BUSINESS NEWS - Growing up, I would marvel at this idea that you could accumulate Shoprite stamps at R5 each and then use a booklet to pay for your December groceries.
It was something that truly made a difference in our home.
As a semi-adult in finance, I have a newfound appreciation of all the principles this teaches. At one point, my mother used to belong to a stokvel that “invested” in these stamps.
If you think about it, South Africans have been perfecting fractional contributions before regulations – and doing so unassisted.
Stokvels were tokenisation long before blockchain told us what it is.
They were a tool that helped us in the hard times and gave us all something to build up and look forward to.
Stokvels allowed for minimal contributions on a consistent basis, enabling us to achieve better cash flow management as households.
The power of collective saving and unified investing goals is epitomised in stokvels.
Limitless possibilities
Here lies a tool that is understood by South Africans but remains grossly underutilised. We could be doing so much more with our stokvels.
Groceries, meat, holidays, handbags, asset purchases, you can stokvel anything! Guys like Stokfella and Property Stokvels (who are doing great things) are just scraping the surface of the limitless possibilities of stokvels.
In truth, there should be a stokvel for everything. So why isn’t there?
It could be because very few of us enjoy admin, and even fewer of us can agree on a common investment goal. But maybe we don’t have to – maybe we just need to agree on the best way to deploy the capital.
Read more on Caxton publication, The Citizen
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