Money talks. It talks to our hopes, our plans and ambitions. It whispers sweet somethings and seduces us with the promise of a better life. But money also preys on our deepest, darkest fears…
We worry that we don’t have enough of it; we worry that we spend it too quickly, on things we don’t really need; we worry, in a world of have-nots, that we may have too much of it. No wonder we’re all in need of a little change. That’s where Maya Fisher-French comes in.
Now an award-winning financial journalist, BrightRock Change Agent, and author of “Maya On Money: Implement your Money Plan”, she grew up in a home where her widowed mother once had to sell the family piano to put food on the table.
Maya has seen how tough life can be when your expenses outweigh your earnings, and she’s learned the hard way about how to handle money and put it to work for you. Maya sat down with Ruda to talk about small change and big change, the power of money, and how to turn your financial fears into your brightest tomorrows.
Transcript:
R: Hello, and welcome to another session of The Change Exchange, where today my guest is Maya Fisher-French. She’s just written a book called “Maya on Money”…
M: Yes, “Maya on Money – Implement your Money Change”.
R: And you’ have a very active website and you write for City Press? On financial matters?
M: Yes.
R: So good to have you. I think this is a really important conversation to have. But when did you know you wanted to go into finance? Because your other major was still English?
M: You know, I feel so sorry for 18 year olds today. You leave school, and now suddenly you need to know what you’re going to do for the rest of your life. So actually, what happened was, I was going to do Law. I was going to be a lawyer and I got some really good advice from a lawyer who said: “Don’t go and study a plain law degree. Go and do a broad BA and spend the extra year doing law, because it’s the only to get an opportunity to study and do other things.” So I went to university and it was like a sweet shop for me. I would think: “Ooooh, these amazing subjects!” And I did philosophy and English and I did Italian and there was a subject called Economics and I thought: “Well, that looks interesting?” And I took it and I suddenly had this aptitude for it and this passion for it and I landed up getting my honours degree in it. So you never know when you start exactly how it is going to turn out.
R: So coming from school, your strong suits was the languages?
M: It was the languages, exactly. I did French, I did English, I did all of those and then I landed up… you know, we weren’t exposed to economics in those days at school.
R: But also economics is a long way from personal finance and planning your budget and that kind of thing? When did that happen?
M: I think a lot of it… You know … again you’ve gone and chosen your subject based on some random process. And then I finished studying and I had two job offers. One was for an advertising agency and the other was for Investec Bank. I had no clue, so I looked at them and all I knew was there was a lot of drugs in advertising, so I decided to say no to drugs. Little did I know how much drugs there are in the financial industry! But that is how I landed up at Investec and I was at Investec Private Bank and got involved in personal investing. So it was the unit trusts, individuals, the retail investing side. And it was obviously where it all grew from and my interest grew and where I learned so much.
R: Did you ever regret that choice?
M: No, never.
R: Because it’s quite radical?
M: It’s very radical, but when I look now at what my strengths are and also the incredible need for financial education in South Africa, and I don’t think I could have delivered as much in terms of going into advertising as I have been able to in this sector.
R: Did your parents talk to you about budgeting and personal finance? Not at all?
M: Not at all! What I do remember growing up is that my mother always used to complain that there was not enough money for groceries, that my father didn’t give her enough money, and my father always just feeling that my mother spent money unnecessarily. And that was pretty much it. And then when I was 16 years old, my father died. And we were left with terrible debts. And I think that that…
R: And you were aware of that?
M: And I was aware of that. Well, we lost everything. We lost our home, I remember one day coming home my mother had to sell the piano just to buy groceries. So we went from having what appeared to be a good lifestyle to literally having nothing. And I mean, can you imagine? I look now, a mother, a single mom now, with two teenage kids to support? She hadn’t worked for 20 years. She’d been a housewife. And suddenly she had to pick herself up and…
R: What did she do?
