'Manage Your Money Like a #$%^&ng Grown Up' with Sam Beckbessinger

 Sam Beckbessinger is the author of the bestselling Manage Your Money Like a Fucking Grownup and the novel Girls of Little Hope (co-authored with Dale Halvorsen). Her interactive story about climate change, Survive the Century, was featured in New Scientist and Gizmodo. She teaches creative writing at Bath Spa University, writes kids' TV and picture books, once wrote for Marvel, and is weirdly obsessed with spreadsheets. Her perimenopausal werewolf novel Femme Feral is coming in summer 2026. She grew up on a farm near Durban with a pet donkey named Mr Magoo, but now lives in London. 

She joins us a guest on this episode of The Podcast to chat about her book,  Manage Your Money Like a Fucking Grownup . 

''In this clear and engaging basic guide to managing your finances, Sam Beckbessinger covers topics from compound interest and inflation to "Your brain on money", negotiating a raise, and particularly local South African phenomena like "black tax". The book includes exercises and "how-to's", doesn't shy away from the psychology of money, and is empowering, humorous and helpful. The book you wish you'd had at 25, but is never too late to read. '' SOURCE: Google Books 

The Podcast:
Camera: Mluleki Dlamini & Siyabonga Meyiwa
Sound: Sibusiso 'Dust' Nkosi
Editing: Mluleki Dlamini & Kwenza Trevor Masinga
Co-ordinator: Phumelele Khambule
Host: Nongcebo Vukile McKenzie

Contact: info@nvmckenzie.co.za
View episodes on YouTube : Link ➡️ https://youtube.com/@nvmckenzie?si=y8ZcaOQ0yYqjGhA8

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Transcript

SPEAKER_01: 0:21

In her book, Manage Your Money Like a Grown-Up, Sam Beck-Bessinger has put together a clear, engaging and very humorous guide to how we can manage our finances. She's our guest on this episode of the podcast. My name is Nangzebo Vukile-McKenzie. Welcome to the podcast. On this episode of the podcast, we're in conversation with Sam Beck-Bessinger. She's the author of the book, and I'll read it without the bleep.

SPEAKER_00: 1:01

Manage your money like a fucking grown-up. Sam, that's a very provocative title for your

SPEAKER_02: 1:09

book. Thank you so much. You know, funnily enough, I started writing what became the book just as a series of blog posts, you know, more than like 10 years ago. You know, and I started writing the blog post because I had gone through this situation. I'd been in, you know, 300,000 rands worth of debt. You know, I was like in this terrible debt spiral and that felt very hopeless to me. And then I had to figure out how to get myself out of it. You know, I came from a background where I felt like I had no financial literacy growing up and I had to figure all this stuff out. And, you know, it is a bit of a provocative title, I think, because I was trying to provoke myself mostly, you know, where I felt like I'd had to provoke myself, you know, to learn all of these things. And to just stop avoiding emotionally, because I think really what had been happening in my 20s and the reason I ended up in such dire financial straits, but then I had to learn how to get myself out of it, was just... I really never wanted to think about money at all. I found it so stressful and terrifying. So it is a bit provocative because yeah, I think sometimes we need that provoking.

SPEAKER_01: 2:19

You know, I love how you started off in the book where you talk about the biases that we have about money and how I think we tend to have sort of like damsel syndrome when it comes to money. Somehow magically all my debt is going to disappear and I'm going to come into this lump sum of money and it leads to all kinds of decisions that people you know land up making in order to just get out of financial strain and you talk about it so nicely in the book when you start off with the biases but I love how you talk about gamblers fallacy because a lot of us land up making bad decisions about money that we are either keeping for the future or should be our little nest for the future and we use that as our lucky streak or people you know they there's all kinds of way to cash in quickly on certain things because we are trying to save ourselves from debt look and this is no judgment on anyone who isn't debt the economy is really really tough and some people land up there not knowing how they got there but then in terms of getting out it's so hard to get out yeah yeah

SPEAKER_02: 3:29

I think that's, and that's like such a careful line that I think we all have to balance, right? Especially, you know, I have spent most of the last 10 years now, you know, talking to people about money. And I've learned a couple of things. And I think one of the big things is we think being good with finances is either about being good with being mathematically competent. Like we think money is maths. And so we've got to be very logical about these things. And that's what being good at money means. it means understanding how to do compound interest calculations and stuff like that actually I think the first thing that I've really learned is that money is so emotional and 90% of improving your situation is about understanding as you say the kind of the cognitive biases that we have and the emotions that lead us into these situations and I think that kind of you know one of those big emotions that I think we all have to overcome is as you say the fact that it's overcoming that sense of shame about money because we have to hold two truths that seem like they contradict each other but they don't really and the first one is that most of our financial situation is probably not our fault right like as you say we live in an economy that's very difficult like i think all of us have had this experience where we've seen you know people in our families our extended families or even ourselves have suffered with jobless from joblessness right like there just aren't enough jobs in this country with the vast you know we live in one of the most unequal societies in the world um we know that the biggest part of our financial situation is not our fault at all, but we also have to hold on to the hope and the sense of control, I think, because it's also not true that you have no control over the situation because there are things that you can do that make a difference. And there's been a lot of research, even research conducted in South Africa. The University of Stellenbosch and Momentum did an incredible study about five years ago where they followed families across the socioeconomic, you know, different groups in South Africa from, you know, the quite wealthy all the way down to people living on social grants and things. And they looked at the question, to what extent does your financial literacy have an impact on your financial outcomes? So they were asking the question like, does it matter to try to improve your skills at managing money? And they found unambiguously that no matter kind of what your circumstances were, it makes an impact. And it might not, you know, realistically, it's not going to take you from, you know, the people who are most struggling, the group that's most struggling to, you know, being a billionaire, but it can make it, it can take you like 10%, for example, you

