My issue with pretty book covers and the complaints about book prices in SA?

 

My issue with pretty book covers and the complaints about book prices in the SA book market?

Here’s a rant if you have the stomach to read it…

So you want to become a writer/ you are a reader who wants pretty book covers to convince you to buy for a maximum of R250 refer this #SAPublishingSector link?

Here’s what I see as an example of an artsy cover as tweeted by Dr.Look earlier today, refer tweet. This is not a local book but a Zambian one by the way.

Here's my functional cover which cost me about R3.3k, and I sell this title for R170 as I am at least a light edit kind of writer.

For a self-published author here’s what you should look forward to as the costs that will result in you publishing that story you have written or want to write…

As per this website, https://www.voxate.co.za/freelance-rates-2018-south-africa/, you should expect to pay R0.9 to R1.5 for ghost writing, please note I did not use the quoted ghost-writing rate of R5 to R7 to accommodate a situation where you need help writing, so you write together with your ghost writer and because my example will focus on fiction.

*Ghost writing is usually used by nonfiction writers, who might not be writers, but have interesting stories to tell.

Let’s say your story is a standard novel length of 80k words, check here for general consensus on word count https://wordcounter.io/blog/how-many-words-are-in-a-novel/

80k words will result in a book of between 200 and 250 pages, the average length that most readers say they want, citing that thin books are not satisfactory and thick ones might be intimidating.

The writing will cost you 80k*0.9 (R72k), and here we are assuming that your ghost writer is an excellent writer who will only need light editing, so you will be paying about R0.50 per word, that makes editing cost of 80k*0.5 (R40k)

Next you need a proofreader, who might charge you R0.30 to R0.45 per word, so 80k*0.3 (24k)

Are you totaling so far? Well it is currently sitting at 72k+40k+24k (R136k)

Now you need a cover designer and a printing prepper😒, is there no end to all that you need to do just to get that one lousy book out there in the market!😭

For book covers refer to this site, https://www.rockingbookcovers.com/book-cover-design-prices-2017/, where I will reference the middle-end costing

Dollar as at now is R14.64, you can check Sharedata

So your cover will cost you minimum of $250*14.64 (R3660), a minimum high-end cover would cost you a minimum of $1000*14.64 (R14.6K)

Formatting is between R0.2 and R0.5 per word so you are paying 80k*0.2 (R16k)

Let’s say this is all the due diligence you do and you can send your proof copies to your proof reader who already proof read before this to help you take back some missed errors to your editor, so no additional charge for this

You now have your print files, yay!

As per this site, https://safacts.co.za/editing-and-proofreading-services-in-south-africa/, printing about 1k copies, for which if you can be bestseller in SA, you will pay R30 per copy so 1k*R30 (R30k)

What is the total now? 136k+3660+16k+30k (R185660)

So how much is reasonable price to sell to break even?

100 copies, 500 copies?

Let’s go with 500, and assume that you believe your book will be an SA bestseller 🤣🤣🤣

Minimum price for your book is R185660/500 (R371.32 per copy)😲😳, and this is when you have not used a cover that someone would consider beautiful enough to buy, and also taking into account that some have quoted R250 as the most they are willing to pay on a book

Please note that I have used minimum rates for each example👆

I will not go into the distribution and marketing costs as that will definitely cause you to faint, if you have not at this point.

So when you are denying writers, local & possibly self-published, your support on account of their ugly covers or whatever other politics you cite, don’t complain about the price without thinking about what it means to produce that beautiful cover you so desire.

*By the way if the person above goes with the artistic cover the cost per book goes up to (136k+14.6k+16k+30k) R196640/500 (R393.28 per copy), that's a difference of R21.96 per copy😣😖.

Let me also say this, this is the cost when writing in English. Writing in other languages attracts costlier editing and proofreading rates.

Thank you for reading to the end, it means you really want to be the difference you want to see and seek to understand some of the industry’s norms.