M: You know, she went to an adverti … To a recruitment agency and she came back and she said: “There’s only one thing I have going for me – I don’t smoke.” But what could she do? She had been raising four children, my two older sisters had left home by then, but she cooked a lot. And she went into catering and she started her own catering business. And then later on she became a national tour guide – she’s fluent in Dutch. And I watched my mother literally build her life from nothing to where she is today, which is financially secure and happy and all the rest. So she’s an inspiration for me.
R: Well she’s also an education.
M: She’s an education.
R: I mean, she’s a walking example, a case study.
M: Exactly. She’s a case study. And I think that’s why I’m so fiercely independent about my money and my own finances and why, when it comes to women and money, I have a really big passion. Because I think women often choose to leave those decisions to their partners without understanding the real implications of that.
R: We kind of drift into things very often?
M: Exactly, and I … You know what I do think sometimes? It’s if you don’t know you don’t have to take action. Sometimes it’s easier to put your head in the sand.
R: You don’t have to take responsibility?
M: Exactly.
R: It’s his decision.
M: It’s his decision and it’s his fault. Ja, let’s be honest.
R: So when did the shift come towards journalism? How did that happen?
M: Well that was … I had been working in stockbroking by now, so I had left Investec and I joined a stockbroking firm and I fell pregnant. Well, I chose to be pregnant – it wasn’t an accident or anything, but I got to a point where I decided that I didn’t want to do the 14-hour days. And stockbroking is very long. It was also at a time – it was the late 1990s when the dot.com bubble was really brewing, and I just got quite tired of the avarice that I was seeing around me and people wanting to double their money in a month and it really became quite a … Not a pleasant environment to be working in from my point of view. And I decided to become a stay at home mom. It lasted a year, and I realised … I learned a lot about myself then, and one of them was financial independence. I wanted to be able to pay for my own facials. I don’t want to have to ask my husband for money and I also had a need to work. So then I did various things, including financial recruitment. I recruited for the financial industry. And then there was this advert in the newspaper for This Day, the newspaper. Do you remember This Day?
R: Yes I do!
M: One day, any day … And I happened to know the consultant that had brought the group to South Africa, so I phoned him. And I said: “You know, this sounds interesting. Can I come chat to you about it?” And he said sure. And I popped round to his offices…
R: “I do have English 3!”
M: I do! So I sat down and there was John Madison who was the managing editor of the newspaper. I wasn’t expecting to meet him, and he looked at me and he said: “What’s your experience?” And I said: “I have no experience at all in journalism, but I worked in the financial industry for x amount of years.” And they hired me that day. And you know, Ruda, it sounds like a cliché, but I found my calling. It was like it was just … I loved every single minute of that experience and I have ever since.
R: So what’s the lesson out of that? Go? Try? Step forward?
M: Go. Try. You don’t know. And I think you also … It is something I suppose in a personality … I take big risks. I think: “Well, okay. It sounds like fun. I’m in!” “Wow, that sounds like fun!” I didn’t have a clue what I was doing. But there you are.
R: But you’re saying you found your calling. Was there a moment that someone responded or you got a phone call or a friend said over dinner ‘I read this and it changed my life’? When did you know that this was it?
M: I think it started off with just the intellectual capital that I was working with. And you know, journalists are extremely intelligent people and I don’t think I ever realised the wealth of knowledge … A lot of people who go into journalism are just … They have incredible knowledge. And they love investigating things and they love finding out. So I sat in this team of amazing people – specifically at This Day at the time. They hired the crème de la crème of journalism. And to be surrounded by this intellect was so stimulating for me on one level. And then the other was this opportunity to educate people, but without being in the product system. Being outside the financial industry. To have the independence to … I have the knowledge, but now I have the independence as well to say what I actually think, and I really enjoy that as well.
R: And the book? How did that happen?
M: Well the book … I think the book was inevitable in one way, because obviously it’s a conversation with readers over the last 12 years, and it’s really putting it all together, the many articles that I’ve written, and many of them in response to readers’ queries. But the publishers came to me and said to me would I consider a book. And I thought about it, and I thought about the books that were already on the shelves. And we’ve got some excellent money-books on the shelves, but they tend to be more about the psychology of money and money attitudes and approaches to money. And what I found readers were really looking for was the practical stuff. Okay, how do I? How do I open a bank account? How do I get a credit record? How do I budget? And it was those How do I’s … and I think I first wanted to call the book “And now what?” because I want to do all the right things, but now what? But the publisher said that wasn’t a very good … And I think they know better than I did. So that’s how it came about – the need for a lot of practical information.
