Smart Savings : Savings

Pamela's blog - Smart Christmas shopping for spendthrifts

Pamela Kay — Tue, 24 Nov 2009 15:00:00 GMT

"Christmas is for children. But it is for grownups too. Even if it is a headache, a chore, and nightmare, it is a period of necessary defrosting of chill and hide-bound hearts." - anonymous

The ever-increasing number of markets and factory shops in Gauteng make bargain hunting over the festive season a breezy adventure... one that doesn't have to break the budget, either! These recommendations are entirely subjective, and I'd welcome input if you know of others I might have overlooked.

The Parkview Christmas Market - From 28-30 November. There'll be loads of gift options, with something to suit all pockets - from luxurious and OTT, to inexpensive Christmas stocking fillers for the whole family. At the George Hay Park in Parkview, until 10pm.
The Bamboo Centre in Melville - Will have late night Christmas gift shopping, supper and a family-focused, open-air movie experience on Thursday, 26 November. All the other shops will be open, too.
The Out of the Box Fair - If beautifully handmade is what you're after; get to this Christmas market. It runs from Friday to Sunday, on the 27-29 November. Superb bargains will be on offer in clothing, art, craft, glassware, jewellery, decor, ceramics, mosaic, sculpture, candles, soap, wood, quilting and sewing items. 11am to 3pm at 305 Long Avenue, Ferndale.
The Bryanston Organic & Natural Market - This is always such a fun family outing, and the special Christmas markets are a delight. Every Saturday from 9am - 3pm, and moonlight markets every Tuesday night in December. There's one on Christmas Eve, too. They have over 120 stalls selling 100% natural, hand-made clothing, gifts, jewellery, deli food and fresh produce. The food is delicious, and there's always live entertainment.
The Bruma Lake Flea Market - Situated near the Eastgate shopping Centre, it's open seven days a week during the festive season. You'll find everything from clothes to crafts, Indian cotton shirts to hookahs and mass-produced goods.
The Hillfox Market - At the Hillfox Power Centre, in Weltevreden Park. Home to 250 traders, the organisers have an exciting Christmas programme lined up. You'll be able to source great bargains, with top brands selling for up to 50% less than normal retail prices.
The Pretoria Boeremark - Home made clothes, shoes, jewellery, deli products, boerekos, and DIY equipment. Great place to shop for quality, handmade Christmas presents, but you've got to get up terribly early. (It's worth it!) All the good stuff is gone by 7am.
The Irene Village Market - Consistently voted the best market by Getaway Magazine, it's a sure thing for reasonably priced Christmas gifts. This year their special Christmas markets are on 28 November and 5, 12, 16 December from 9am to 3pm
China Mart - You have to experience this at least once. Good for kids' toys in particular. You'll find all the well-known brands for vastly reduced prices. Toys start at around R5. Barbie dolls are around R40. It's got great goodies for kitchens - the funky double-decker bamboo steamer you pay R120 for at Woolies, you can get here for R20. Buy a stack, tuck a few deli products inside, tie them up with beautiful ribbon, and your epicurean friends will love you. It's on the corner of Main Reef and Production Road, in Amalgam.
Amatuli African Art - Beautiful, unusual African crafts. This place is a wonderland of carved wooden fish, crocodiles, stunning baskets and wall hangings, and hand crafted artefacts from all over Africa. 170 Corlett Drive, Bramley.

Other good places for bargain gifts:

Bookbinding Creations - Your spouse's tatty but beloved childhood paperback collection in a fragile state? Have them recovered as an affordable and special Christmas surprise. They'll also make up beautiful photo albums. 42A Greenhill Road, Emmarentia.

Hadeda - This Mexican treasure trove on Jan Smuts Avenue near Rosebank has delightful stocking fillers, from R30 upwards. You'll find votive candles, jewellery, tiny tin toys, hand carved rattles, oil cloth bibs for babies, small brooch dolls, finger puppets and knitted toys.

Cape Union Mart Factory Shop - Bargains on outdoor gear and camping equipment. At the Woodmead Value Mart.

Consol Factory Shop - Vases, jars, bottles, candlestick holders, platters. Truly an amazing place to visit. Buy inexpensive, new glass containers in all shapes and sizes to fill with décor items and delectable treats. Waterval Crescent, Woodmead.

