Personal Finance Magazine Vol. 88 - 3rd. Quarter 2021

The release of this publication coincides with Women’s Month, and it contains three articles focusing on women: the cover story on women investors; one on how different arrangements between partners, within and outside of marriage, can result in different financial outcomes; and a profile of Raazia Ganie, one of the increasing number of women in senior positions in the financial sector. It’s a well-established fact that men take more risks than women; hence they pay higher car insurance premiums. However, one area where women could try to behave a little more like their male counterparts is in long-term investing. Here it is beneficial to take on more risk, by investing in growth assets such as equities, instead of “staying safe” in cash. This is because investment risk, in the form…

Future-proof Yourself – How to Win at Work and Life Author: Nikki Bush Publisher: Penguin Books Recommended retail price: R210.00 Nikki Bush is a popular speaker, author and media personality, specialising in parenting and personal empowerment. She has written a number of books, including Future-proof Your Child for the 2020s and Beyond. The theme of her latest book is disruption, and it couldn’t have come at a better time. The Covid-19 pandemic has given us all a major lesson in disruption. The ways the pandemic has changed our lives, and how best to deal with these changes, form the heart of her book. Bush herself had to cope with severe disruption in her life back in December 2017, when Simon, her husband of 26 years and father of their two…

EMPLOYEE BENEFITS FOR MY STAFF I’m a small business owner with 10 employees. At what point do I need to get a plan in place for my employees? I’d like to consider offering them benefits such as medical and retirement provisions, but I am not sure where to begin. Name withheld John Cranke, principal at PSG Wealth Employee Benefits, Midlands, responds: There is no legal requirement for businesses to have retirement fund or healthcare cover in place for employees. However, there are many reasons why it is a good idea to have these sooner than later. Offering benefits of this nature through the employer group immediately makes a company an “employer of choice” owing to the financial protection and peace-of-mind offered. From a retirement fund perspective, there are significant tax…

“Women are less financially literate than men.” That’s the opening statement of Fearless Woman: Financial Literacy and Stock Market Participation, a research paper released by the Global Financial Literacy Excellence Center earlier this year. The lack of financial literacy means that, to a greater extent than is the case with men, women don’t know what they need to know to make informed financial decisions. But the researchers noticed another trend when they were assessing the data: women tended to choose the “do not know” option to questions designed to measure financial knowledge far more often than men did. Don’t know, or think you don’t know? Following from that observation, the researchers wondered whether women really lacked the knowledge, or whether the issue was confidence. They decided to dig deeper, removing…

Whatever cocktail of emotions drives a couple to make a lifelong commitment to each other, optimism is an essential ingredient, not least when it comes to money. Yet, for all the benefits of togetherness, from shared costs to tax breaks, it is indisputable that women tend to be the losers when plans and expectations derail, and are more likely to face a financial crisis after the departure or death of a life partner – whether they are married or not. If there’s anything we have learnt from 18 months of the global pandemic, it is that life can change very suddenly in ways that are inconceivable in the good times. Women’s Month 2021 has the important theme of gender equality, but it might be even more relevant in this moment…

In 2021, women are still more likely to earn less than men for the same work, according to several surveys undertaken in the last three years. Most recently, an article published in the University of Stellenbosch Business School’s Management Review, based on recent research, described South Africa as having “a stagnant median gender pay gap of between 23% and 35%”, compared to a global average of 20%. Women in the middle and upper wage bands are affected most, according to the research. Two studies published in 2019 echo these numbers. Stats SA's November 2019 Inequality Trends in SA survey found that salaried women were earning 30% less than their male counterparts – a statistic that is all the more alarming when you consider that salaries account for at least 70%…