R: And it’s been out there for a couple of weeks. How is it going?
M: It’s going incredibly well. The feedback I must say has surprised me, and again it comes back to filling a need, which is financial information. Practical, unbiased financial information when you want to make a choice or decision, to have access to that information immediately. So the response has been phenomenal so far.
R: Why do you think people find it so difficult to talk about money? Because we do – it’s not something … You know, sex, money and politics you’re not supposed to talk about.
M: I think money is such a fear-based thing. We fear not having money. We fear if we have money what other people will think of us or want from us. So I think to me fear is a big part of money and I think that’s why we don’t want to talk about it. And people also on the other side if you don’t have money and you’re struggling, or if you’ve got debts, there’s an embarrassment. You know, if you swipe your card at the teller and it doesn’t go through? How that makes you feel at that moment? So these are conversations people are very uncomfortable about having, and then there’s this whole belief that it’s wrong to want money, or wrong to be rich, which also I think…
R: The whole moral…
M: I think there’s some sort of moral approach to it. So people also then don’t want to talk about it if they are successful, when money is a particular goal for them. So I think to me money is just a big emotional sort of mess, and fear is the overriding emotion in there.
R: And why should we talk about it?
M: Well I think we should talk about it because money is one of the most powerful things in our life. It is powerful in its ability to destroy your life, and it’s powerful in its ability to build wealth for you. And I think we need to harness that power. You know, my children watch these Disney programmes about the Power and the evil guy and the good guy and that’s money. Money has power. It’s how you wield that power and you choose how to wield that power. And I think the more we talk about it, the more we educate people on how to wield this power – how better our society’s going to be.
R: It can be Thor’s hammer, but he must decide how to use it.
M: Exactly.
R: So do you talk to your children? You have two young boys?
M: We have a lot of money conversations, partly because of what I do for a living. And in fact, I took them to my book launch in Johannesburg. They came with me. And my eldest afterwards was very impressed. He didn’t know that he had R100 000 saved up. Do you know that? R200 a month, I have been putting away since he was two years old in Satrix.
R: And you never told him how much it is?
M: Well we always told him we have the investment, but the actual amount … I never really … I was preparing for the book launch and I mentioned it and all the rest. Well his eyes went this big! And my little one was a little upset. He wanted to know where his was. And I said: “We’ve also got for you.” But he … The next day after listening to my presentation, my little one was playing a card game. He took a pack of cards.
R: He’s 10?
M: Yes. He’s 10. And he said: “Mommy, look. This man has so much for emergencies. So much for insurance. This money’s for his rent. And this is his day to day money.” And I thought well, there you are! And my conversations with my children, which I have written about in the book … I think they just open my eyes to how much children can engage about money if you let them. And you know, to see how easily they can assimilate that information. If you’re teaching your kid at 10 those kind of principles, they’re going to have a better start in life.
R: Absolutely! And when that happened with your mother, when she was in such dire straits. Did she talk to you and your sister?
M: She did speak to us about money, but then again it was more out of the fear-based stuff. So it wasn’t really … It wasn’t a positive conversation. There was a lot of anger. There was a lot of resentment. So I wouldn’t say it was positive. But we knew there was absolutely no money. And it also … What is interesting to me, is now I look at my money attitudes and my money issues, and I do have … I still have that fear of not having money, despite doing the right things and all of that. Because you just think overnight things can change. Because that’s the message I got, that things change. And you know, I think with children, what’s so important, is to educate them with money, but not to put fear in them. And I have made that mistake with my own children, where I would “I can’t afford this and I can’t afford that” and you suddenly realise that you’re making them nervous and scared about money. And that’s the one emotion we really don’t want to be putting into our children, so I think those money conversations need to be positive. And if you are struggling financially, it doesn’t necessarily need to be translated directly to your children. It can be about: “We need to focus on this at the moment. We need to be cutting back there, or whatever because we want something better tomorrow.” I think we have to be very, very careful about passing on those fears to our children.