You can check out my books here and place your order https://payhip.com/BooksbyTumeloMoleleki

Alternatively email reubexg@gmail.com or WA https://wa.me/message/4Z6HUUYNMKDSJ1

You can also sample books here https://www.amazon.com/Tumelo-Moleleki/e/B00JQA8ILS

 Enjoy your day.

Shareholding movements and adjustments

Dear reader.

Thank you for visiting my blog to discover what I endeavour to share with the world. Your time and attention is appreciated.

This blog is going to address a question that was posed by my favourite people on twitter, the #fintwitter peeps.

The question related to what happens when an investor decides to take the profits gained from the appreciation of the share price for the stock that they are holding.

So, strategies are important when you embark on investing. Refer to my blog What of these strategies they go on and on about?

If your strategy allows for investing in shares where you are looking to maximise your gains in the short to mid term, then you would be looking to buy shares that you are looking to lock the profits you make from them, in. This strategy borders on trading as it can be fast paced.

Here's a scenario of Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow...

If yesterday X bought shares for R80 and got 8 shares, it means that each share was R10 and contributed 12.5% to the whole of R80.

If today Y, buying the same shares for R80, gets 5.33 shares, it is because the share price has increased and each share now costs R15 and contributes 18.75% to the whole of R80.

X, who bought yesterday, has made a 50% gain on each share, so now X's share is worth R15 and contributes 18.75% to the new whole of R120.

So 5.33 * 15 gives X R80, which is the same as what Y has, the difference between X and Y is that X has pocketed R40 and is back to having the same whole as Y of R80 and no longer has 8 shares but has 5.33 shares.

If tomorrow Z buys the same shares for R80 and gets 10 shares, it means that each share price has decreased to the cost of R8 for each share, contributing 10% to the whole of R80.

Y has lost R37.36, which is 46.7% of R80. Now the shares are each contributing 18.76% to the new whole of R42.64 , which is essentially the same due to the adjustment in value. Share value adjusts based on the number of shares held when the share price changes.

X has also lost R37.36 as a result of the new share price, but X's profit of R40 has cushioned their loss such that they still have a profit of R2.64, that is money either in their pocket or invested elsewhere.

*You can even go so far as to say that X's investment is R40.00 and that would then mean that their 5.33 shares contribute about 20% to the whole that is R40.

With the new price, X's number of shares still being 5.33 does not give them 100% of R80 at a portion of 10% when compared to the number of shares Z has. So X has lost (100 - (5.33*10)) = 46.7%.

In theory, the money in X's pocket is still R40 rand, but taking into account the loss on the share that gave X that gain, X is tomorrow sitting on only R2.64 gains in real terms. So X has less stake in the shares than Y and Z, but when dividends are being paid, Z will get more than X and Y, but X's dividend yield will be more than Z's, in the way that X's adjusted average that accounts for his adjusted invested amount, actually means that each share cost X (40/5.33) = R7.50

Z's shareholding is now more than X and Y's, as he holds more shares for the new value of R42.64, so he got more shares for his additional R37.36 for buying when the price is lower. A whole 4.67 shares more!

The investor who is worst of as a result of tomorrow's move is Y.

I hope the above has clarified some of the questions you have about what happens when you do certain transactions on the stock market.

Thank you for reading!

My profile and bio, on twitter handle @guepard_1, has a poster with images of my fictional side. The stories I tell, will have your jaw dropping, hie hie hie...

Getting to know a company - How I do it

Hello there visitor.

Thank you for your interest in what I wish to share with you.

I will briefly cover how I familiarise myself with a company behind the share that I wish to own.

It won't be exhaustive, but will have plenty of pictures to accommodate those who are visual as well.

Let's get to it...

Visiting Sharenet I enter the share code or company name in the search input box and select the company from the list returned. These websites are dynamic and efficient.

Then it opens the page with all the summarised information about the company selected.

See the general share information that gives the share code and the industry it operates in, which in the current case is Engineering.

To visit the website I just click on the relevant option.

