Dalene Kooper
Some Keetmanshoop community members on Friday attended the financial training offered by Old Mutual to equip them with tools to build a more secure financial future.
The //Kharas governors’ youth desk organised the training in partnership with Old Mutual to address misuse of money among the youth. “Our youth these days mostly spend their money on alcohol, and we thought we should approach Old Mutual to help our youth spend their money better,” Sebiso Mwange, representative of the governor’s youth desk, said.
The aim of the training was to empower young people with practical skills in money management, budgeting, saving and making informed financial decisions.
Regional manager for Old Mutual’s southern regions and facilitator of the training, Eusebio Fredericks, said the training forms part of Old Mutual’s initiative to teach financial literacy using the Big Five wild animals’ analogy.
“Basically, what we are doing is an initiative that Old Mutual is running to teach about how to manage our finances using behaviours of the animals. We are looking at the Big Five of the wild and two other animals that we have incorporated within the presentation. That teaches us that we sometimes tend to have the same behaviours as animals. But through the animals, we can also learn that in the presentation, we are teaching the public about how to manage finances,” he said.
The training initially called out to the youth, and saw pensioners and older community members in attendance.
“The training caters to everyone. People after retirement, in my experience, do not know how to handle money. And that’s only because of the choices they made when they were young. It impacts their life after retirement.
“So, basically, we are trying to set up the youth for success so that they can be able to learn how to manage and maintain, and what choices and decisions they need to make to be able to sustain and maintain the salary they are currently receiving so that it can help them for the future,” he said.
Fredericks added that the training is part of Old Mutual’s social responsibility initiatives to build basic financial management skills in communities.
Local authority councillor Enrico Blaauw, in his remarks, urged the attendants to learn to be the ‘CEOs of their bank accounts’.
He stressed the need for people to learn the art of budgeting, investing and saving.
“I hope this session will include the foundations of budgeting, learning how to protect what you earn and prepare for the unexpected,” Blaauw said.