R: And do you think you have managed to do that with your kids?
M: No, not successfully enough. I must tell you this story. We had … Well, I hope I am, but I certainly made a lot of mistakes … When we were moving from Johannesburg down to Cape Town, my husband was between jobs, so things were a bit tight. And obviously there’s the cost of moving and those things. So I had cut back on the extra-murals at school, and we were selling our house and all of these things. And my little one, who was 6 at the time, one day burst into tears and he said: “Mommy, are we poor? Are we going to have to live out of a car?” So I said to him: “What are you talking about?” And he said to me: “Mommy, you say there’s no money and we’re selling our house and we’re climbing in the car to drive down to Cape Town? This is it!” And I suddenly realised how careful you have to be. And I do think not in a million years could I have thought that was how he could read it, but still that was a huge reflection for me on how careful one has to be about talking about one’s finances negatively. And what I did is I actually sat down with him and I showed him, he literally wanted to see the bank statements and everything and I was able to explain to him where everything was, that we had insurance policies, that we had retirement policies and we had emergency funds. And what I also realised, was that I was very fortunate to have all those in place. So that when my child asked, I could make him feel safe. And that’s one message I would like to get out to parents. If your finances are in order, you make your children feel safe, and that’s important.
R: And it’s real safety. I’m thinking of friends of ours who through circumstances quite late in their lives lost almost everything. And they protected their children against all odds. They called up all the investments to keep the kids at the private schools that they were at, et cetera et cetera, so that they shouldn’t be touched. How do you feel about that?
M: You know, I think if they were doing that at their own expense, then that’s a problem. So it all depends, because if now you have wiped out your future to just protect your child today, what legacy are you leaving for your children in the future? Because they now, I do imagine, will be dependent on their children. They will have nothing. And only then will the children realise what actually happened. And I think one must also be prepared as a family to deal with issues and to take challenges together as a family. And you can sit down and you can say: “We have a financial difficulty. We’re still together, there’s still food on the table, we can celebrate that. But we’re going to have to look at what makes sense for us. And if the private school doesn’t make sense for us, we need to look at other options.” I do think the biggest gift – and I look at my mom – and the biggest gift she’s given me is she’s not dependent on me. And there’s not a lot of families nowadays where the children are not having to support their parents in their retirement. And again it was all her own doing. She could very easily have been in that situation, but I don’t have that financial pressure of supporting elderly parents. So one has to sometimes look at what gift are you giving to your children if you’re not preparing for the future. Is it a bit of a Trojan horse?
R: What is the best thing about doing your job as a journalist, about writing in the City Press and your writing on your website?
M: You know, I think there’s two sides to journalism that I just love. One is I get to meet amazing people and I get to interview incredible people, and I enjoy their stories and it really, really is a highlight of my job. And the other side in the educational side. When I get an e-mail from a reader who says: “You changed my life.” Or “I think differently because of an article you wrote.” I know it’s … That’s why we’re here, isn’t it? To make a difference? And that feeds me. That feeds my value system or feeds me.
R: It doesn’t sound as if you’re the kind of person who makes 10-year plans, but is there a vision board?
M: I’m the worst! I was asked the other day this, actually someone said to me: “So now what?” And I said I have no idea. I have never in my life woken up with any grand plan. But I think what I do is, I look at the opportunities that come about, and I think, okay, does the opportunity interest me? Where is it going to take me? So I’m always open to opportunity. And I think that means that you have to always be open to change, and be prepared to change. So I think sometimes those 10-year plans actually are the opposite of that. They’re not celebrating change; they’re not allowing you to change if something comes along. So that is how I work, so yes, opportunities come. I weigh them up. Is this what I want to do? Is this taking me along the path that I wish to be on? And I make the decisions. But I can tell you there is no 10-year plan!
R: You’ve been married just about 20 years. Can you remember meeting your husband and deciding he’s the one?