I then look for company information or about us and visit the different pages there.

Toggling the options on the left gives you details on the right.

As you can see, this is a duly registered company with a valid registration number 1966/002182/06 that can be verified with CIPC, which you can do for yourself.

The company has 2 divisions, namely; CEG and ESG

If you visit the Capital Equipment Group you will find information about who is at the helm and what group of companies are under this division.

I leave it up to you to consume the information and employ your comprehension skills.

The same can be done with the Engineering Solutions Group.

Back on sharenet, you can find summarised fundamentals of the business. You can see that the market capital for this company is over 672 million

Comparing it to other listed companies in the same industry, it shows up as the second largest, Master Drilling being the largest. I went to sharedata to get the list of companies in its sector as sharenet wants me to be a subscriber to see that information.

You can also use the historical performance graph to check how it has fared against the overall performance of the selected comparison index.

Against the sector it operates in, you can see that it has been under-performing since sometime in late 2014, early 2015

Against the Market Capital that I am comparing it, as can be verified on this site, which is SmallCap, it has also started under-performing somewhere around 2015.

Toggle between the Prices tabs to see things like spread, number of trades made, highs and lows, trade volumes, moves for different periods, including year to date. 

Yesterday, when the market closed, the spread was ((620-612)/620) 0.13%. %Move indicated the price increase from Thursday's close of R5.99, so the price grew by R0.21c, which is also shown there.

Since 2015, as per the Closing Prices tab, it has lost share price value of about 92%, meaning that if you entered the market at its peak in 2014, you have been losing share price value since. But if you have entered the market in the past month, you have gained in share price value by about 46%

So much information is available and can be analysed at your own pace, using the dictionary to help words and definitions outside your vocabulary.

Below are some historical performance ratios as well as dividend information. You can see there that I have highlighted unissued shares, these are shares that are authorised by the company but are not made available to be traded on the stock market.

If you don’t like reading, this is likely to seem like a nightmare, but you are not doing yourself a favour by choosing to stay ignorant. I hope you choose knowledge

You are however, doing a-charlatan-that-banks-on-your-ignorance-in-order-to-fleece-you with promises of unrealistic returns -- which you won’t be able to spot as you are unfamiliar with the realistic performances typical of an industry or a company operating within that industry -- the favour of making his or her defrauding of you easy.

Sharenet and sharedata are just some of the websites that give this information on local stocks, relatively for free. There are others you can discover for yourself through your preferred search engines.


Follow me on Twitter, Facebook, Goodreads
Email me on reubexg@gmail.com to order the books you see all over this blog

To enjoy building that culture of reading, here are books you can order directly from me on the above email address.

Her Heart R210.00
His Joy R160.00 (No paperbacks available at this time)
Their Hope R185.00
Our Triumph R220.00
The Dry Tears of a Bleeding Child R200.00 for softback (No paperbacks available at this time)

Buying more than one title or copy gets you a discount.

Courier is R100 to your door or nearest post net branch,  R60 via PAXI to reach your nearest PEP store in ten days.

If you are outside South Africa, visit my good reads profile, select the title you want and click the Amazon or Online store button for all the options.

I can also send books overseas, I have done so successfully in the past.

Thank you for reading!

Your comments are welcome.

Theme picture sourced from here Pexels

A na diabo di etsetsa ya di rekileng tjhelete ka mokgwa ofe?

Ha motho a qala kgwebo, o hloka tjhelete ya ho aha kapa hona ho bopa dietswa tseo kgwebo ya hae e di qapileng.