SPEAKER_00: 6:17

know,

SPEAKER_02: 6:18

and that can be enough to make a huge difference to your choices, to your emotions, your wellbeing, the wellbeing of your family, you know? So I think we have to hold both of these things at the same time. We have to let go of that sense of shame and failure of, Oh, I'm struggling. It's my fault, but also hold onto the sense of, you know, there is something I can do about it. It's like, I'm not, as you say, letting go of the damsel thing as well. I can improve my literacy. I can figure out some basic rules about how money works because it's actually not that complicated was the other thing that I learned. You don't actually need to understand complex financial calculations and things. You need to understand some basic principles about how money works and just understanding those principles can get you out of this trap of just hoping that you'll win the lotto. That's your financial plan is let's hope I win the lotto. There are actually a lot of other very practical steps you can take that can make a huge difference.

SPEAKER_01: 7:21

What's nice about the book is that it starts off with the basics. You start off with the obviously explaining just the biases that we just talked about now and then you go through sort of like a quiz just to give you an understanding and I was laughing.

SPEAKER_00: 7:38

Word problems.

SPEAKER_01: 7:39

Yes, word problems. You're holding three apples. Paul asks to take one apple and he will then give it back to you with another apple. Will you give Paul the apple? But it's really, it's again just affirming what you've just said that if you think about it as simplistically as possible and then you apply it to the various contexts and I say apples because you're illustrations in the book as well have got these gremlins coming to bite the apples and it makes it really because talking about money is a very daunting subject and talking about making a decision between a higher risk investment and a lower risk investment because of the wording it becomes so scary because then you're like okay what's risk okay oh I don't want

SPEAKER_02: 8:24

risk risk seems

SPEAKER_01: 8:25

terrible you know yeah high risk high return but what if what if you know and it becomes very difficult but when you've put it in such a manner that The book itself is easy to read. You don't use the complicated... I mean, you obviously explain the complicated terms, but the way in which you convey the message is not using big words and complicated words and the illustrations of the monsters and the apples and all of that.

SPEAKER_02: 8:47

And there's jokes, don't there, Bo? There's jokes. I wanted to make it appealing to people like me in my 20s. I would never have bought a book about personal finance in my 20s. I felt like, oh, you know, this just isn't the kind of person I am. And I wanted to write something that was... accessible to everyone but also wasn't dumbing things down right because it also you know we do go through the book through the foundational things that really matter and then we do build on that and we do you know towards the second half of the book we start I discuss very specific investment products but I think that that is backwards to how most financial education happens because you know you think like my family my family grew up you know quite working class and you know they never spoke to my my parents loved us so much and they were great parents but they never spoke to us about money because money was a stressful thing for them you know and they wanted to protect us from that stress and so how I really started learning about finances in my 20s was from advertising from the financial services industry and I think how the mistake there is that how we treat financial education often is we start off with products we start off saying you know like invest in this kind of investment and you should try out crypto and and you should try out bonds, and you should try out this thing, and blah, blah, blah. And that's how the financial industry wants you to think about it. finances and money right because they're trying to sell you things but actually I think what's really important is to start off thinking about the big picture and understanding you know on a holistic in a holistic way what is the role that money needs to play in your life what do you have how is wealth actually built how do you keep your money safe how do you use risk as a tool to grow your money without you know kind of risking losing your money you know understanding these really foundational things and I think it's really really important to start off with the basics because we usually don't like we usually skip over these very fundamental ideas about money that are actually where you can make the biggest difference in your life is if you understand compounding that when you understand diversification and you understand assets those are the three things I think and then the products are secondary to that but too often we start with the products we say invest in this thing that's how you'll get rich and that's not how we need to start thinking about things

SPEAKER_01: 11:09

and you also present different perspectives on how we are traditionally taught to view things so I'll go to the footer on page 47 where you start off talking about Murta the creepy neighbour who eats more and more and more and then you talk also about the apple tree if you pick an apple There are seeds in that apple and you can grow more apple trees from the apple that you picked from your original tree. And when it's put simplistically like that, it's actually, it sounds so easy. And then you start thinking, okay, what is my tree? Okay, what is my apple? But the footer there, I'll read it as it is. Okay, accounting nerds, I know you're tearing your hair out right now and yelling at the book about the technical definitions of assets and liabilities. Yes, I know that a car is technically a depreciating asset. I just don't believe it's useful to to see a car in this way for regular people? Okay, thanks, love

