Savings

My Question is, how many of you here are married and are the sole breadwinners of the family, how do you manage saving? i try my hardest to save anything each month but to no avail :( . (ps i do not spend big)
Reading this thread has been very informative and i am going to try my best to follow some of the suggestions/tips from here.
 
zahpat said:
My Question is, how many of you here are married and are the sole breadwinners of the family, how do you manage saving? i try my hardest to save anything each month but to no avail :( . (ps i do not spend big)
Reading this thread has been very informative and i am going to try my best to follow some of the suggestions/tips from here.
Click to expand...

Not sure, I'm single etc. But I know my dad had retirement annuities which "forced" him to save and then pushed as much money into his bond possible. There's a few months where I remember him very stressed and we couldn't afford going to do monthly shopping (switched to weekly basically) and had to cut some stuff, but everything managed, even during the "savings" going off.

So it's possible.
 
zahpat said:
My Question is, how many of you here are married and are the sole breadwinners of the family, how do you manage saving? i try my hardest to save anything each month but to no avail :( . (ps i do not spend big)
Reading this thread has been very informative and i am going to try my best to follow some of the suggestions/tips from here.
Click to expand...

That is really tough nowadays :( really wish you the best of luck and all we could offer you is that you increase your financial education as much as possible so that you make the best financial decisions that you can.

My opinion is that that the problem here is that your situation was completely fine in the 50-70's even the 80's. But wages have not increased with productivity since those golden economic times. But nowadays the cost of living for the avarage family has mostly higher than the average salary for head of the family, especially young families. Really tough situation.
 
AcidRaZor said:
Not sure, I'm single etc. But I know my dad had retirement annuities which "forced" him to save and then pushed as much money into his bond possible. There's a few months where I remember him very stressed and we couldn't afford going to do monthly shopping (switched to weekly basically) and had to cut some stuff, but everything managed, even during the "savings" going off.

So it's possible.
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It is possible. Our household is in a 1 and 1/2 income model. Simply, I am the breadwinner and my wife is self-employed. We took the approach of living as an 1 income family, forcing budgeting, savings, not spending on luxuries and pushing as much money into savings as possible (into a pretty complex portfolio balanced across multiple types of assets). We squeeze out 25-30% on good months, and about 15-20% in bad months. We drive 7 year old cars (no debt), bond is used for emergency fund (min 3 months of net income available). Shopping is done by looking through specials, making a list of the necessities (and yes, we do cater for those little luxuries) and also using the "rewards" cards where possible. Any 'big' purchases are measured on the basis of necessity or luxury. Amazing how many times something is what you want, but don't need.

now that I think about it, our income is 1 and 3/4. I have a second job which isn't permanent and pays quite well. It is done in the evenings once / twice a week (starting from July) with a bit of work over the weekends. Not stressful as it is something that I wanted to do for a while. That money will be going into savings and pay for the holidays. And we even budget for holidays.

The biggest trick to make this work is to ensure that everyone in the family share the same mentality to save and the finances are transparent. The talks are tough sometimes, but to be disciplined, requires a voice of sanity from someone else.
 
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zahpat said:
My Question is, how many of you here are married and are the sole breadwinners of the family, how do you manage saving? i try my hardest to save anything each month but to no avail :( . (ps i do not spend big)
Reading this thread has been very informative and i am going to try my best to follow some of the suggestions/tips from here.
Click to expand...
I am. :(

My wife studies full time so the only income we have is mine. I have absolutely zero money left over at the end of the month to save. Last year I even cancelled my retirement annuity as things were becoming unbearable. I've paid along the lines of R3500 per month for it for about 4 or 5 years so I know there's a few bucks in there. I'll get them to reinstate it once my position improves.

We've also started up a small business, but the proceeds from that is almost negligible
 
Thanks guys, will certainly look on the brighter side. Discipline is the key factor in all this.
 
There is always someone living worse than you. The biggest difference to if you can save or not is generally related to the area you choose to live. Pressure to keep up with the Jonses is what destroys families ability to save.

Anyways, I am main breadwinner in a home with 4 mouths. The wife does some self employment on the side but that totals less than 5% of our income. Its mainly for the little luxuries and because she likes to keep busy and finance her own hobbies. We do save but not as much as I would like. I really wish I could get to the point where I was putting 20% away into long term savings but I am still about 5% short of that.
 
On a related note, for those of you putting money away into a pension fund, what are the fees like? I'm asking because with our company mandated pension fund scheme I've calculated that the scheme takes 11.5% straight off the top ("Scheme Fees", "Admin Fees", "Risk Fees" Blegh).

