Women are urged to take control of their finances to ensure that they are financially secured. That’s the word from Financial Advisers who have also called on women to diversify and explore a variety of investments. And also to always keep a record of what they are spending their money on to avoid spending recklessly.
Spending less than what you earn and learning to differentiate between needs and wants could help alleviate women’s financial woes. Women are also encouraged to manage their debt especially unsecured debt as it incurs high interest.
Avoid using credit for lifestyle spending and always ensure that you borrow wisely could help improve women’s finances. Having an emergency fund of at least three months of their salary will help ensure that women do not rely on credit in case of an emergency.
Ester Ochse, who is the Production head at FNB Money Management says, “have emergency savings in something where you can get hold of the money quickly. For example, a notice account that is less than seven days you can even pre-pay that into your bond.”
Experts say that women live on average 7 years longer than men. This means that they need to put more money towards retirement and the earlier you start the better for you to derive the benefits of compound interest.
Ochse adds that “Women tend to live longer than men, so they need to sustain themselves for longer.”
Women are urged to diversify their investments and explore non-traditional ways of investing.
One of South Africa’s crowd-investing funds is offering women an opportunity to invest in cattle farming for as little as R500.
Ayanda Majola, the CEO at SV Capital says that “We have created an innovative and disruptive investment product that appeals to the African concept of value. When you look at investments out there, they tend to be difficult to understand and there are quite high to start investing so we are making investments accessible to everyone.”
Many families are run by females and some women are reluctant to go to maintenance court. Women are encouraged to have a will and Life cover and nominate beneficiaries.
Some financial blunders
Ochse further adds “not budgeting is a big mistake when it comes to managing your money and using credit to maintain a certain lifestyle”
“Our goal as SU Capital is to educate South African women on the importance of saving and investing and channel them to always live within their means I think the biggest challenge is that a lot of people are living outside of their means which means it affects their ability to start investing,” explains Majola.
Experts say that buying a fancy car can reduce your chances of securing a home loan. A car depreciates in value as soon as you take it out of a garage. Rather invest in property as it usually appreciates in value and is generally regarded as a good investment.