SPEAKER_02: 12:07

you, bye. Yeah, I mean, so my journey kind of to writing this book is, you know, I studied, I did a degree in creative writing, you know, I care about communicating, I care about talking to people. And I thought of myself as a creative person and I thought, you know, like this finance stuff, I'll figure this out when I'm earning more money or one day when I win the lotto. And basically my financial plan for most of my 20s Just never think about it. I'm sure it'll be fine. And it really wasn't fine because, you know, I first got a credit card and I just had no understanding of how damaging credit card interest can be to, you know, your financial life. So I used that credit card. Boy, did I use that credit card. And then I bought a car and I, you know, I bought a car with a balloon payment and I had no sense of like what a bad idea that was, you know. And I got deeper and deeper into debt and it got to the point where, you know, debt collectors were phoned me so often that I was having to change my phone number every six months that's that was my plan I'll change my phone number the debt collectors will never get hold of me and then I realized okay I really I need to stop avoiding this because ironically by not understanding these basic financial principles money is now controlling every decision in my life and how boring you know I want to be thinking about other things so you know how I solved that is I got a job in the financial services industry so I started working you know I went into the I was like, what's a better way of understanding finance than working in the financial services industry? So I worked in the financial services industry for years and it was my job making, I was a user experience designer and a product manager. And it was my job kind of making apps that would help regular people understand their money. And, you know, when they look at their finances for banks and for insurance companies, that kind of thing, understand what they're looking at. And that was an incredible job because it meant that I both started to learn about how the financial services industry understands finances, but also about, you know, it gave me an opportunity to interview hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of regular people, of middle-class people, of working-class people, of wealthy, wealthy people, all across the board about how they think about their money. And, you know, it really helped me understand that thinking about finances the way that financial people think about finances not always the most helpful thing for most people. It doesn't always match the kind of mental models that we use. So I was really interested in trying to write a book that is financially informed. I do know my stuff now. I had to learn. But I try as much as possible to talk in you know in a way that is actually kind of helpful to people rather than is technical like it's not a textbook I think is really important.

SPEAKER_01: 14:58

So there are some aspects of it that really go into the technical aspects of managing your money I mean that's the whole point of the book to break it down and then build it back up again towards you building a wealth profile. And so let's talk about the money dashboard.

SPEAKER_02: 15:20

Yeah. Okay. So I think basically how I like to talk about this, right, is it's a little bit like you've got to think about managing your money like you would think about a fitness program, you know? So I've recently started getting into running because I'm nearly 40 and my body's falling apart. I'm trying to run a half marathon,

SPEAKER_00: 15:41

right? Well

SPEAKER_02: 15:42

done.

UNKNOWN: 15:42

And

SPEAKER_02: 15:42

Thank you. Well, congratulate me when I've actually successfully run it. So far, I'm on 12Ks. But the thing is, if you say to yourself, okay, I want to run a marathon, what you need to do is you need to understand some basic principles about how fitness works. But then what you actually have to do is you need to go and put on your running shoes and you need to actually go and run every day. You can't just read a textbook about how it does the human metabolism work that isn't going to get you to run a marathon and I think similarly sourcing out your finances is much more about your habits and your behavior than it is about understanding a whole bunch of theory

SPEAKER_00: 16:27

so

SPEAKER_02: 16:27

I think there's some theory it's important to understand and so kind of what I do as you say is I break it down and then I build it up so I talk about kind of the three basic theoretical principles I think people need to understand, which is diversification, assets, and compounding. And then I say, okay, so then what do you do? And very practically, what are the steps you need to take? And the first step for most people is the hardest one emotionally, although it's very simple, which is literally sit down and write down every single thing that you have or you owe. Just put it down in black and white and start building what I call the money dashboard right which is you can't manage what you don't measure is the idea and it's just building a dashboard that lets you see in black and white this is my financial situation and this is how it is changing every month because out of that you can then build a plan but you can't actually build a plan unless you're first honest with yourself about where you are and that sounds so simple but you know when I was really badly in debt I was the person who I would go and draw cash from the ATM And then I would crumple up the slip before I looked at it because I didn't want to know. It was too scary. It was like a game show every time I went to buy groceries. You buy your toilet paper and your loaf of bread and then you swipe your card and you cross your fingers and you

SPEAKER_00: 17:47

hope that

SPEAKER_02: 17:47

it goes through. Because I think getting past that denial and that shame, that is the hard step. And this is the step that gets you past it, which is to just stop. honest with yourself and put it all in one place write it all down because then once you've got it all down I've got a very simple flow chart then and if you know if people don't want to buy the book this is also available for free on my website you can just go download it which is a flow chart for okay answer these questions and then based on these questions and what your financial picture looks like this is your goal right now like this is the step in the financial program that you are on so for example you know the first question is are you spending more than you earn every month that's the first question and if that's your situation then the game that you are playing is you are trying to get to the point where that's no longer the case that you are earning more than you are spending and there's no point talking about investments or insurance or anything until you fix that problem so I you know I'm a big believer in focusing on one thing at a time as well Because otherwise it gets very overwhelming. So I think that is the first step is to just build a picture of, you know, understand where you are and then figure out what your goal is. Yeah, so that is the first step. But then that money dashboard evolves with you. You know, so I've now been maintaining a money dashboard for 15 years and it's grown with me and it's still the tool that I use to give me a picture of my financial situation and to keep me focused on my goals.

SPEAKER_01: 19:23

So the actual drafting of the money dashboard, you go down a list of the possibilities of what needs to be included and you include even the 300 Rand that you owe your friend for last puza Thursday. Okay.

SPEAKER_02: 19:42

because again I'm going to come back to the fact that money is emotional and when you're in debt often you'll find that the debts that you have the biggest feelings about and are causing you the most guilt you know it is it's that little niggling sense of I haven't paid so and so back that small amount you know and I think it's important when you're thinking about you know what is the picture to include everything include every single thing that is impacting your financial position because then you can make a plan to deal with it, you know, and those emotions matter. So if honestly it's the money that, you know, even if you owe your mom money and your mom is not charging you interest, you know, a financial planner will say, well, don't pay your mom back because that's very cheap debt. But, you know, money is about emotions and that debt might be the most important debt for you to pay back emotionally. And so I think it's important to write it down, include it.