Mekgwa ya ho fumana tjhelete eo e mengatanyana. A ka e fumana ka mekgwa ena e latelang:

• ·         A ka etela motse wa tjhelete, eleng banka, mme a kopa hore beng ba ona ba mo kadime yona.
• ·         A ka boloka karolo e itseng ya moputso wa hae mosebetsing, ho fihlela a bokelletse tjhelete a lekaneng ditlhoko tsa kgwebo eo.
• ·         A ka itsebisa ho batho ba fanang ka matla a tjhelete dikgwebong tse ntjha.
• ·         A ka kopa mosa bathong.
• ·         A ka kena ditumellanong le motho a seng a ikemetse
• ·         A ka ngodisa kgwebo ya hae lebenkeleng le leholo la diabo

Jwale he, re tla lekola hore na kgwebo tse ngodisang moo ke tse jwang:

Kgwebo e sa ntsaneng e qala, ha e na hona hore e ka ba le bokgoni ba ho bokella tjhelete e ngata, hobane ha e eso be boemong ba hore e ka kena mmarakeng wa diabo.

Sena se bolela hore kgwebo e keneng mmarakeng wa diabo, ke e seng e hodile ka mokgwa o kgotsofaditseng mmaraka ona, mme ke yona kgwebo eo batsetedi ba nang le monyetla wa hore ba ka iketsetsa tjhelete ho yona.

Jwale ha re bueng ka tsela eo kgwebo e ngodisitsweng lebenkeleng lena e etsetsang motsetedi ho yona tjhelete:

Ho na le kgwebo e bitswang ka hore ke Exxaro, e leng kompone e etsang mashala. Mashala ana e a rekisetsa Eskom hore e etse motlakase. Exxaro e kene ha JSE ka selemo sa dikete tse pedi le motso o mong

Exxaro boholo ba yona, eleng se bitswang mothamo wa bareki (market share), bo feta dithiriliyone tse mashome a mane le metso e supileng. Sena se bolela hore hara dikgwebo kaofela tse rekisang mashala, e tshwere karolo e mahareng ka boholo.

Jwale, ha motsetedi a reka diabo tsa Exxaro, o di reka ka boleng bo beuweng ke ba bang bareki, ba shebileng hore le bona ba iphumanele karolo. Hore na moreki o ikemiseditse ho ntsha bokae ho reka seabo se le seng sa yona, ho ya ka boleng bona, le hore na ba rekisang tsa bona ba ikemiseditse ho arohana le se le seng seabo ka bokae.

Ha re re seabo se le seng sa Exxaro se rekiswa ka diranta tse lekgolo, mashome a mararo le metso e mmedi. Exxaro e fana ka tifidente e lekanang le diperesente tse leshome le motso o le mong lekgolong. Sena se bolela hore ka selemo, Exarro e kgutlitsetsa diranta tse leshome le motso o mong seabo ka seng, ho batsetedi ho yona. Mme ena ke e nngwe tsela eo batsetedi ba etsang tjhelete ka yona, ha ba tsetetse tjhelete ya bona eo ba e kolleditseng.

Ho tla nka dilemo tse robong hore Exxaro e kgutlisetse tjhelete kaofela e rekileng seabo ka seng ho motsetedi.

Ha re re kamora dilemo tseno tse robong, kgwebo ena ya mashala e hodile hoo ba rekisang diabo tsa bona, ba batlang diranta tse makgolo a mabedi, mashome a supileng a senang motso seabo ka seng. Sena se bolela hore motsetedi ya rekileng seabo se le seng o phetaphetetswe tjhelete eo a neng a rekile seabo seo ka yona, habedi.

Kotulo ya motsetedi enwa, kamora lemo tse robong, e lekana le diranta tse makgolo a mabedi, mashome a supileng a senang motso seabo ka seng.

Lebitso la ka ke Tumelo, mme le ka ikopanya le nna mane ha thwitha ka lebitso lena @Guepard_1

Ways to save

Decide on a figure - I want to save R100 every month, for example

Shop around for the best offers available in terms of minimum returns you can get:

- Important to consider interest rate, if you are going with a fixed term savings account

- Important to consider the fees, if you are going with a Retirement Annuity or buying unit trusts with the help of a brokerage firm

- Important to consider your will power as it will determine if you should go it alone or join a savings group that will help you stay on track as you avoid disappointing them by skipping on your savings.

