Feel free to reach out to PSG Wealth Adviser Bernice Barnard directly.
I will earn more soon. The school fees will fall away in a few years. When the car is paid off, saving will feel manageable. But it rarely works out that way. There’s just never a long stretch when money can be freed up. A salary increase gets swallowed up by rising living expenses. When one expense ends, another one just appears in its place. The ‘right time’ to start saving keeps shifting, and waiting for it to happen often means you never begin at all.
Why saving feels like losing
When a savings debit order goes off, and your bank balance drops, something in your brain registers that as a loss. The benefit is invisible and seems far away, while the cost is immediate and real. This is why people cancel savings debit orders during tight months and then never reinstate them. Weeks become months, months become years, and years become a retirement that was never properly prepared for.
Willpower alone will not fix this, because it runs out. What changes the pattern is changing the story you tell yourself about what saving actually is.
Saving is not losing money. It is sending money forward to a future version of yourself who will need it. That future person may face medical bills, losing a job, a family emergency, or simply the reality of no longer being able to work. The money you set aside today is the only thing standing between your future self and a genuinely tough situation. From that perspective, saving stops feeling like a sacrifice and becomes the most caring thing you can do for yourself.
The shame that keeps people stuck
Another reason why people avoid their finances is shame. Being told repeatedly that you are behind, that you are not saving enough, or that retirement is closer than you think tends to lead to avoidance. People stop looking at their bank statements. They change the subject when money comes up, or they tell themselves they will deal with it later, but later never comes.
What is often not said enough is that starting late is still better than not starting at all. Saving a small amount consistently beats saving nothing while you wait until you are able to save a larger amount. The only decision you cannot recover from is the one you keep postponing indefinitely. Wherever you are right now is a perfectly good place to begin.
The cost of waiting
Compound growth is one of the most powerful levers available to an ordinary person seeking to build financial security over time. The concept is simple: the returns on your savings generate returns of their own, which in turn generate further returns. Over years and decades, this effect builds into something way larger than the sum of what you put in. The catch is that it needs time, and every year you delay is a year’s worth of growth that cannot be recovered.
Over time, a person who starts saving R500 a month at age 25 will accumulate significantly more than someone who starts saving R1 000 a month at age 40. Starting to save earlier in life, even with smaller contributions, consistently yields better outcomes than starting later with larger contributions. This is not a theory; it is simply how money grows when given enough runway.
The majority of South Africans who reach retirement age do not have enough saved to maintain their standard of living without depending on family or continuing to work. This is not a problem faced only by people who earned very little before. It is experienced by people across all income levels who chose present comfort over future security, year after year, for reasons that seemed completely reasonable at the time.
Where to start
The most effective savings habit is one that eliminates the need to make a decision about it every month. Set up an automated debit order that moves money into a separate account the day after your salary reflects in your account. What you don’t see available for spending, you quickly stop missing. The amount matters far less than the consistency. R500 a month will not make you wealthy on its own, but it builds the habit and the structure that enables you to increase contributions as your circumstances allow.
If you are unsure where to put the money, a tax-free savings account (TFSA) is one of the most straightforward options available. You can invest up to R46 000 per year, with all growth earned tax free. It is convenient and simple. However, keep your emergency savings separate from your longer-term investments, as emergency funds need to be more accessible. Investment capital should be slightly out of reach, to avoid withdrawing funds during a difficult month and undoing years of progress.
One thing today
This message is not intended to make you feel guilty about the past. Guilt leads to avoidance, not action. Rather focus on how you view saving: don’t see a financial obligation you have been failing to meet, see something practical and achievable that is available to you right now, at whatever scale your life currently allows.
You don’t need to overhaul everything at once. You only need to do one thing at a time. Open a tax-free savings account. Increase an existing debit order by R100. Move R200 into an account you commit not to touch. One concrete action taken today is worth more than a perfect plan that just stays in your head.
Financial well-being is not reserved for people who earn more than you do or who started saving earlier than you did. It is built slowly and imperfectly, by people who decided to start anyway. That decision is yours to make, and there is no better time to make it than right now.