SPEAKER_01: 20:38

That's actually quite a nice perspective. Again, I go back to the example about the car depreciating asset and how that's viewed in an accounting sense when you look at assets and liabilities. But when you look at it in terms of how people ordinarily look at their car the majority of people are looking for transport to get from point A to point B take their kids to school do the basics you know go grocery shopping it's a means of transport for them so you know when we're told to not invest in depreciating assets or to rather not invest that much in depreciating assets theoretically yes it makes sense but we do need to get to places to work to do things we do

SPEAKER_02: 21:18

yeah and also you know like money is a tool right and also All of us spend emotionally all the time. If we tell ourselves that we're not an emotional spender, we are lying to ourselves because we absolutely use, you know, a car is transport. It is all of those things. But, you know, for many, many people, a car also is this, it's a symbol. It's a symbol of I feel good about how I've made it or I can show to the people around me a level of success. And I think, you know, I can't tell anyone else what they should do with their money Because that's the beautiful thing about money is it's how you enact your choices. And it's a store of value and how we spend it is a demonstration of what we value, you know. For me, I think what's really important is just that we make more of those decisions mindfully and we actually make more explicit choices. And a big part of that is just, you know, often... we're not even realizing how expensive certain things are in our lives. Because, you know, for example, when we buy a car, the car salesman really tries hard to get you to focus on your monthly payment. They'll do some magic and wizardry and they'll say, okay, if your budget is 2,000 Rand a month, we'll add this kind of thing. It will take this debt and blah, blah, blah. There we go. For 2,000 Rand a month, you can have this fancy car. And you think, okay, great. That's wonderful. What you're not looking at is, okay, but over the five years I'm going to drive this car, what does that cost me? And if you look at it and you're like, oh, that is the same amount of money as buying a one-bedroom flat in cash that I'm now spending on this car, you might feel differently about it. You might feel, okay, if I look at the big picture, maybe actually what I want to do is I want to buy a cheaper car and also do something else with this money. It's just about making sure that, and when you start building the money dashboard and you start being able to look at your spending in this kind of more zoomed out way, that's when you can also start to understand like where actually is your waste and your budget. And for me, money wasted is Yeah. Or, you know, often I think when... I encourage people to go through their budgets and I've got some very specific ideas for, you know, when you go through and you analyze your spending and you need to find extra money, where do you go look for that extra money? You know, and especially after five years of, you know, difficult economic times in South Africa and massive inflation, most South Africans do not have a lot of extra fat in their budget to cut already. But, you know, often I think where that fat can be found is in those recurring budgets. Debit orders, not in the KFC you have once a month that makes you very happy. That's usually not actually where the money is leaking. It's often like, oh, you might have more insurance than you actually need. It's these kind of invisible leaks in the system. And I think that this is why building... A really detailed picture of all the money that's moving into your life and out of your life, where it is and where it's going. That is the first step before you can make any kind of plan, is you just have to know you need the information.

SPEAKER_01: 24:43

And that's the perspective that a lot of people need about how they make their spending decisions and how to... sort of interact with their spending as opposed to just spending if I'm making sense interact with why I'm spending could I spend it differently long term what does this mean interact with the actual decision to spend and not interact with the item that you're spending on and I like the example that you made that theoretically you pay off the debt that has the least interest at the end but you're saying and you're making 100% sense that you are risking what are you risking by not paying that debt are you risking your mom being upset with you because she gave you money maybe from her pension or maybe that she was spending planning to spend on something else that is quite significant to her and if you're going to start paying off everything else that's more expensive and this is where family feuds start I mean it sounds like a small thing like it's just 300 grand but no it actually it can go quite a long way because then your brother now doesn't like you because you took mom's money and then your sister you know has always been observing that you always have lots of money to spend on shoes but you're not paying mom back and then you've always been this way since you were a kid because it's all emotional and then it just starts bubbling over yeah

SPEAKER_02: 26:05

exactly exactly exactly so I'm actually updating the book at the moment so we are hoping to bring out an updated edition of the book next year in 2026 because it's now been 8 years since the book came out and you know it's been really lovely kind of revisiting the book recently um you know been kind of at you know updating some sections there's a couple of things where you know the the the rules have changed or the the industry has kind of changed over the last eight years like especially the two-tier retirement savings stuff that I need to update so all of that's going to be updated but it's also been a really lovely opportunity to think about the things that you know 10 years ago when I wrote the book and I was in my early 30s and or late 20s even you know what are the what is the kind of new wisdom that I've also kind of gained and And since the book came out, one of the most incredible things for me is that it's also enabled the most incredible conversations with readers. We sold over 100,000 copies of the book and I feel like I've had at least 100,000 conversations with readers that have just been so special to me. And the section that I'm expanding on the most is exactly what you're talking about. It's how does money affect families and what are the different approaches and strategies that families use to manage money and you know in the South African context that absolutely refers to you know children and parents but it also very much refers to as you say siblings and elderly parents and cousins and you know wider networks and the same way you know money is emotional money impacts our relationships in a massive massive way so it's been really kind of interesting to also you know I've done a bunch of research into different strategies families use around these things and there's a lot of great research about things that tend to go wrong um with money and relationships which has been really fun to expand on but yeah i mean that was also something that i felt was missing in other books about money you know is i think also we get a lot of our financial advice from america and you know one their economy is a very different economy to our economy they have different kinds of products they have inflation looks entirely different um but two i think that there's a much more individualistic culture america in south africa And when we think about money, the big question with money is, is it going to help us? Is it going to enable us to live the lives that we care about? That's the only important question, which means it has to be part of how we think about our families and our duties to our families and what we want for our families and how we think about building intergenerational wealth and all of those kind of really nuanced and very emotional questions. That's been really fun to think about.