Liebermann Pottery - Funky, brilliantly coloured contemporary garden pots and vases, tableware and ceramic tiles. It's near the old gasworks in Cottesloe, Auckland Park.

Bidorbuy.co.za - Recycle old unwanted goods into stylish new gifts. An artistic acquaintance bought an old printer's tray for R120 and turned it into a gorgeous anniversary gift for her partner. Each compartment was filled with black and white photographs, cut to size, hand-written poems and mementoes.

Pamela's blog - Deck the halls with plastic folly

Pamela Kay — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 19:24:00 GMT

In defiance of the annual consumer feeding frenzy, I’m considering a one-toy-only gift policy for each child this Christmas, with requests to friends and relatives to participate in a reciprocal, group scheme: making a small contribution to an education fund, or a charity of your child’s choosing. Or alternatively, only exchanging homemade gifts.

After a week in which my six-year-old daughter’s grandparents gave her a fancy fairy Barbie doll that lasted exactly 24 hours before it malfunctioned, and my son got me to buy a R20 rocket popper that broke before we’d even got home, I’d had just about enough of cheap, rubbishy toys. Then, as if I needed to compound my growing sense of disquiet, I watched a fantastic greenie documentary called The Age of Stupid.

Plastic has a special role in this documentary as a big contributor to climate change: Huge amounts of energy are consumed manufacturing “Crap-is-Us” plastic toys which are shipped overseas from China, wrapped in plastic and sold in a plastic bag. The toy breaks after a short period of time and ends up in a landfill for thousands of years – it’s not biodegradable - and this cycle continues, unabated.

It’s not just the inferior quality and expendability of these toys that gets to me, it’s the ease with which my kids shrug off the defective item and move on to something else. They’re not treasuring their stuff, which leads me to believe that they’ve got too much of it. Is it just my kids? I don’t think mine are particularly spoilt, but they still have a lot more than I had, 35 years or so ago. For example, way back when, every single movie my parents took me to see was a standout event. I can remember the thrill of every occasion, precisely because it didn’t happen that often. In contrast, my six-year-old daughter has her own DVD library, containing at least 10 Disney classics, assorted nature doccies and some BBC kids’ programmes collected especially for her. She doesn’t sit glued to the screen all day, but watching Cinderella or Finding Nemo is by no means a rare treat.

I’m still trying to figure out the fundamentals of teaching my children (all aged 6 or under) gratitude and respect, and how to get them to smile and say “thanks, grandpa” instead of bursting into tears when my dear, baffled dad gives them T-shirts from Woolies, instead of toys. Stern tales of poor, starving children without toys won’t work - why would they, as impoverished kids have no direct impact on their lives? Perhaps with very young children, meaningful teaching starts with simply never buying toys on demand. And maybe once they start having to buy their own toys, with money from their own savings accounts, some level of understanding will dawn: A new Roald Dahl paperback from Exclusive Books costs the same as three from the second-hand shop… or the state-of-the-art dinosaur excavation kit costs the same as a term of swimming lessons.

I think my sprogs can count themselves lucky – they’re getting a December break at a guest farm, with three chef-cooked meals a day. There’ll be farm animals, rolling lawns, other littlies to frolic with in the impossibly blue swimming pool. Father Christmas will arrive on a donkey cart, lugging a giant sack stuffed with goodies for all the mini humans, who will stare at him with wide-eyed reverence. Yes. One package each for my three, and that’s really more than enough… in fact, it’s more than many others get.

