This is second in a
series of blog posts written specifically for incoming volunteers.
The question of money is a big one when it comes to the
Peace Corps, especially if you’re like me and quit your nice, stable “real
world” job in order to pack up and fly halfway across in the world in pursuit
of world-changing and dream-chasing. Some of my biggest unknowns were how I
would handle my financial affairs while I was away, and just how much money I
would need to have saved in order to fully experience Madagascar and even some
neighboring countries. So with
that, here’s some money-related information I wish I knew before coming here:
First, the basics: you won’t need to access money (and won’t
actually be able to anyway) during the 2 month training period—which, looking
back, I realize was actually kind of nice and liberating. While you’re living
at homestay (first month) and while you’re living at the PCTC (second month),
you will have all your meals provided for you and won’t really need to buy anything,
except maybe for some snacks, a bar of soap, flip-flops, etc. For this kind of
expense you get a weekly allotment of what Peace Corps calls “walk-around
money”. Think of it as your weekly allowance from the Peace Corps. It’s enough
for you to buy phone credit, occasional snacks/soda/beer, laundry soap, and
other miscellaneous things during training. It’s also a good way to practice
your Malagasy because you willl have to talk to different vendors while you buy
things! It is pretty impossible to actually spend the entire amount each week,
and my recommendation is to save as much of this as possible—trust me, you’ll
be glad you did once you get to site. (A
note about phones: every volunteer buys a local cell phone to use here, both
for communicating with your family/friends back home, and for talking to people
in-country. The way they did it for my stage was that during the first couple
days of training, they took a list of who wanted a phone, and a PC employee
bought us all phones and SIM cards in Tana. They deducted the cost from our
first month’s living allowance, and I think they gave us the phones about 2
weeks in. So you can expect to have a local phone number which people can call
you/text you on after about 2 weeks of training. You’ll be using a
pay-as-you-go system, which is a culture shock if you’re used to all-inclusive
plans. It is super expensive to call/text America, but it’s free to receive
texts and calls, so have your family set your number up in Skype…. Which I
think is around 40 cents a minute to Madagascar.)
Once you finish training, you receive your monthly living
allowance via direct deposit into a local bank account, and it’s up to you to
go to your banking town monthly/twice-monthly/whenever to get money out. (This
is another culture shock if you’re used to swiping your debit card for
everything—this is pretty much an entirely cash-based country, except in major
cities!) There are 3 main banks here in Mada: BFV-Societe Generale, Bank of
Africa, and BNI. You will be assigned a bank by Peace Corps based on your site
location, and you will be given an ATM card around when you get installed at
site. (However, these are not like American debit cards that can be swiped like
a credit card—you can only use them to take out money at an ATM, and only at
your actual bank. So you can’t just pay a fee to use the BOA ATM with your BFV
card, for example.) All of these 3 banks accept VISA debit cards as well, but
only BNI accepts MasterCard debit cards, and BNI is more sparsely spread out
than the other two banks. Additionally, their acceptance of MC is not
reliable—I have yet to be able to use my USAA MC debit card, even though I am
technically supposed to be able to. So if you are looking to have access to
American money while you’re in Mada, make
sure you have a VISA debit card.
The topic of accessing American money brings me to the thing
that I wanted to address most in this blog post. As mentioned before, this is a
big question I had before coming here, and I don’t think the information I got from
a current PCV was very accurate, so I want to correct that for you guys. The
volunteer who helpfully answered a lot of my questions pre-departure told me
that I wouldn’t really need to dip into my American savings for anything while
I was here, and that the Peace Corps living allowance would be enough for the
lifestyle that most PCVs live. Wrong! My experience here has been that not just
for me but almost all other volunteers, you need to dip into American money for
vacations in-country, splurging in Tana, or other big expenditures. For
example, I was a new volunteer (as opposed to replacing a volunteer) and so I
moved into a house without any furniture. I ended up having to dip into some of
my savings in order to buy some things for my home. I also have to dip into
American money whenever I go on vacation in-country. I do save some of my
living allowance every month for traveling, etc., but it is never quite enough,
especially for holidays like New Year’s when you want to splurge a little bit.