M: You know, we knew each other for a while before we started dating. And we were so young! We started dating when we were 19 and we were married at the age of 23. And I remember when he proposed to me, I was 22 when he proposed. And I thought: “We’re so young! This is crazy! What are we doing?” And you know what he said to me? He said: “We can either build our lives apart and then get married, or we can build our lives together.” And I fell for it, hook, line and sinker. I’m very glad I did! I always said the best thing I ever did was say yes!
R: How do you think, has marriage – it’s so difficult to say that after 20 years because it’s more than half one’s life – but how did it change you?
M: You know, if I look at what I get out of my marriage, perhaps, and it’s that partnership, it’s that sharing something with somebody. And I have now more memories with my husband than I have without him. And you know, if I go away somewhere and he’s not with me, I don’t have someone to share that moment with. And especially when the children come along – you have somebody to share those moments. Those joys that – the opposite of joy – those moments of I’m pulling my hair out! And I think it’s for me – it’s the sharing. The ability to share your life with someone. And I think that’s really important. And again, I probably wasn’t an adult long enough to say was there a massive change, but for me I think marriage is the sharing.
R: And how does one keep it together? How do you keep enjoying the other person? So that it’s not just a habit?
M: You know, I think there will be many aspects to it. And I always look and think what is it that’s kept us together, because we’re really happily married. We’re not just married because we have a certificate. And I look and I think what is it that’s made this work, and we both respect each other deeply. And not just superficially – we have an incredibly deep respect for what each other does, for our value systems, who we are as people. And I think any sound relationship begins and ends on respect. If you can’t respect your partner or your partner doesn’t respect you, it will not be a happy marriage. And the other thing we do is we have date night. Every week. Since my son was six weeks old – my eldest – we have date night every single week. It is a complete and utter non-negotiable, and I must tell you there are weeks where I feel like I can breathe, just because of that one evening with him. I feel like we can just … Because you know when you’re raising children and you’re both working, it’s just chaos. And you know, you can just touch base again, catch up on the week. It’s very important.
R: And what you’re saying there is you have to focus on it. It doesn’t sommer happen.
M: No, marriage doesn’t just happen. You do. And I think we’ll get to a point where we realise we have been drifting, and we’ll focus again on it and we’ll say: “Hold on a second, we’re letting us drift. We need to pull ourselves together. And we need to come together again.” And again it comes back to the fact that we actually like each other. We actually do! We enjoy each other’s company, we want to be together, so we must make it work.
R: And the kids? How did they change you?
M: Children change you radically. You know what children do? They teach you so much. They first of all teach you that they are individuals, and parents have some notion when they give birth to this little child that they have anything to do with anything. They don’t! This little thing comes out and it has a personality and it is an individual and you get to guide this child. To watch this personality evolve, to see the world through a child’s eyes. You know, you go on a hike now with your little five-year-old and suddenly you see the small flowers and the little bugs and a child’s perception of the world is amazing. And I think the other thing that it really did as well is it challenged my belief system. Not from a … I don’t believe in saying to my children “because I say so”, I have to have a good reason. So I had to once analyse why do I think manners were important. I couldn’t just say because. I had to think what is it. Why do we have this ritual of greeting people, why do we have these things … How does it affect society? So I go into these very deep philosophical discussions within my own head to prepare myself to explain this to my children and I find that also a wonderful journey.
R: It must be, because … You know …. When I did Maths 2, my lecturer once, I had to do an oral exam. And he said to me explain whatever it was … matrixes to a grade 10 class. And he said to me because you can’t explain something unless you understand it. Now to understand your own values to such an extent that you can explain it to a small child – dit wil gedoen wees! You’ve just recently made quite a big move from Johannesburg to Cape Town as you were saying. How do children experience change as opposed to adults? Because in the first place, it’s your decision. Not theirs?
M: I think that was quite a difficult parenting experience as well, because my eldest child was so angry with us for the move.
R: How old was he?
