Meet Khaliphile Memani, our latest Team Member at Kanan Wealth.
She spends her days crunching numbers and doing calculations for our clients. Read what she has to say about saving…
Importance of saving young by Khaliphile Memani
“Compound interest is the eighth wonder of the world. He, who understands it, earns it … he who doesn’t … pays it.” ― Albert Einstein
When asked what he considered as the most powerful force in the universe, Einstein answered: “Compound interest!” Getting your money to compound for you is the secret to getting and staying rich. Loss is indeed inevitable somewhere along the line, however if one has been saving up, those random losses will not leave you sucker punched with no will to get up and fight financial freedom’s good fight. You do not have to be fancy pants to generate real wealth over time if you start young enough i.e. in your 20s. Setting money aside for retirement, emergencies, education and just a general peace of mind has become an essential part of long term financial planning and freedom.
We are all familiar with the piggy bank form of saving. Which suggests you put money away in a little porcelain piggy figure and you smash it the day you come across what you consider to be an emergency. For many of us this is the first form of saving that we are introduced to, however somewhere along the way we lose touch with the importance of these teachings and just feel the need to be consumers even if it is at the detriment of our financial freedom.
“Youth is wasted on the young.”- George Bernard Shaw. This quote alludes to the lack of experience and wisdom amongst the youth to make the right and not so popular decisions to better their future.
We are currently living in the generation of over consumption and little to no saving. Where looking good and being seen at the latest “it spots” supersedes the need to save. At the age of 25 I have also fallen a victim of this short sighted lifestyle. I am in my first cooperate job, earning a salary, but have zero savings to my name. Without even putting scientific thought to it, I am well on my way to owning the things I want solely through credit because my salary without any savings to give me a head start have placed me in a position where I am in a deficit even before I have mastered this “adulting” thing.
Fortunately for me, I have been placed in a position where I am exposed to healthy financial practices. In less than a month I have learnt that if I would start putting away as little as R500 a month up until I retire at around age 65 I should have R6 151 217 million saved. For most of us, we could never even imagine coming in contact with such figures at retirement. All of this is possible, with putting away a little for longer periods at a time.
In my head I have always toyed with the idea of putting money away but it has never materialised because I have always believed I cannot put away money that I do not have. Just thinking about that concept seems preposterous right?! However, if we would all sit down really take note of what we unnecessarily spend the few odd cents on we would find if we would cut those silly expenses, we would have a considerable amount to save. Besides the benefit of the monetary reward, there are other benefits that come with saving. It promotes a good sense of goal setting and discipline and in moments of emergencies your coffers are never empty leading to loans that lead to debts that become a never ending cycle of shortfalls.
NB: THE MOMENT TO START SAVING IS NOW!!!