Set goals of something to save for

Having clear saving goals can be great motivation to get started.

Whether you want to have enough money for a deposit on a car or house or just to spoil yourself by buying that pair of sneakers you’ve been eyeing for months, you have to set reasonably achievable goals.

Take young Bongiwe Simelane who bought herself one of the top of the range cellphones last year for example.

She saved up the entire year for it.

“My mother taught me about saving. She told me she got the knowledge from my grandparents. I am glad she shared with me lessons around the importance of saving and setting clear goals for yourself,” she says.

Bongiwe, 15, says she started saving aggressively over two years ago when she got to high school.

“My lunch money was obviously increased and I had more than enough. I'd get R30 a day, that is R150 a week. It is a lot of money. I don’t use the entire R30. Whatever I have left, goes into my savings.

“When I told my mother I wanted a cellphone that cost about R4,000 last year, she had no idea that I had saved up enough to be able to buy it myself.

“When I told her I would pay for it myself, she was happy that I had listened to her. Over the past few years, I would use my savings to buy clothes in December,” Bongiwe says.

This week is financial planning week and the Financial Planning Institute of Southern Africa (FPI) is tackling a number of topics, including children and money.

Financial planner Gugu Sidaki said the more she spoke to adults about money, the more conversations turned into educational content and she started teaching adults about money.

“The more I taught adults about money, they more they requested for this information to be available for their children because the realisation from all of those people was that a lot of the money concepts need to be learnt as early as possible and that’s how I started teaching children about money.

“There is a lot of research that supports the fact that it is a lot easier for you to learn a new habit than it is to change an existing behaviour. The thing about money is your habits are formed from a very young age and by the time you get to adulthood, your habits are set and it becomes very difficult for you to change those habits," Sidaki says.

She says she meets a lot of adults who are struggling with their money today because of information that they never had as children, incorrect role models, and not knowing how to look after their money as children.

“It is important to catch children as early as possible and to teach them the right ways so that by the time they become adults, they know exactly what to do with their money and we can avoid a lot of the issues that we’re experiencing today with adults not saving enough, not understanding the difference between saving and investing and not putting away money for their financial future,” Sidaki says.

Kgomotso Masongoa, who has been in the insurance financial services industry for more than 20 years, says one of the challenges she has is she often has to deal with clients going on pension and has to break the news that they will have to work an extra 10 years or tell someone they need a side job to ensure that they are able to survive.

“It is very scary. Over and above that the health issues that come along with it… The financial stress is traumatic. I always ask where it [financial education] actually started, where it comes from and yes, it comes back to the basics of how the person was brought up and how they’ve been managing or handling their monies throughout the years.

“We start from school age or even younger than that to say this is what you need to do.

“Money has got value,” Masangoa says.

Bongiwe says she is now saving for a laptop.

“I am not planning to buy anything expensive this year. I’m in grade 10 and want to save enough money to be able to buy myself a laptop when I go to university in a few years.

“My mother and I are in the process of opening my bank account. I believe this will make saving much easier because I won’t be keeping money in the house anymore.

"I want to learn more about investing and be exposed to it. I want to buy some shares. I hope they make me a lot of money,” Bongiwe says.

mashabas@sowetan.co.za