My Father Couldn't Pay Our Fees, Yet We Found Ksh5 Million in His Account

Growing up, I genuinely believed we were a poor family.

My father owned a small agrovet shop in Migori. It brought in enough to keep the business running, but whenever school fees were due, the same conversation would begin.

There was no money.

By the time I joined university, the situation had become even more difficult. HELB helped cover part of my tuition, but there were still accommodation, upkeep and other expenses to think about. At the same time, my two younger siblings were in high school, and their fees also needed to be paid.

Almost every school term felt like a crisis.

Sometimes my siblings were sent home because of fee balances. On my end, I constantly worried about where my next semester's upkeep would come from. Relatives occasionally stepped in to help us stay afloat.

I never questioned my father.

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He worked hard, opened the agrovet every morning and closed it every evening. I simply assumed the business wasn't doing well enough.

Whenever we asked about money, his answer never changed.

There wasn't any.

I graduated in 2023 and was fortunate enough to secure my first job as an accountant a few months later.

Just as I was beginning to settle into employment and looking forward to helping my family, tragedy struck.

My father passed away in 2024.

Apart from the grief, we were left wondering how we would support my mother and keep the agrovet running. We assumed there was very little left financially because that had always been our reality.

Weeks after the funeral, one of my cousins asked a question that none of us had considered.

Had we checked whether my father had any money in the bank?

At first, it sounded unlikely. Still, we followed the legal process. We obtained the necessary documents proving we were the next of kin and began making inquiries.

What we discovered left all of us speechless. My father had accumulated Ksh5 million and some hundrends in savings. For several minutes, nobody spoke. I remember staring at the figures repeatedly, convinced there had been a mistake.

How could the same man who struggled to pay school fees have accumulated that much money?

The discovery left me angry.

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I kept replaying moments from university when I skipped meals to stretch my upkeep. I remembered my siblings being sent home over fee balances and the embarrassment my parents carried whenever relatives had to contribute.

The money had been there. Why hadn't he used even part of it to make our lives easier?

For weeks, I quietly resented him. Then I started asking questions.

I spoke to family members, his close friends and people who had known him for years. I also found myself reading about financial behaviour, trying to understand why someone would accumulate substantial savings while living as though they had very little.

That is when I came across the concept known as the Endowment Effect.

It describes how people can become emotionally attached to something simply because they own it, making it difficult to let go, even when using it would create greater value.

The more I reflected on my father, the more it made sense. To him, the growing bank balance represented security.

Every additional deposit reassured him that he was getting closer to a bigger dream. One evening, my mother shared something that changed how I viewed everything.

She told me my father had always dreamed of buying a tractor and venturing into large-scale maize and millet farming.

The savings were never meant to remain in the bank forever.

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In his mind, he was waiting until he had "enough" to pursue that dream. The problem was that the target kept moving.

Every time the savings grew, he wanted a little more before making the investment.

Meanwhile, life continued. School fees remained unpaid. Relatives kept rescuing us. We continued believing we were struggling financially.

Looking back, I no longer think my father was selfish.

I think he became emotionally attached to the idea of preserving what he had built. The money stopped being a tool to improve our lives and became something he felt compelled to protect.

Ironically, the dream he had saved for never happened.

Today, whenever I save or invest, I remind myself why I am doing it. Money should create opportunities, solve problems and improve life.