A eureka moment in last-minute research
It is always a relief on those rare occasions when you meet someone like Olive Matlanato. She is still what many people would call reasonably young, “turned the big Four Zero this year” in fact, but her head has been screwed on the right way for a long time already.
A business architect working in the public sector, Olive has been working for 12 years and has been saving seriously for 10 of those. With a great start like this, she will already be enjoying the benefit of compounding, where you earn interest on the interest already earned, and growth on growth.
Compounding is a little like the effect of a snowball rolling down a hill: the further it goes, the more speed it gathers and the bigger it grows. Once you have saved for 20 or 30 years, the annual growth in your savings that comes from your investment return can be expected to dwarf the contributions you make in those years.
Olive, who comes from Soweto but lives in Pretoria these days, says she always makes sure she saves at least 10% of everything she earns, including anything extra that comes her way.
Olive is “well aware that the investment market is not always stable and that there will be ups and downs”, but she has always been a saver and sticks to saving at least 10% of everything she earns in good times and bad.
“I make sure that 10% of my salary as well as any extra work payouts goes into my savings and investments.”
Olive was introduced to 10X Investments when founder and chief executive, Steven Nathan, gave a presentation at a media event she attended. But, she adds, she has also “shopped around a lot in search of a good home for my money”.
It was Steven Nathan’s presentation that introduced Olive to the idea of high charges.
“That made me review my investments and start assessing how much of what I pay goes towards fees.”
Once she understood the impact of fees on her savings she moved her investments across to 10X.
In addition to keeping costs low, Olive says, she has been very impressed with the support and the services that 10X provides “to help clients make good decisions and to help them to make every effort to prepare for a better retirement”.
Olive says she has also learned from her parents’ experience. They are both retired but are unfortunately not as well off as they expected to be before the 2008 recession knocked a hole in their retirement funds.
She says her parents’ experience has made her more cautious. “Having made a big effort to find a company that I am sure has my best interests at heart was really worth it,” she says.
Olive says she will continue to work hard to try to follow the advice given by 10X in order to meet her retirement goal.
As for others who are considering the move to 10X Investments Olive says: “Do it! It will be the best retirement gift you could give yourself.”
