Do you have a clear savings strategy in place for your child’s education?
It’s no secret – the sooner you start saving, the better the results. It’s also no secret that school fees are becoming increasingly expensive, with many schools pushing fees up above the rate of inflation every year.
Despite the facts, 57% of urban South African parents are not actively saving for their children’s education. Many parents pay school fees ad-hoc, without much advance planning. But with the rising costs of education, paying for secondary and post-secondary years may become a challenge. When your child is still young, you have more time to build up funds for education and benefit from earning interest and bonuses on your accumulated funds.
The inflation equation
Figures from Stats SA show that since 1990, inflation for day-to-day living expenses has increased by about 7% each year. Sounds like a lot, doesn’t it? Take a deep breath… because education costs have risen by almost double this amount – an alarming 13% per year.
Let’s look at a practical example – if your household earned R10 000 a month in 1990 and your child’s education cost you R500 per month, 5% of your income would go towards education. If your income increased in line with inflation, you would be earning around R44 000 today. However, the cost of providing the same education for your child would have increased to R8 103 per month, a massive 18% of your income – over triple the proportion from 28 years ago.
“But I can’t afford to save”
The truth is that you can’t afford not to. Time are tough, but even if you don’t have a lot of money to spare, getting into the habit of actively saving now (no matter how small the amount) can help you reap the rewards in the future.
If you’re not saving right now, can you afford to provide for your children’s education now and into the future?
School-Days member Shaun Dutton says: “When it comes to saving for your children’s education, there’s no such thing as starting too soon. From the moment they’re born (or even before), you need to start thinking about the future you want to give them – and how much it’s going to cost you!
No amount is too small and no time is too soon to start saving for your family’s education. I’ve even asked my parents and in-laws not to buy as so many presents (toys in particular). I’d rather they make a financial contribution and give a lasting gift of a better education than things that eventually accumulate dust in the garage.”
The School-Days solution
The stats may sound scary, but there’s action you can take today to provide for tomorrow. School-Days is revolutionising the way South Africans meet their school fee obligations.
School-Days sources multiple channels of getting free money, consolidated into your single bursary account. For example, when you join School-Days for free and shop at School-Days Partners, you get a percentage of your spend added to your personal education bursary. This is just one of the ways to build your bursary; there are a number of other easy ways too, like making direct contributions, getting tax-exempt contributions from your employer and benefitting when friends and family spend at our Partners.
With a proactive and systematic approach to building your School-Days bursary over time, you will be able to accumulate funds and one day use your bursary to pay towards your family’s education fees.
ABOUT SCHOOL-DAYS
School-Days gives you the opportunity to build a bursary for your family’s school, college and university fees, helping you provide for their education. The platform is simple, and building a bursary is easy. Take the future of your children’s education into your own hands. Sign up for School-Days and join the school fees revolution today.
Have more questions about School-Days?
- Visit www.schooldays.co.za.
- Get in touch with the member support team at [email protected].
- Give School-Days a call on 086 999 0105.
