Cultivating a savings culture is always ideal, but is never easy. Saving entails a commitment to starving oneself off certain pleasures, and that takes discipline. Most people wish they could save, but just a few successfully save at the end of the day.
Saving is important to the economic progress of a country because of its relation to investment. If there is to be an increase in productive wealth, some individuals must be willing to abstain from using up their entire income.
With most lending institutions unable to avail funding, the local capital market is left to lead the way in providing capital to resuscitate the various sectors of the economy in order to create jobs whose trickle-down effect will be an improvement in the general standards of living for the ordinary person.
Currently, most Zimbabwean households lack the culture of saving. Resultantly, this prejudices the capital markets sector of funds that can be availed to productive sectors, the majority of which are still struggling to be competitive, owing to lack of funds to recapitalise.
Capital markets on their own cannot create capital, instead they facilitate the creation of wealth by being a marketplace for capital and securities. This underscores the need to promote a culture of saving in the country.
The million dollar question is how can one save and invest in an economy like ours which is not the easiest to operate in.
There are some who hold the view that saving is for the rich and well-off.
This view emanates from a lot of misinformation, something that can easily be corrected by rolling out relevant awareness and education programmes.
Every individual and corporate must be made to be cognisant of the importance of saving in the body economic of the country.
Further, the financial education provided should extend beyond savings.
There seems to be an information gap which should be covered on products offered and incentives attached by the financial institutions. Citizens need to be empowered with the knowledge, to help them create generational wealth.
The onus is also on financial institutions to provide individuals with full information about the products they offer and incentives attached.
Saving is not entirely hinged upon the income an individual or corporate generates.
C-TRADE has introduced investment clubs which are aimed at bringing the traditional cooperative clubs to the stock market and enhance financial inclusion.
While co-operative clubs are well known for promoting savings, they have lagged in encouraging investing to earn more from the saved funds.
This is where the C-TRADE investment club platform comes in. By dialing *727# across all mobile platforms and selecting option 8 a group of people can form a club, pool funds and start investing and earning from shares.
There is the potential that the synergy of investment clubs can translate into higher returns than one may not achieve on their own.
Through trading of securities in groups, C-TRADE aims to help individuals grow their wealth and increase income at the push of a button as all this is done electronically.
Investment clubs generally have more buying power as opposed to the case with individual investments thus more shares can be purchased at a given time which in turn increases the chance of getting quicker matches and hence, increasing investor satisfaction and in turn confidence in the system.