SPEAKER_01: 28:51

You suggest various ways... when you're interrogating your spending, coming now from this money dashboard, when you're interrogating your spending, as you were saying now, that if you really look at it, you might have more insurance than you need. You list a few things which a person needs to really take a closer look at. Cell phone contracts are nonsense. And incidentally, I was speaking to someone, a 25-year-old this week, and they were saying that they want to take out a cell phone contract so that they can have a credit record. And my reasons for saying no I don't think that's a good idea. We're completely different to what you detail in the book. But also, it's something that you talk about in the book as well, this whole idea of taking out a cell phone contract to build a credit record because you can save up for that. But then you also expand on why cell phone contracts are not a good idea. And then you talk about finding cheaper insurance and also just the basic day-to-day things. You know, when I read this book, I was like, ooh. because you know when you think about the electricity bill and the water bill oh Sam there is nothing more divine after a long day especially now it's autumn going into winter taking a lovely long shower and there's this thing you'll switch on the shower you'll switch on the shower and then you'll be like oh I'm just testing the water and then you'll end up testing the water for like 3-5 minutes and then you walk away like I want to boil the kettle quickly while I'm showering so that when I jump out the shower I can quickly make my cup of tea And then you're in the shower for 15 minutes and then you've got to re-boil the kettle. And then somebody calls you to do something and you start talking and then the kettle boils and then it's cold. And those are the little things that are adding to the bill at the end of the day.

SPEAKER_02: 30:33

Oh, girl, I hear you. I am a big, I love nothing more in this life than a hot, long bath. I absolutely, it's one of my great joys and pleasures in life. But I think that, you know, this is a great point. You were saying, you know, these little things add up. And I think that's 100% true. But one of the metaphors that I use in the book is I talk about thinking about all your spending like a jar full of rocks, you know? And if I were to ask you, I would say, you know, here's a jar full of rocks. Try and make some space in the jar as quickly as you can. You know, you can spend, and imagine there's different sized rocks in the jar. There's like three big boulders and then there's a whole bunch of pebbles and then there's little grains of sand, you know, like tiny, tiny ones in all the cracks. Now you can either open that jar and you can spend the next hour one by one taking out each little grain of sand in that jar or you could reach in and you could pull out one big rock and that'll be, you know, that'll take one second and have a much bigger impact. So, you know, I think it's really important to start off with the biggest things and then work to the smallest things because it's just much easier to cancel one debit order or to spend one hour on the phone trying to find cheaper car insurance which might save you thousands of rand or a cheaper medical aid might save you thousands of rand over the year and it's a ship like no one likes spending an hour trying to find cheaper medical aid but you'd rather do that and it's more effective to do that than to worry about every single time And I think similarly, you know, like with the, you know, with electricity, you know, it's thinking about the big questions, like it makes more of an impact to insulate your geyser than to worry about every five minutes that you're running the shower before you get in the shower. So it's also thinking about, you know, being careful. being smart, being strategic and focusing. But again, you don't know where to start unless you have the dashboard, unless you can actually look at this and say, okay, if I'm now looking at my monthly bills, what are the big ones? And can I make one change with one of these big bills? Or do I need to, you know, and you kind of work from biggest to smallest, I think is often the clever thing for most people.

SPEAKER_01: 32:49

So in chapter five, you talk about alternatives to buying a house. And I found this interesting. Investing in a property fund. How is that a good idea?

SPEAKER_02: 33:01

Okay, so let me talk about my... I'll give you my summary version of it. And I think this is the thing I've probably had the most arguments about since the book came out. So... When I was growing up, the one piece of financial advice I got from my parents from the time I was, you know, can remember was get on the property ladder the moment you can get on the property ladder.

SPEAKER_00: 33:23

And

SPEAKER_02: 33:23

what they meant was buy your own house, you know? And I heard all of these sayings like, why are you paying your landlord's mortgage when you could be paying your own home loan, you know? And you hear all of these things. And there's so much pressure in South Africa to buy your house as early as you can. But there's a couple of things about buying a house. The thing is that buying a property is a very undiversified investment. So you're really putting all your eggs in one basket. And people in my parents' generation who bought a house in their early 20s, which was like the 70s, the 80s, they made so much money owning those properties. It was great for them. In South Africa, most... residential houses have actually lost money against inflation for most of the last 25 years so most people have actually lost money investing in houses in South Africa and that's not true for everyone and you always hear about the exceptions you hear about the one guy who owned a flat in Cape Town CBD 10 years ago and he's very happy now but you don't hear about all the people who bought a house 20 years ago in an area that is worth less now than it was worth 20 years ago and if you look at the data that's most houses in South Africa So what I say is, I'm not saying don't buy a house because I think owning your own home, again, talking about the emotions is, Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. For most people, it's better to wait and not feel that pressure to buy a house as early as you can and rather kind of wait until you're a bit more settled and it's more of like a lifestyle asset rather than the thing you're going to retire with, which I think is the mistake a lot of people make. And I think it's just really important to talk about alternatives, right? So I talk about investing in property funds, you know, like rather than putting all of your savings into one single house that could do very well or do very badly, you can buy into an REIT, which is, you know, it's a 1% of 100 properties, including commercial properties, including a whole bunch of different types of things. And that's just much safer. And then I think... Even going further than that, you know, you could think about investing in property and buy-to-let properties, which is a different kind of investment entirely. Or even better, you know, if you think about diversification being something really valuable and the thing that actually keeps your money that you invest safe, which is splitting it between lots of different things. And even more diversified investment is, you know, the type of investment I suggest for most people as the first investment is just investing a global ETF, so something that invests in a stock market fund that includes property, but also includes gold and includes technology companies and includes banks, includes everything. And it's such an easy type of investment to invest in. It's actually much easier to invest in that than to invest in property. And, you know, I wish more people were as excited about the stock market as I am. So, yeah, that is my whole rant about homeownership. We should stop telling 20-year-olds to try and get on the property ladder as soon as possible. Give them a break.

