I hoarded money because I was afraid to go back to poverty

Ondiro Oganga, 26.

Looking keenly at the state of my finances encouraged me to start spending a little more money on myself. 

I grew up in the ghetto and so I always had this fear of losing everything and ending back where I started. I have always been scared of over spending as I never want to go back to that life.

However, doing a financial health check helped me to realise two very important things.

One, that I need to use the money I had to lead a life I enjoyed.  I could afford to. I had a tidy sum that I could spend on myself, maybe plan for a vacation and still be OK. 

I realised that while it is okay to save money, one also needs to live a little and spoil themselves regularly.

The second thing I learnt was that just keeping money in my account didn’t mean that I was being astute; the money did not grow.

In fact, every time I withdrew some from the bank account, it cost me something.

So, I consulted with a financial expert who helped me realise that there were a number of investment opportunities like the money market, tertiary bonds and the pension fund that I could use to grow my money instead of stacking it in an account.

Doing a health check also helped me realise that I needed to diversify my sources of income instead of only relying on one source.