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Staying hungry

THERE are quite a lot of new initiatives aimed at educating South African youth about managing their finances, but sometimes the simplest form of advice actually comes from parents not pandering to their every demand.
 
At 29 I am a "parent" to four kids - one step-daughter and three foster children. I spend a lot of time trying to work out how we are going to afford things for them like education, accommodation and even a car for the step-daughter in five years' time.
 
The flip side of that is that at 29 I am young enough to have grown up in 20 years of bull market conditions, in a place where I have never really had to think of anything except take it for granted that life was driven by credit.

I have only known a world where there were 110% bonds on houses, and credit cards were expected rather than a nice-to-have.
 
Two years ago, we took the decision to move into a bigger house and rent out our smaller place. When we applied for finance at the banks, they came back asking us for a 10% deposit; then we also needed to cover roughly R50 000 in transfer fees.

I was stumped - what the hell was a deposit, and where was I going to get R150k in cash on hand?
 
Of course, I followed that time-old tradition of my generation and dialled daddy.
 
I explained my requirements, sent him my bank account details, hung up the phone and then waited, expecting the money to arrive in my account.

When it didn't materialise, I called him back, worried that perhaps I hadn't given him the right account number or that he didn't realise the meaning of the word "urgent".
 
His response left me absolutely gobsmacked: "You get the first two-thirds of it and I'll give you the balance as an interest-bearing loan."
 
Say what?!
 
Didn't he understand that one-third did me no good? I needed it all.

Be cruel to be kind, it can be the greatest gift
 
Long story short, it took us a year longer to raise the money. Eventually we did it and we got the house, but not without some serious sweat and discipline.
 
It didn't feel like it at the time, but it was actually a very important lesson for me to learn and in hindsight I am grateful for the experience.
 
In December the shoe was on the other foot, when the cousin of one of the foster kids came through looking for R10 000 to do a course at Damelin. Do I just roll over and say it is a nice thing to do, or do I follow my dad's example?
 
While interviewing Mark Barnes from Purple Capital, I brought up the subject and he said something which I thought was very true: "People have to stay hungry. If everything is given to them, they will never know what it is like to be hungry."

He pointed to an example he knew, where the father had been asked by one of his kids to stand surety on a business property she wanted.

Much to the child's dismay, the father refused but went out to make an alternative plan and sure enough, with a bit of digging he came up with a far more suitable and cost-effective property.
 
If we look at the way the Greeks have reacted to the proposed austerity measures in their country, we start to realise what happens when nobody stays hungry.

Do we want the next generation of South Africans growing up like that and, more importantly, can we ourselves afford to just give indiscriminately?
 
 - Fin24

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