SPEAKER_01: 36:59

And again, looking at it in context, I mean, people are different and people look for different things in life. And some people are perfectly okay buying homes in their 20s. But I look at the people... I'm in Durban and I look at the people that I was in Durban with in my 20s. A lot of them have gotten married and some of them have sold their properties. Some of them have kept their properties for rent. A lot of them have moved up to Joburg, to Pretoria. Some have immigrated and they then have an additional decision to make now around a property. Some have been able to leverage that to their benefit and that's great. But for some people, like you say, I mean, if you buy an certain area and that area doesn't do so well after X number of years and you now want to leave and you were hoping to make money off of that house again it's weighing the risk versus the benefits and what you're comfortable with and maybe projecting forward as you're saying zoom out for a little

SPEAKER_02: 37:57

bit I love what you're saying as well about how people are different and people's situations are different and there really is no like one size fit all thing and I think that's exactly the case and so it's about being conscious about your own choices and I think being conscious of your own own biases as well. So this is kind of taking it all the way back to that first section of the book where I talk about here are the cognitive biases that we all have with money. And this is how it leads us to make mistakes. One of the big cognitive biases that we're all guilty of is sunk cost fallacy, which is the fact that thing of, you know, you throw good money after bad. You feel like, well, I've already put so much into this. I can't sell now because, you know, I've just got to keep holding onto this and until it gets better. And specifically with stuff like houses, I saw this with my mum who bought in a part of Centurion like 25 years ago. And unfortunately it was a property that lost value. And she kept waiting to sell because she was waiting for the market to turn around and she was waiting for things to get better. And it just never did. It just got worse and worse and worse. And then at the end of the day, you would have been better off selling 10 years ago than you are now. And that is one of the things with property is we're very vulnerable to, again, because houses are also emotional. And that's fine if the value that they're giving us is also emotional value. But where we also expect our houses to finance our retirement, this is where people really, really end up in trouble often with housing. So I think it's really, really important to know that you have other options because one of the reasons people invest in housing is because it's something we're all familiar with. We all live in a house. It feels very concrete and tangible, you know, and we understand it as an asset. Whereas something like the stock market feels so airy-fairy and weird and we don't intuitively understand what it is. But, you know, this is why I'm so passionate about talking to people about the stock market because it's honestly so simple. It's just... like a virtual mall where you're buying and selling pieces of businesses. That's all it is. And over the long run, there's no type of assets in over the last 100, 200 years that has delivered better returns than buying shares of businesses. And there are ways to do it that are very diversified. So it's definitely, it's a long-term investment. It's not a way to make money quickly. In the short run, it's not a gamble. You can lose money in the short term, but over the long run, I think it's just a much safer investment for most people to be thinking about more. And again, not to say that we should never buy houses, but I think that we need to also talk about the alternatives that people have and help people to feel less afraid of them by understanding kind of how they work and how to make that kind of investment work for you.

SPEAKER_01: 40:53

So you recommend talking to your children about money and talking to your children about your own money. Now as... A parent, myself, the only conversation I have about my money is that I can't afford that. I worked for that, not you. And I've said no. And that's the only conversation I have. And then you also recommend letting children start managing their own money. And there are two things here. that piqued my curiosity because a lot of parents, look, we grew up with parents, a lot of people my age, let me put it that way, A lot of us grew up with parents who didn't talk about money simply because there was so little of it to go around. So the conversation was really how am I going to pay your school fees? You know, I'm owing this, I'm owing that because they were trying to, you know, get the best for us that they could. And that's the reality for most parents even today. And so talking about my money, there was no money to talk about. So we haven't been trained to have a conversation with children about our salary. And also it feels like You are... It's even with regard to wills. You know, like we told, be transparent. If you've got five children, tell them I'm leaving everything to the cat or I'm leaving one rand to each of you. And then parents get scared. Sure, but if I'm telling them I'm leaving them one rand, the one's going to figure, hmm, hang on. I could figure out a way to get two rands just by myself. So we get scared. We get scared, you know, having these conversations. But you recommend talking to your children about your money. Why that recommendation?

