

Savings and loans

Ms. ME’s financial life was largely limited to her saving and borrowing. The most significant financial tool Ms. ME used during the Diaries study was her savings club. She saved Ks. 1,000 a day. Her club had 30 members, all women associated with the local market, and was of the ‘ROSCA’ (rotating) type, with a prize of Ks. 450,000. During early March 2105 (week 29 in the financial tools chart), Ms. ME told our somewhat skeptical interview team that her prize “was due in two weeks’ time.” Sure enough in week 31 it arrived on time and in the right amount. The arrival of such a large sum (the largest single transaction of her year) meant that she could repay an interest-free debt that she had built up dealing with the death of her mother—Ks. 251,000 repaid on the same day she received her prize. She put the rest into store at home, and took it out again the next week and transferred it to her family who needed funds for clothes and other necessities. As well as her membership of a savings club, Ms. ME has always been a good home-saver, and in April 2015 (week 34 in the financial tools chart) she took her Ks. 250,000 from her home savings and, with a fresh loan of Ks. 200,000, fulfilled a solemn undertaking she had given to her mother to donate to a monastery to help them build a boundary wall.

Planning ahead

In an interview with the Diaries research team, the year of the Diaries study was not a normal year for her. Usually the household ran a steady surplus, and there were less of the ups and downs she saw in the Diaries study year. She hoped to avoid further borrowing because she feared damaging her reputation, and her eligibility for savings club membership, by a failure to repay on time. She hoped to continue with her savings club and home savings, borrowing only when really needed. She also hoped to rebuild her store of gold jewelry, which she liquidated to help pay for her mother’s medical and funeral costs.

About the Myanmar Financial Diaries

The UNCDF MicroLead programme funded by Livelihoods and Food Security Trust Fund (LIFT) in Myanmar aims to contribute to the development of a strong, inclusive financial sector in Myanmar. UNCDF commissioned Microfinance Opportunities and TNS Myanmar to conduct a year-long Financial Diaries research study to provide in-depth market intelligence on the economic behavior of low-income residents of Myanmar. The study covered 101 women and 10 men living in urban, peri-urban, and rural areas of the Mandalay Region. The Diaries gathered information each week between August 2014 and July 2015 on the respondents’: purchases, sales, earnings, loans (including store credit), loan repayments, savings deposits and withdrawals, and transfers of money both within the household and outside of the household. The respondents also reported on any unusual events that occurred each week.