Photo Credit: Priscilla Gyamfi
Walking into a local sporting goods store I came across this mother and her two kids. They were trying on sneakers and as one of the boys walked pass me, he turns to me and said “I’m gonna get these for Christmas Uncle”. Here’s the weird part about his statement, it was July. When I saw who his mother was I actually recognized her from high school, we ran track together and I asked her, without even thinking about it
Are you going to lay-bye your kids’ shoes?
For those that don’t know the concept of lay-bye, you chose a product and pay monthly instalments until paid and the product becomes yours.
Her answer, which I feared, was
Yes, I can’t afford them right now
I should have stopped there but I couldn’t help myself. My next question was
Do you have a saving account for your kids for when they want to go study one day?
Again I got the answer I feared,
No, I can’t afford to have savings accounts for them
Not sure why I did or said what I did next but this burning feeling inside me just made me say it.
Please help me understand, you are willing to put aside money every month so that your kids can afford name brand clothing and a pair of shoes that they will probably destroy after a month but you won’t put aside money for your kids to go study and change their lives for the better
Don’t get me wrong, we; the wife person and I, also lay-byed clothing when our kids were babies, sometimes it just works in your favour but our kids both have savings accounts since the day they were born with a stop order payment going into it every month – for when they want to go study one day or travel one day.
So what brought on this memory? I few days ago the wife person said something to me that hit a nerve and got me upset with ‘Our People’. I don’t normally play the race card but by ‘Our People’ I mean the Coloured community and the Coloured community of Cape Town in particular.
What she said, in not so many words, is that “We are Coloured” and if you came from a middle class family you were brought up to believe that your life had to lead a certain way i.e. Go to school, get good grades so you can go to university and get a diploma or degree so you can land a good job, get married, buy a house and have kids so the cycle can continue.
For the unfortunate masses life has a totally different cycle. They live in poverty; gangsters rule the streets – wearing expensive jewellery and name brand clothing and these are the role models for their generation. Money that could be saved, invested or spent on education is lost to name brand clothing, alcohol and drugs. This could easily have been my life.
Thankfully for me, my parents, who had me at a very young age; had to adapt quickly to adult life and worked extremely hard at life so that we remained in the middle class of society. Yes, they instilled the above values of studying, good job, buying a house and having a family but they also preached investing and saving, living your life to the full and enjoying every minute. They encouraged my sister and I to go after what we wanted no matter how hard it would be.
I was very impressed with my parents one day when we made a visit to the bank, I had asked my parents to sign surety for me on a loan and they made the application with NO DEBT to their names and generous savings and investment portfolios. This was something for me to aspire too.
I want ‘Our People’ to realize that there’s more to life than owing a house and car, which by the way doesn’t even belong to you; try stopping your monthly payments on your house or car and see what happens. There’s more to life than spending 5yrs studying something and then realizing, when you work in the field, that you hate your job.
A few years back I’ve decided to keep my words to myself. If I say something I’m going to see it through. I’ve made up my mind to sell our house and invest the money differently so I sat down with the wife person and explained why it’s good for us and our family. I have no regrets buying the house and paying it off and calling it our own but it’s stopped us from living our life to the full. Yes, we have a good time, spend money on things we want and need. But what we really want, which is international travel and early retirement, we can’t have because we have home payments, car payments, and debt. And we aren’t alone in this, so many of our family and friends are in the same cycle. And it’s because we let life lead us instead of us leading life.
I want to change this, with the wife person, I want to lead life. If we want to travel somewhere I want to be able to pack our bags and go. If we want to buy something nice I want to be able to say “let’s buy it” without worrying about how it will affect the monthly budget. My job allows us to live a comfortable life but one unplanned shopping spree and we find ourselves scrambling at the budget and living pay check to pay check, that’s not living life!
We don’t want this for our family anymore and we don’t want this for ‘Our People’ anymore. We will lead by example and make good investment choices to lead our life in the direction we want and when we succeed we will coach ‘Our People’ to do the same. It’s a cycle that has to be broken.
I say “we” as I know the wife person wants the best for our little family and for some odd reason she trusts me and my crazy ideas.
Why don’t any of our kids aspire to be doctors and lawyers anymore? You never hear a kid from our community say that they want to be President one day. There are millionaires being made every day by good investing or using the internet and social media platforms to make a living while travelling the world. Why aren’t we exposing our kids to this unlimited source of information and income?
We need to change and it starts with us. Together we are the CHANGE!
If my story resonates with you and you can relate leave a comment below, I would like to hear from you.