Seems a bit high but we're not given a choice in the matter.
 
zahpat said:
My Question is, how many of you here are married and are the sole breadwinners of the family, how do you manage saving? i try my hardest to save anything each month but to no avail :( . (ps i do not spend big)
Reading this thread has been very informative and i am going to try my best to follow some of the suggestions/tips from here.
Click to expand...

Same situation, currently trying to pay off debt (mostly my university fees for masters) so savings are limited to the compulsory pension etc stuff at work.
 
Icarium said:
On a related note, for those of you putting money away into a pension fund, what are the fees like? I'm asking because with our company mandated pension fund scheme I've calculated that the scheme takes 11.5% straight off the top ("Scheme Fees", "Admin Fees", "Risk Fees" Blegh).

Seems a bit high but we're not given a choice in the matter.
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Risk fees refer to insurance for life or disability cover, or both. Work out the fee again without the risk stuff.
I just checked mine and it is just over 3% which is pretty high :/ Think I'm gonna speak to HR about this and see if anything can be done.
 
I save about 25% of my gross salary. Reason why I manage to save so much is because I'm single, my car is paid off and I don't have medical aid. If I had cars installments, a medical aid and was married, I would most probably be saving 0% or less. I'm thinking of cancelling my car's comprehensive insurance and just take out a third party, fire and theft just to jack up my monthly savings a bit more. I'm one of those people that are happy to see my money grow every month. The more money I see on my bank balance the happier I am. Money for me is security, it's not something that one works for and then just wastes it. My challenge is to spend less on food though, I spend about R1500 monthly, and I live alone.
 
I struggle to save each month - I had at one point saved up R3000 and then what goes and happens, accident damage on my car and the excess cost me R2800 (since then I have fixed that "excess" issue) but still, every time I save up, something happens and I lose it.
 
gdiza said:
I struggle to save each month - I had at one point saved up R3000 and then what goes and happens, accident damage on my car and the excess cost me R2800 (since then I have fixed that "excess" issue) but still, every time I save up, something happens and I lose it.
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Just think what you would have happened if you didn't have those savings. Take on debt? Be stuck?
 
Ugh, I just pushed a little over R23k into debt the last month. Feels weird... hopefully it'll pay off in the next few months
 
Icarium said:
On a related note, for those of you putting money away into a pension fund, what are the fees like? I'm asking because with our company mandated pension fund scheme I've calculated that the scheme takes 11.5% straight off the top ("Scheme Fees", "Admin Fees", "Risk Fees" Blegh).

Seems a bit high but we're not given a choice in the matter.
Click to expand...

I invest with Old Mutual Unit Trust RA and do not use a broker, so 0% costs. Not even admin costs. Old Mutual and Alan Gray are the best option to go with in terms of costing. Be sure to take a Unit Trust RA!
 
DrewChan said:
Whats percentage of your salary do you put away per month for a rainy day?
Additionally is there a "minimum" you believe should be saved per month?
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10% of my salary, this will go up to 13% next year, then 16% the year after, and in 5 year's time I am hoping for 20%.

I also have no debt barring the R1000-R2000 on my CC.
 
AlmightyBender said:
Wow well done, hope that your discipine can be an inspiration to others reading this thread
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Not everyone can push that amount into their debt in any given month.

Last year, I cleared all my revolving load debts + CC and closed said accounts. Luckily, it was my bonus that I recieved, which allowed me to do that.

My only "debt" now, is my car.

I'm hoping I am able to get my "rainy day fund" up to what it should be.

Am I right in saying there is no real benefit into pushing more cash into my car repayments?
I've had the car for just over two years, so the capital interest has been paid - now it's the principle debt which needs to be paid - I wouldn't be saving anything by paying it off quicker - I believe it would just be paid off sooner, that's all?
 
Tander said:
Am I right in saying there is no real benefit into pushing more cash into my car repayments?
I've had the car for just over two years, so the capital interest has been paid - now it's the principle debt which needs to be paid - I wouldn't be saving anything by paying it off quicker - I believe it would just be paid off sooner, that's all?
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I dont know. When I paid my car off quicker the interest amount left got less and less as the capital amount was reduced.
 
Every payment that you make has both a capital and an interest portion. The interest portion is calculated on a periodic basis (depending on the product but for car loans I would imagine that its monthly) on the outstanding principal balance at the beginning of that period and the capital portion is then the difference between the actual payment and the interest portion. So because the interest amount is calculated on the outstanding balance at each point in time, any additional payments will reduce the capital balance which in turn will reduce the interest portion on every subsequent payment. So you will end up paying less overall.
 
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