SPEAKER_02: 42:40

So, I mean, it's interesting that you say that you don't talk to your kids about money because, you know, you're describing what you're describing. I think you are, you know, I think that we communicate the basic principles very, very early. And I think when you say to a child, I'm not buying this for you because I can't afford it. I think that's a really important lesson that you are communicating to your child. You're communicating financial responsibility, you know, and even things like, you know, kids also watch, learn by watching you as much as any And if a child sees you, for example, saving up for something, you know, so I can't afford this now, but I'm going to start saving for this thing. That's an incredible lesson that kids can learn. And also kind of to flip that around for them, to help them save up for things that they want. You know, it doesn't have to be a full sit down conversation about, okay, let me show you my bank statement. But, you know, so there's great data about this and great research. So, you know, I think that, so what the research says about kids, and money is that the earlier you can get them to start being able to practice, the better their long-term financial outcomes are. So, and it really doesn't have to be with a lot of money, but the research is very clear that giving your kids Even a tiny bit of pocket money does make a huge impact to how confident they feel with money when they become adults and how well they are able to do things like save up for things that they want. Eventually, you know, when they're a little bit older, when you can start to open bank accounts for them, you can start to teach them about interest and that kind of thing. Those are incredible skills for kids to learn young. And the other one is entrepreneurship, you know. So I wrote a specific version of how to manage your money 14 which came out a few years ago. And that's been great because it's also given me a chance to speak at a lot of high schools around the country and talk to kids about money. And my goodness, they are so impressive because I go into these schools. And again, I'm talking about both public schools and like former model Cs. And I'm talking about like career schools sort of things like all across the board. And, you know, I go in and I think, okay, I'm going to teach these kids about entrepreneurship. And what happens is I sit there and the kids teach me about entrepreneurship because my goodness, they are hustling. The things I have heard kids doing, they're like, and some of it's a bit scary. Far more teenagers in South Africa than their parents realize are already investing in Bitcoin, for example. Way more. They know way more about the stuff than most of their parents do in a way that can be quite dangerous as well. They're also very vulnerable to these scams. But when they're online, they are seeing all of the ads, the get-rich-quick things, that adults are seeing. And if we don't do a good enough job about teaching them about scams and teaching them about how wealth is actually built, then they are so vulnerable to these things. And there was this terrible story about four years ago, a 21-year-old who took his own life because he had started investing on this online investing platform and he was doing leveraged investments, which means when you're investing, but you're not putting money in It's kind of like, you know, it's this kind of quite complex financial instrument. And it looked to him that he had incurred a million dollars worth of debt. And so he took his own life. And that's not actually true. But he didn't understand how the platform worked. And he felt so ashamed and so hopeless. And I think that, you know, I think it's really important that we talk to kids about money. Because if we don't, they are getting messages from people. the internet. And I think it's really important that those messages rather come from us and we can help them to, you know. But I think the other thing as well is just shame. You know, again, it's helping to build positive emotions about money. And that is, you know, that's really hard because, you know, again, when I think about my parents, and you're totally right, it was our parents didn't have any money to talk about managing. But, you know, You know, when I, all of my emotions in my 20s that I had to work through about money, it was fear and it was anxiety. And those things came, that was inherited trauma, you know. You know, like I talk about, I think about all the women in my family, the generation ahead of me, who were in horrifically abusive relationships that they couldn't leave because they weren't financially independent. That is trauma that we inherit, you know. And I think that the first step of really learning to manage your money, again, I come back to, it's understanding the emotions and it's understanding your own emotions and then being very thoughtful about what you're going to pass on to your kids. Because even when you think you're not talking to them about money, they are learning, they're watching and they're hearing how you talk about all of the decisions you make about money.

SPEAKER_01: 47:33

So someone said something that I found quite intriguing. They said the reason that children nowadays don't understand money so well is firstly money is no longer tangible for them so when we were sent to the store to buy bread first of all we were sent to the store first of all so we understood that bread didn't just come in the car

SPEAKER_02: 47:57

I remember my dad used to send me out to the corner caf to go and buy cigarettes for him

SPEAKER_01: 48:02

cigarettes and bread and you therefore learnt the whole concept of change and how the change and the money that you'd spent needed to add up to the money that you'd left home with and you also understood that money was a tangible thing that when we talk about inflows and outflows you could literally see it flowing out of your parents wallet and into the shopkeepers and so you could actually see that and you could actually have a mental understanding based on that mental picture of you physically walking to the store to go and buy that and you could actually see what money could physically buy you now we're buying online so things arrive on the delivery truck or via courier and we're buying groceries online we tap our cards we tap and go and these are conversations where children are saying when you say I don't have money and they say oh can't you just use your card

SPEAKER_02: 48:53

exactly and that was how I ended up with credit card debt it felt like my credit card was magic I think this is such a good point that you make. And, you know, when you look at techniques that are used to teach young children, especially about money, like there's some great strategies for kids of all ages. And one of the big recommendations is when you're teaching younger kids, like under the age of 10 about money, is exactly as you say, try and make it tangible. So with them, work with coins if you can. You know, you can even start, for example, teaching very young kids about interest by, you know, having a savings jar with them. And having, you know, you, the bank, are going to tell them you will pay interest on whatever they put in. And it can be very simple. You know, you can say, like, every time you put in five rand, I'll put in one more rand. You know, that's then them learning about interest. And that is physical and tangible. With even smaller, smaller kids, you can do it with treats and with stickers and whatever. But I think that is really important to try to make money tangible. It is harder with teenagers. It really is because, you know, nothing works on cash anymore. Right. And I think you're absolutely right. I think it is part, it's one of the reasons that younger people, you know, money feels much less tangible. And it is, it's a real problem.

SPEAKER_01: 50:13

So forgive my ignorance, but I really loved this because I'd never heard of it before, where you talk about black tax and aging parents. And you talk about, because it's not just black tax in terms of racially people, Black text. It's actually called Ubuntu text because... if you've got ageing parents and if you've got parents that didn't have great circumstances and they provided for you and you've not been able to have a better life you also want your parents to be reflective of the life that you now can afford and you want to assist them and some parents you know we went through a phase in the country where there were massive massive massive retrenchments and a lot of parents lost a lot of things and their children have now worked hard to sort of restore their parents if I can put it that way, dignity, if I can put it that way, and just give them a good laugh. Some people have been opposed to calling it a tax. In some instances, you can feel and see that it actually is being handled as a tax. And in some instances, it's just people really wanting to give back to their parents and really wanting to help their family have a better standard of living. But I love how you call it Ubuntu tax. That's lovely.