You only need one other person who will keep you accountable to stay the course, and it cannot just be anyone, it must be someone you respect and would not want to disappoint

- What my friends & I did was we opened an account which had joint signatories and when we contributed, we sent proof of our contributions every month to the one we had elected to keep track of the contributions and every month this person would broadcast to the group a spreadsheet showing each person’s payment and the date they made it

Select the vehicle that will help you stick to your savings, based on what you have determined your will power to be:

- buy a unit trust and pay via debit order, the D/O will keep you honest

- Open a fixed term savings account and pay via stop order/recurring payment, the S/O or R/P will keep you honest

- Open a share trading account, transfer your savings, select what equity to invest in based on your investment strategy, and make that buy transaction. Your willpower needs to be strong for this one but you can use the recurring payment/stop order to transfer/pay into your trading account, but the implementation of the rest of the steps will be based on your due diligence and not wavering, but revising based on objective analysis of what is working or not working with your formulated strategy

- Join a Stokvel and make your contributions via stop order/recurring payment

If you make sure that your savings go off first, you truly implement the principle of paying yourself first.

Refer to my blog for ideas on how you can save and invest your savings in the context of the topic under discussion  Living below your means

Follow me on Twitter, Facebook, Goodreads
Email me on reubexg@gmail.com to order the books you see all over this blog

Her Heart R210.00
His Joy R160.00
Their Hope R185.00
Our Triumph R220.00
The Dry Tears of a Bleeding Child R200.00 for softback

If you are outside South Africa, visit my good reads profile, select the title you want and click the Amazon or Online store button for all the options

Thank you for reading!

Your comments are welcome.


Pictures sourced from pexels

Moral dilemma - a short story

She was sitting at her desk, punching away at the keyboard keys when he walked in. She looked up as the door to the office opened and saw that it was him. She blushed in an undetectable way. He cheerfully greeted everyone in the office and said something along the lines of "you choose blah blah blah..." She was not really listening to him but she watched him do his theatrics, while wearing a bemused expression. 

He was dressed casually, unusual for a Tuesday, because she had come to know him to dress up during the week. He only went casual on Fridays. He went about taking his work equipment out and laying it on his work-space. Then he walked over to her and gave her a friendly hug. He made a point to linger and prolong the contact of their bodies. As was now usual, her body came alive with sensations that only he could awaken in her. She longed to kiss him. To discover for herself what that would feel like. She wished everyone could just disappear but alas, that was not to be.

"What's got into you?" began the tirade of questions that always followed similar episodes in the past.

"He is a married man. And who says he is even into you?"

Nevertheless these guilt-ridden questions did little to deter the desires of her heart. She wanted this man even though she could not understand why. He was not exactly her type. Not that she had one, but married-with-kids would not be one if she had.

She was feeling under the weather, but in her desire to answer to her baser urges, she seemed to have no qualms about spreading her germs, sharing them with this man in a saliva infused dance of their lips and tongues. 

These thoughts scandalised her, because she had never been one to think positively or even remotely favourably towards french kissing. Yet here she was dreaming about such a kiss with some other woman's husband.

She had to attend a meeting with her other colleagues, so when they started shuffling out of the office to the meeting venue, she reluctantly followed suit. He was standing by the door, laughing while ushering everyone out. She could not even remember what had started the hilarity. He made sure to touch her arm as she passed him. He was certainly sending her a message that he was drawn to her, or at least that was what she thought.

Perhaps in the past she might have done something to discourage him, but he was laying the groundwork to immoralise her.

The week that was the prelude to the long Easter weekend, on that Thursday afternoon, as they were leaving to go home, he insisted that she take a lift with him to her car. She wasn't parked very far, but it was raining and his car was closer.

So she obliged him, after-all being with him gave her such pleasure that she was secretly pleased to prolong it. He drove his car the short distance to hers and took the empty parking immediately to the right of her car. 