Some volunteers who live in the countryside save a lot because they spend
practically nothing while at site-- everything is cheap and they don’t have
cell phone/internet access, so there is no way they can possibly spend much
money until they go into their banking town. However, I’m in a bigger town and
have cell phone reception/3G, lots of good food options, and great frip shopping, so there are ample
opportunities to spend money on phone and internet credit, food, clothes, etc,
and therefore it is harder for me to save money. So I want it to be known that it’s definitely possible for
you to save money and not have to spend American money while you’re here, but
it will be harder if you’re in a bigger town, or close to a big city. In
general, when I just stay at site and live “normally” for a month, I never have
a problem with money. But it’s when I’m spending time in Tana, or traveling
in-country, it gets very expensive.
Some further explanation about Tana (aka Antananarivo, which
is the capital): all of us volunteers joke that trips to Tana suck us dry. If
you’re in a town close to Tana and end up going there frequently, you will find
yourself spending a lot of money going out, taking taxis, etc. For example, a
taxi at night will cost 10,000 Ariary (although you can split this with friends),
and you’ll find yourself spending maybe 15,000 Ar for dinner, perhaps 20,000 Ar
for drinks, and then before you know it, you’ve spend 50,000 Ar in one night.
For me, that’s half of my food budget for a month. A former volunteer always
told me that he’d go through his living allowance in 4 days in Tana. Of course,
you don’t need to be going out and spending a ton if you’re in Tana; it’s easy
enough to just hang out at the meva (PCV transit house), cook in the kitchen,
and chill with friends. But you will often find yourself wanting a night out to
celebrate a birthday, go out with your PCV friends, or just experience a bit of
city life to get a break from life at site. Also, some PCVs are generously
supported by their parents are all able to go out without much regard to
budget. It gets difficult when you want to go out with friends and end up
having to “keep up with the Joneses” and then spend a lot of money that you
can’t afford. For me, I don’t receive support from my parents (other than care
packages), and all of my savings were very hard-earned, so I personally can’t
justify a lot of lavish nights out in the capital—I’d rather put that money
towards traveling.
So then the question is, how much money do you need? The
amount will vary for everyone, and I won’t tell you how much I saved, but I’d
say that in general, it would be ideal
to have about $1,500 to $2,000 set aside to see you through your 2 years of
service. I know this is not possible for many people, but it will ensure that
you can live comfortably and take some vacations in-country, as well as give
you a cushion in case you run into any unforeseen expenses. If you want to
travel outside of Madagascar during your service, plan on saving several
thousand more. For example, a flight to South Africa is about $1,200 round trip
(you’d think it would be cheaper because it’s so close, but it’s surprisingly
not.) For traveling after you COS (close of service), be aware that you can
take up to 1/3 of your readjustment allowance and put that towards your COS
trip. So that’s how most PCVs finance their COS travels.
It is definitely possible to come here and live without
having any American money to tap into, so please don’t read this and think that
you won’t be able to come here and be a happy PCV if you don’t have money
saved. But if you want to live only on your living allowance and be able to
take vacations/go out in Tana, you will have to budget very carefully.
I know that the money thing can be a sensitive topic, so
please do not interpret anything I’d said here as wanton disregard for the
purpose of the Peace Corps and the fact that we are supposed to be living like
local people, not rich expat aid workers. I merely wanted to give some honest
information that I think would be helpful for incoming PCVs to know in advance,
and present you with the reality of the situation you will face when you come
here. Money can be a big issue for a lot of PCVs, and it leads to moral
dilemmas for me because I constantly think about the fact that I am supposed to
be living on a local level—but how can I be, if I am taking out American money
to take a vacation over the holidays, and able to pay someone to wash my
clothes? But on the other hand, if I have money saved to travel here, why
shouldn’t I use it, and support tourism here? And if me paying my neighbor to
do my laundry means that she gets to earn some extra money to feed her family,
isn’t that a good thing? These are the type of puzzling issues that occur a
lot, and you will just have to figure out how you feel most comfortable dealing
with them. Anyway, once again I hope this information was helpful for those of
you who are going to be new volunteers. (I realize it’s a little late in the
game to be telling you how much money to save, but hopefully the August stage
volunteers will see this!)