SPEAKER_02: 51:29

Thank you. Well, I mean, I can't take credit for that. Nikum Shongo, edited this incredible collection of essays. I think it came out in about 2018, 2019 called Black Tax Burden or Ubuntu. And it's a collection of essays from South Africans from different backgrounds, mostly black South Africans, writing about different perspectives of familial responsibility and money and different ways that different people feel about it. And I think this is it. Different people do feel differently. I think that one of the things that's important though, and I think all of us come into this world owing a debt to our parents that we can never repay to some extent you know and is it even right to think of it as a debt but you know none of us are individuals in this world and you know again coming back to this thing about how so much financial advice is so individualistic because it comes from America and that's not our cultures that's not our country and not everyone feels regretful of you know it can feel like an incredible honour to be able to uplift your family with you and it can feel like you are the realization of your family's hard work as well you know but I think one of the things that is important is when you look at other families to just be aware of the fact that we all have such different starts in life and such different circumstances because you know especially when I talk to young people in their 20s and they're in their first kind of Especially black South Africans, because of our history, very often I talk to people and people would tell me they feel very far behind their peers because, you know, peers who come from backgrounds where their first paycheck is 100% theirs. It's all, you know, the money that comes in is for them. They can start saving. They can start buying their car. That is not normal in South Africa for your first paycheck to be just yours. And I think it's just really important for all of us as a society when we look around and we think to ourselves, like, am I behind? Am I failing? To remember that some people, you know, they start, they don't even start with 100% of their own paycheck. They start of inheriting things. You know, it works. Some people have start with intergenerational wealth and I think you know also one of the really important things when it's this constant really difficult balancing act when you're thinking about saving and you're thinking about investing It's always that question of, you know, you're balancing your desire to give back to your parents, to invest in your own retirement and to invest in your children. And, you know, I think understanding things like compounding can be really powerful when you apply it to intergenerational wealth thinking. But, you know, I think we make a huge mistake when we pretend that personal finances are personal, that it's just about us and ignore the fact that we do. We live in these networks and you know we all this is Ubuntu I think this is the best word for this you know we are We are interconnected. That is our humanity.

SPEAKER_01: 54:34

You also give strategies. Let me take it from the top. So creating your own money challenge board. You write them from difficult to easy. And you've got different options there. Live without a car, downgrade your cell phone, cut your electricity bill, no spend weekends, 25 rand, dinner challenge, et cetera. And I think one that we would find most difficult there, look, I mean, you've got others like live without a car. I mean, that's hard. Real

SPEAKER_02: 55:01

hard, especially in this country.

SPEAKER_01: 55:02

But you've got one... that you've listed as easy just say no a lot of people would say that's the hardest one

SPEAKER_02: 55:09

so yeah that's the challenge is go into a very expensive shop the kind where there's a salesperson who will come up to you and like try and sell you something

SPEAKER_00: 55:20

like

SPEAKER_02: 55:20

a car sales sales room for example and you know pretend you are keen to buy something as you know don't do this often you don't want to waste people's time but it's an it's a good challenge but then kind of you know you try you know go and have that experience and then say say no, walk away. And I think if you're someone like me, Um, when I was younger, you know, that was really, really hard. And I think it's, it's, it's helpful to be able to just practice explicitly, you know, those skills in ways that feel, you know, all these skills can be, can be practiced and it can be helpful to, again, just be a bit mindful about what are the habits and behaviors that actually create your financial situation. Because your, your financial situation isn't just created when you sit down with your spreadsheet or you sit down the day after payday and you pay all your debit orders or you pay off your bills, whatever. Um, It happens in that moment to moment decision. It happens when you're out with your friends and, you know, you have the one friend who says, oh, let's get another round. And, you know, you're looking at your app, your banking app, and you're thinking, oh, I can't really afford another round. But, you know, it's learning the habits and skills that actually are where our financial choices are made, which is not when we are sitting in front of our banking desk spreadsheet it's moments and moments

SPEAKER_01: 56:36

i'd like to try this one and when we have the conversation about the other book i'm actually going to give you feedback on this turning 100 rand into a five into 500 i'm going to try

SPEAKER_00: 56:46

that

SPEAKER_01: 56:50

but um yeah you also give strategies for making money and you talk about um honing your skills you're talking about pricing your time I really like what you say here about pricing your time because for somebody who isn't a freelancer they might not be used to that and they might believe they don't have time to price so let's say maybe it's somebody that you know is good at baking for argument's sake and is good at baking but they've never baked outside of their family they bake for functions and everybody knows that if it's a family function so and so must bake so they've never really learned to price the value of their skill and also to price their time create a side hustle but price their time because maybe they do have a job but they're sitting on this phenomenal baking skill or sewing

SPEAKER_02: 57:36

skill or And I wish this was a skill that we taught people in school. Like how do you actually do that? Like how do you set a price for something? Because you know that more than half of full-time employed South Africans have a side hustle. More than half. It's like we have one of the highest rates in the world. Most South Africans are side hustling, you know? It's not just this niche thing, but it's not a skill that we teach. And you find, especially women, underpriced, undervalue ourselves, especially people who are doing a job that they enjoy, underpriced yourself because you think, well, I'm enjoying it. So, you know, do I even deserve to get paid? You know, and yeah, you're totally right. Like we get negotiated down and there's no way out. of your situation unless you learn how to properly price your time so yeah I think it's something that we should teach we should teach more people because more and more people are side hustling

SPEAKER_01: 58:33

they need

SPEAKER_02: 58:33

to know

SPEAKER_01: 58:34

Thank you very much for your time filing your tax return and being able to calculate that properly. You talk about your retirement annuity. You talk about choosing the right insurance. You talk about all those very specific things that I would like for us to talk about in another conversation. But just for this episode, thank you very much for joining us on the podcast and I look forward to more conversations about this.

SPEAKER_02: 59:23

I will chat to you anytime. Thank you so much for having me on.

SPEAKER_01: 59:26

And thank you for joining us for another episode of the podcast. Remember, you can like, rate and share this podcast from the channel you're listening on.