They sat and talked, and while they did that, he opened a bottle of red wine, which happened to be in his car. She, not being a fan of alcohol, expected this discovery to break some of the chains he had enlaced around her proverbial heart, and endear him less to her.

He used her water, to rinse a glass into which he poured the wine and started drinking. She couldn't get over how handsome she found him. Sitting there, laughing or smiling. She told him she wanted to kiss him and he said she had his permission.

She brought her face to his, and he leaned towards the passenger seat, and their lips met. She was steeling herself for the repulsive smell of alcohol from his breath, which never came. At the back of her mind she worried about getting the urge to hurl and offending him. The urge never came. Instead, the sweetest interlude of lips happened.

This, being a first kiss where she was a willing participant, was unlike anything she could ever have had words to describe. It created a mind shift. Caused her to view kissing more favourably. She loved kissing him. She wanted to kiss him some more, but she didn't want to appear overzealous.

She asked him why she could not smell the wine on his breath, and he said it was because he knew what to drink. He alluded to this knowledge of what to drink drawing forth from his many years of drinking. She brought her nose close to his mouth to smell it, and she caught a gentle whiff which was not offensive to her at all.

He stole a brief kiss from her while her nose was leaning in to smell his breath. Her mind was racing a mile a minute. Analysing. Speculating. Postulating. Wondering what was happening to her when she was around this man, that things that once repelled her were not, when he was doing them.

She wondered if she was losing the essence of herself in him. She was becoming amorous with him, when she had never been so with anyone in the thirty-seven years of her life. Or maybe we could say in the twenty-four years since becoming a teenager.

She had often found it difficult to understand why, women seemed to act and make weak decisions, when it came to men. Now she was eating humble pie, because she not only understood, but was subject to the same faulty logic now.

When the rain had stopped, she thought it wise to jump out to her car, but still she didn't. She found herself not wanting to leave this wonderful love cove they were having in his car. She kissed him again and kept it brief, then she opened the door and got out before she could change her mind. He needed to go and so did she.

***

Follow me on Twitter, Facebook, Goodreads
Email me on reubexg@gmail.com to order the books you see all over this blog

Her Heart R210.00
His Joy R160.00
Their Hope R185.00
Our Triumph R220.00
The Dry Tears of a Bleeding Child R200.00 for softback

If you are outside South Africa, visit my good reads profile, select the title you want and click the Amazon or Online store button for all the options

Thank you for reading!

Your comments are welcome.

Pictures sourced from pexels

To Frugal or Not To Frugal?

Someone on twitter expressed an opinion contrary to what I believe this other week.

I will paraphrase what they said...

They alluded to the notion that living below your means would not lead to financial freedom because people are insufficiently paid.

This person has a point. People are underpaid, that is true.

But what is also true is that there are people who are reasonably paid too but they are not financially free either as indicated by this tweet https://twitter.com/Linda_Khuz/status/1214884517800038400

It has often come to light that people who earn little can make their money stretch better than those who earn more than them.

Case in point https://twitter.com/CassidayJacobs/status/1226038549042147329

So this means that earnings are not the issue.

This also means that this person's reasoning about frugality not bearing fruit is not reasonable either.

I will use myself as an example here:

When I started working in 2004 I earned the kind of money that could allow me to go to the movies as often as I wanted during the month.

I was grossing R7k and I was paying 7.5 % of the gross towards my pension and had medical aid costing about R0.7k which was subsidised by my employer, in part, to result in me paying about R0.3k, if I remember the amounts correctly but they were around there.

I qualified for credit in clothing stores.

I could buy household appliances & furniture on higher purchase.

I did none of that.

I opted to buy lunch only when I had not had a chance to grocery shop, which happened if I had to work overtime.

I bought clothes and shoes that I could afford cash and saved before buying them, I mainly bought clothes appropriate for work so I never had nice clothes outside of those my sister bought me out of the generosity of her heart, which she bought with a clothing store credit that I often berated her for having. I did not want to make her feel bad but I discouraged her often from buying me clothes with her credit and helped her to pay them off. I even paid them off to encourage her to close them down.