M: He was 10. And he was at a school that he was happy at. And he had friends, my family is all up there. And here we were, for no good reason, uprooting him from his life. And transplanting him down somewhere called Cape Town, because we thought it was in his best interest in the long term. And he didn’t really have a say in that. And ultimately parents will make decisions. Someone has to be the adult and someone has to make the decision, and that was also to say well, okay, we are the adults. We have decided this is the best move for us as a family, but I understand how you feel. And I think that’s what I learned from that. It’s that I can’t change the reality. I’m making those decisions, I am the adult. But I can hear you and I can understand you. And when you tell me you hate me, I understand that. Because he did! He swore he would never forgive us. Fast forward, and he’s very happy down here I might add, and he’s got his friends and he’s settled. But, you know, it was a very, very tough transition for him. And I think that change for children as implemented by parents is challenging. But it’s also life. It’s about the journey.
R: But it’s so important to allow them the space to say how can you do this to me and I hate you and I am never going to speak to you again et cetera, et cetera. In our generation, that was not allowed!
M: Absolutely. But I understood that he was grieving and we understood that. We knew it would have to come to an end and it did. But you know, there was a process. He … It wasn’t his choice. It was an interesting one.
R: And you actually built a house? What is that like? That is on my bucket list.
M: We were very fortunate. We had a really amazing builder – and that’s all I can say. Get a really amazing builder, because we were very fortunate and it actually wasn’t the most traumatic experience in our lives as it has been for many people. But we … We loved where we lived in Hout Bay, but we were renting and the landlord didn’t want to sell. But the property behind, two roads up from us, was for sale. And it was, it is on a slope like this. And fortunately we didn’t ask the engineering costs, what it costs to build on a slope like this! We have spectacular views as a result, but believe you me, we will survive a tsunami. We’ll survive an earthquake with the amount of steel and concrete that goes into building on a slope like this. So we built the house, and as everybody says – I’ve written quite a lot of columns out of it – it will cost you more than you expect.
R: It will take twice as long?
M: That’s what it didn’t for us. And that was the one tick that I can give you, as I say, we were very fortunate in having a great builder. And the actual experience was quite painless, apart from the financial side.
R: But when you briefed the architect … What did you say? What did you want?
M: We loved the place we were living in already, and I said we like this design. So that started off giving him a concept idea.
R: So what was it? Space? Big windows?
M: Space. Big windows. Beautiful views. Very open plan. Our house is very open plan. And then what we did – this is the thing of building a house when your family is a bit older. I know how my family works. I know the dynamics. And I said I know that my children are not going to sit at a desk in their bedrooms to do their homework; they want to be near me. So we need to have the space here. The kitchen – it’s an open plan kitchen – but there must be a room off there for homework and for TV and all of that, because children want to be near you all the time.
R: They’re like cats in that sense.
M: In all those dynamics and all the way that we work and we want to be – and I think that’s the bucket list – why people, why do you want to build? Are you mad? It will cost more than buying a house. There is the trauma of it, because you will get what you want. And it will be a reflection of your family. And it will work. And it’s quite interesting – I spoke about my elder son – he really struggled with moving down to Cape Town, and we were worried about the move. We thought he doesn’t like change, and we thought moving into another house. Do you know he settled immediately? And I think it was because it was designed around him and us as a family. And I think that is the pearl of a house. And I got very good advice – if you ever, ever want to build a house, the best advice I got was don’t land up hating your home. And what happens is, I think you go through the process and the windows in the wrong place and the builder does this and you start to build up this anger and resentment, and eventually when you move in, you just notice all the mistakes.
R: You accept things that you actually shouldn’t accept?
M: No I think you should. I think it’s the opposite. I think at the end of the day you’ve got to say: “You know what, no-one else knew that that window should have been one centimetre that way. I accept it. Because it will bug you. You sit there every day. “Oh that window! I wish I had put it here! I wish I had put it there!” The house you have, the house that will come out is the house you should have.
R: Well, I hope you’re so very happy!
M: Thank you.
R: And I hope that whatever doors open physically and metaphorically, you step through. Good luck.
M: Thank you.
R: Till next time. Goodbye.
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