Some great low-cost Christmas gift ideas:

Gourmet coffee beans with a personal coffee cup * a kilo of cashew nuts, beautifully packaged * a child’s artwork, framed * a journal with a special inscription inside * a pretty, vintage teacup with a box of herbal tea * a collage of special photos * personalised stationary * home baked bread, include the recipe * a deli cheese and fruit basket * craft supplies * a pretty basket filled with special jams or mustards * gardening gloves with a plant or flower seeds * vintage postcards, tied with ribbon * movie vouchers* board games * books, bought on sale throughout the year * a video shop contract * a stylish pepper mill with fresh peppercorns * handwritten copies of your favourite recipes * homemade CD compilation, with artily decorated, personalised cover * a magazine subscription * a workshop voucher (yoga, life-coaching, writer’s, mosaic, pottery?) * kitchen gadgets * beauty treatment voucher * small camping gadgets * good bottle of wine * form a collective and contribute to a plane ticket to fly a distant relative over for Christmas *

Pamela’s blog: Revolutionise your relationship with money

Pamela Kay — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 14:28:00 GMT

I think women in particular are still socialised to believe that they’ll be saved by a prince – not necessarily a man on a white horse, but something that will magically appear to end any financial hassles – a lottery win, an insurance payout, an ideal job, the best-selling novel. It happened to JK Rowling, didn’t it? And what about Charlize? Throwing a tantrum in a bank made her a superstar. Sorry, but Prince Charming’s not coming.

Auntie Pearl, my grandmother’s cousin, never learned to drive a car. She married in her late teens, and, in keeping with acceptable post WW II societal norms, allowed her spouse to control every aspect of their finances. Now, in her old age, she’s completely dependent on her unbearably grumpy, octogenarian spouse’s good will. If he’s in a bad mood, he won’t drive her anywhere. She has to ask him for every cent she spends, and she can’t go anywhere without him. It’s not hard to understand why you rarely see her smile.

Times have changed for the better, thank goodness, but I’m still constantly surprised during financial conversations with other women by the realisation that many of them just don’t take enough of an interest in their family’s long-term financial affairs. Sure, they earn a salary, most of which goes towards day-to-day living costs, but many of them hand over the intricacies of boring long-term financial planning to their partners, assuming, rather optimistically, that he knows what he’s doing. Or else they consign their one and only insurance policy and their will to a dusty drawer somewhere, and don’t bother to ever really look at the fine print.

If you can imagine yourself as a strong woman of independent means, a force to be reckoned with, you can achieve it. It really does start with changing your thinking patterns from reliance on external control mechanisms to internal ones. In other words, become your own most trusted, financial best friend. Stop dreaming about that Arctic cruise – the one that costs R48 000 – and make it happen by putting away a monthly amount of money, (R400!) so that you can make it a reality in 10 years time. Or, if your budget doesn’t stretch that far, but you still want the dream holiday, find a way to bring in that extra income – my sister, for example, makes gorgeous jewellery in her spare time that she sells to a growing fan base.

Barbara Stanny, author of "Prince Charming Isn't Coming: How Women Get Smart About Money", talks at length about

The seven commandments of financial savvy:

· No one is going to look after your money; that responsibility falls on your shoulders.

· There is a learning curve to financial proficiency that relies as much on courage and tenacity as on educating yourself with books and courses.

· If you have trouble learning about money, then it's time to turn inward, examine your emotional blocks, change any false beliefs and conquer your fears.

· There is nothing mysterious about investing. Trust your intuition, learn from mistakes, start cautiously and you’ll become your own expert.

· Risk is not another term for loss; you can protect yourself from short-term loss with a long-term horizon and a properly allocated portfolio.

· You don’t have to go it alone; you need to talk to family and friends, consult with experts, get support and learn from others.

· You can make a huge difference; as individuals and as a group, financially responsible women have the means to effect change for themselves and society.

Whether or not you should have private, just-in-case savings in a committed relationship is, for some, a controversial issue.

Personally I believe that you most definitely should, and I’m not advocating that you necessarily keep it a secret. You have to be able to discuss the issue openly with your partner, who needs to be made to understand the importance of your financial independence in the form of a fixed deposit savings account or a rock-solid investment that can’t just be randomly dipped into during a rough month. It’s also a good idea to have your own insurance broker – an expert who reviews your financial needs every few years and makes any necessary adjustments to your portfolio.

Finally, just a few tips about women’s financial planning in general:

· Don’t be shy to invest in yourself when you’re still single. Buy the house; start planning for your retirement.

· Address emotional spending issues. Your bank account will be a lot healthier.

· Budget, budget, budget. .

· Plan for unforeseen eventualities, such as divorce and death of a spouse – you might have to raise the kids by yourself.

· As a woman, you are likely to outlive your partner. Plan accordingly.