I did however have to get into debt to buy a car as my employer had stipulated own transportation in my employment contract.

In 2008 when I bought my first property for less than what I qualified for & it was not a new development, I had money to defray the transfer and bond costs of about R12k from the savings I had accumulated by not doing any of the above.

I was also able to buy my very first fridge and bed cash, the fridge cost me R7k and the bed R5k. In 2016 I bought my first sofa cash (seats 4 & is brown leather) for R13k.

Today I am not financially free, but I am well on my way as I have to date:

1. 1 paid up property
2. 1 rental property that has a tenant who pays on time financed by a second bond
3. 2 investment portfolios of about R150k & R120.k respectively, current market value notwithstanding, which give me dividend payments or varying amounts and percentages throughout the year. I started the first portfolio in 2013, the second in 2017
4. A TFSA account
5. A pension preservation fund
6. A retirement annuity that I started in 2009 paying R0.5k increasing by 10% annually
7. A matured unit trust I had with Sanlam for 5 years which amounted to just a little over R100k when it matured in 2014, giving me a mere R5k growth from my capital contributions that started at R1.5k and increased annually by 10%
8. A silver Mandela coin which I bought for R27k in 2013 from savings collected over the 12 months of 2012 as part of a savings group
9. 4 unit trusts I started in 2013, one of them financed by the savings collected over the 12 months of 2012 and 10 months of 2013
   
10. 2 notice deposit accounts for myself and 1 for the tenant's deposit that are earning 9% pa

So what then is the problem?

I see it this way;

People will always aim to spend what they have, some even aim to spend more if they are able to spend what others have, by borrowing from friends and family, clothing stores that offer credit, food stores that offer credit, and even banks.

Credit should be used to leverage, not to fill a gap created by frivolous spending because the person who is spending is seemingly able to absorb this cost because they can always use the credit card or borrow transport money from their close relations.

You are also spending all the income you are generating because your mindset tells you that you must spend all that you earn because:

• You worry about losing your money if you don't spend it.
• You recite philosophies such as "Money is earned to be spent", "You only live once", "Reward yourself so that you won't be bitter about having to work so hard" etc...
• All these mantras rob you of the mindset required to prepare for a future you clearly desire, I mean no one wants to die young, and can reasonably ascertain by the choices you make throughout your life.

The solution is not to look at what you earn, but why it is that you insist on spending every penny that is accessible to you.

If you are already underpaid, you are finding ways to supplement that income if it does not reach the end of the month. If you are borrowing from close relations, this is not a sustainable solution.

Start something while you keep employing this temporary solution so that later you can employ a more sustainable one and stop borrowing from your loved ones.

To be able to do that, you need a lump sum.

To build a lump sum you need to give up something in your life that you consider a thing that you reward yourself with.

This giving up is only until such time that you have build your lump sum and can start entering spaces previously closed to you due to the absence of some financial leverage.

It may take several years but you can alternate months that you are doing the giving up so that you do not go completely cold turkey until you are ready. As you see the benefit of doing this, it will become easier to make the decision to do without other things that you will identify as well.

If you consider that you are living below the poverty line with your minimum wage of R3.2k, if your aim is to expend that entire R3.2k, you can still do so and save a portion of it

What you do is include your saving as an expense that is included in what you are spending, i.e. R3.2k

Refer to my blog for ideas on how you can save and invest your savings in the context of the topic under discussion  Living below your means

Follow me on Twitter, Facebook, Goodreads
Email me on reubexg@gmail.com to order the books you see all over this blog

Her Heart R210.00
His Joy R160.00
Their Hope R185.00
Our Triumph R220.00
The Dry Tears of a Bleeding Child R200.00 for softback

Chulumanco R140.00

If you are outside South Africa, visit my good reads profile, select the title you want and click the Amazon or Online store button for all the options

Thank you for reading!

Your comments are welcome.

Pictures sourced from pexels