FNB - Share Investor - an idea for Unisa students

What does FNB share investor have to do with Unisa students? Not much - but what does anything except for Unisa have to do with all Unisa students. Anyway all that is besides the point. The point is that according to a radio advert I heard recently 90% of South Africans live well beyond their means. By deduction and assumption then, many Unisa student’s are financially over extended.

One only needs to look at the cars one sees everyday on Johannesburg roads to verify the fact that the vast majority of people are in constant debt. Obviously there are some very wealthy people in Johannesburg that can afford very expensive cars (mercedes, BMW’setc) and for the extremely wealthy: Bentley’s, Porsches, Feraris, Aston Martins etc. Yet itis clear to see that the number of expensive cars excedes the number of people that can afford them.

If most people would like to retire at around 65 and could easily live for another 20 years thereafter it means that they will need to have a lot of money saved/invested.

So how does one invest/save wisely?
 

First of all, don’t spend more money than you actually have. Secondly if you are a youngish person ( as most Unisa students are) yous hould not be keeping money (that you are not going to spend soon) in a bank. The best interest rate that I could find at FNB yesterday was 4.5 percent. Year on year inflation generally is greater than this. This means that your money is losing spending power while in the bank

In the long term it is almost always better to invest your money in shares. Ofcourse there is risk and huge companies in which you have shares could collapse leaving you penyless. That is why, as with eggs you should not put all your money in one “basket”.

As a general rule most financial advisers would suggest that one has a diversified portfolio. This means that risk is spread and that therefore there is ultimatley less risk. Yes, stock markets do rise and fall with the ebb and flow of political, economic, and even natural occurences (like tsunamis) but, generally over 5-10 years the stock market outperforms even the most attractive interest rates offered by banks.

How to invest in Shares

FNB’s share investor may not be the cheapest way ( I’m not sure) but it does seem to beone of the most convenient ways. This is especially true if you already have an FNB bankaccount. You can then simply open a share investor account here https://www.fnb.co.za/share-investing/share-investor.html

I’m no financial expert but if you are new to shares, investing in a tracker fund like theSatrix top 40 may be a good place to start. This fund mathamatically tracks the 40 bestperforming shares on the Johannesburg stock exchange.

While many fund managers claim that they can beat such a fund I doubt that this is veryoften the case.


Armstrong's Unisa Books is an official supplier of Unisa prescribed textbooks to Unisa students throughouth South Africa. In addition to this Armstrong's Unisa Books also supplies Unisa textbooks internationally to Unisa students throught the world. Every effort is made to ensure that all requried Unisa books are kept in stock at Armstrong's and are readilly available to both instore customers and those that would prefer to buy thier Unisa book online at http://www.armstrongs.co.za