Money Time Mag

Moneytime : YOUR CHILD’S FINANCIAL FREEDOM AWAITS

Financial literacy is one of the essential life skills you can give your child. In collaboration with MoneyTime SA, MyLife has the vision to create a Financially Independent South African Youth.

We aim to help parents and educational leaders to teach our kids how to make good decisions with their money. What and how you teach your child about money depends on many things. Regardless, your child must be equipped with the knowledge, skills and confidence to enter adulthood prepared to make sound financial decisions.

There’s no doubt about it. It was more difficult for our generation to get ahead financially than our parents. It will be even harder for our children. Your child must learn about earning, saving, borrowing, lending and investing to get ahead in today’s economy.

We live in an age of instant gratification where we can access almost anything within a few clicks. Our children are more familiar with paying with plastic than cash – where it’s easier to get a sense of how much you’re spending and what is left. Young adults have easy access to credit, and the concept of borrowing to live beyond their means is largely accepted. All this can lead to bad spending habits that result in student, personal and household debt.

***The mountain is steeper for our children***

Take student loans, for example. Student debt has ballooned to R16.5bn (US$1bn), up from R14bn at the end of 2019, Linda Meyer, director for operations and sector support at Universities South Africa, disclosed in March 2022. South Africans are now going into their 30s, 40s and 50s with student loan debt they’ve not paid off. The question we have to ask ourselves is, have we done enough to equip our youth with the financial knowledge they need to make wise financial decisions or are we allowing them to learn by costly trial and error?

We understand that financial freedom means different things for different people. For some people, it may mean the ability to pay university fees for the first graduate in the family or paying off a long-standing family debt. For others, it may mean travelling to the coast to enjoy the sea for the first time. No matter where you are on the journey towards obtaining financial freedom, it’s never too late to start.

Here are some practical tips from MyLife and MoneyTime SA to explore with your child, and get your child interested in working towards financial freedom

Ensure your child remains motivated to achieve their goals by creating a vision board they can work towards. Simply put, a financial vision board is a collection of images, words, numbers and dates and helps clarify, concentrate and maintain focus on a specific objective. This daily visual stimulation will motivate you to adopt healthier money habits – helping you and your child stay on track and achieve milestones.

It’s no fun saving if you don’t know what you’re saving for. Give your child a savings goal – such as a deposit for a toy or event, cool clothing or even luxuries. When deciding on a goal, consider how much they need to save and by when. Concrete dates and amounts will help to motivate both of you. Give them chores around the house to earn extra pocket money – it’s a win-win for all.

Don’t forget to treat your child when they reach a savings milestone. This will help motivate them to keep putting any extra cash away when possible. In addition to focusing on the big goals, aim to set smaller, short-term goals because these will reap quicker results and keep you both motivated. For example, saving money each week for a trip in six months will keep you inspired to put the money away.

A budget can help you accurately manage your money. By creating one, you can see exactly how much money is coming in and out of your accounts, how much debt you have and how you can make strides to reduce that debt. For many, figuring out how to live on a budget can be a steep learning curve. A budget helps you see that you’re spending R500 a month on takeaways and R100 a month on an online subscription you aren’t using. By knowing how much they spend on what, your child can optimise how they spend their pocket money every month and start to steadily grow their savings.

Credit and debit cards have become essential – especially when considering the increasing amount of online transactions. While on the other hand, the average person spends more per transaction when using plastic. Paying with cash will make you think twice about making any purchases. Come into the habit of using cash when spending money with your child and let them do the math with you.

Voucher and Reward Programmes, like MyLife Lifestyle, can come in handy to stretch the rand and enjoy discounts on your monthly spending patterns. If you plan right, you can use your vouchers to pay for everyday-living items and even some nice-to-have reward items. Visit www.mylifelifestyle.co.za for more. Teach your child to use these programs to their advantage.

Let us be intentional about freeing our children from the shackles of over-indebtedness and a lack of knowledge about their finances. Now is the time to empower our youth with the experience to manage their finances and grow their wealth. Both for now and into their future. The MoneyTime SA financial education programme was created just for this purpose.

MoneyTime includes a fun money management game as part of the course. Children are rewarded with virtual money within the game for answering questions correctly and can decide how to spend it. They can shop at virtual stores, donate, or invest in further education and property to increase their long-term wealth. In this way, MoneyTime teaches your kids how the consequences of their financial decisions work without the real-life pressure, risk, or fear of failure.

MoneyTime covers a wide range of money lessons, at 30 minutes each, including employment, job application, career choice, banking, property purchase, investing and business basics. In addition to the 30 student lessons, there are 13 parent-child lessons. These are designed for students to complete with a parent or trusted adult. They are optional but highly recommended as they help to put learning into real-life context.

Lessons are combined with a fun money management game that lets children try out the strategies they’ve learnt in the program to grow and manage their money. Gift your child financial literacy, one of the essential life skills you can give your child. Click here to learn more and subscribe.

Excellence In Financial Literacy Education (EIFLE)

MoneyTime was also awarded runner-up for the prestigious The Best Non-Financial Services Company at the inaugural 2022 Money Inclusion and Awareness Awards (MIAA) in what judges considered the most tightly contested category of the evening.

The Money Awareness & Inclusion Awards (MAIA)

MoneyTime is proud to have won the Children's Education Program of the Year - Financial Responsibility & Decision Making award for 2022 presented by The Institute for Financial Literacy.

For more information or to enrol your child or school today, contact us at +27 72 118 3258 or rietha@moneytimekids.co.za

MoneyTime – Enrol now

MyLife – mylife.co.za

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