- 2 months ago
Inspiring conversation about motherhood faith, compassion and living surrendered to God's calling.
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00:08you're asking about strength i think i think it awakened strength in me that i probably didn't
00:13even know that i had but even more so than that it awakened for me a very much a deeper
00:20a deeper dependence on god because i just realized that i could not do this on my own
00:28this was never ever going to happen and if i think about it when when paul died in that aircraft
00:35accident my life was shattered i was i was finished i was absolutely finished um but carrying
00:43my son through my through the pregnancy bear in mind i was 10 weeks pregnant at the time
00:49so i had a long way still to go through that pregnancy um and what it did it it reminded
00:56me
00:56that with that deep grief that i was going through god was still at work in my life
01:03um literally daily he he didn't give up on me so that that verse is very very special to me
01:10um and it's a verse that gave me confidence right throughout life through it continues to give me
01:16confidence um and ultimately what i knew is that things would actually be all right in the end
01:23because of that hope that that verse in fact gave us and i think you know motherhood also
01:31called in me to to keep going i could just give up i had a son on the way and
01:38once i had him
01:39i had to make a success of whatever i was going whatever i was doing so it it brought out
01:45in me
01:46courage um i'm going to say it brought out in me some tenderness even and and perseverance which um
01:54and i don't think i even know that do those things existed in me at the time but amazingly that
02:00they
02:00really did come through and again there was a verse that encouraged me hugely and it's that verse that
02:05i think most of us know that verse from romans chapter 5 which talks about perseverance
02:09the way perseverance builds character and character builds hope so it so ties in with that verse from
02:18jeremiah 29 verse 11 which i absolutely love and and it really is has shown the way god's love
02:24has absolutely been poured out to all of us um so i believe that that motherhood really awakened
02:34in me a very much a sense of purpose um my son gave me that reason to to kind of
02:41get up in the
02:42morning to rebuild my life after what i'd absolutely gone through it as painful as it was and i was
02:50constantly reminded that god had not abandoned me and he still hasn't abandoned me and it's given me
02:57that ability to continue motherhood through a really difficult season because ultimately
03:04through all of this what it's also done is it's given me the opportunity to share the gospel
03:09i mean i mean what an opportunity what a privilege how god takes a story and we sometimes say he
03:15takes
03:16our mess and he turns it into a message in your case it was a loss an incredible loss so
03:21well done on
03:22that are we going to go much deeper kirstie because she's cully kirstie speaking to us about the
03:27importance of financial planning and how the lord's helped her not only through her own personal story
03:33but what she's built up in terms of experience and the need to fill gaps financially so kirstie you've
03:40got many years of experience as a public speaker and even with radio um what message do you have for
03:47our listeners and for our single mothers that will even maybe tune in a bit later in terms of the
03:53importance of of planning and and and how to have honest conversations that often make us feel
03:59quite vulnerable about about how to prepare and be prepared from a financial point of view
04:05well honestly barbara there are so many points we could be here for days talking about this
04:10but what i did was i actually put together five points which i thought were perhaps quite important
04:14that we can perhaps go through so hope everybody's got a pen and a piece of paper around with them
04:18and we can perhaps chat through them because if you go through these points that i'm going to give
04:22you it's going to be able to create that financial independence that i talk about the whole time which
04:28is so so vital so if i think about it firstly let's talk about your earning power because that's where
04:33it all starts okay i mean yes education is phenomenally important that you have the the best education
04:39so that you can at least do the best from an from a job perspective but if for example you
04:45are
04:46getting a new job okay yes the thing to do here is to negotiate that your salary starts as high
04:53as
04:53possible because then from there you're moving up okay so always remember don't try and go into a job
04:59and then say oh let me negotiate it doesn't really work like that start as absolutely high as possible
05:04and because that's going to be going to be going to be good maybe you're already employed let's have a
05:09look at that then you've got to have those when you have salary discussions have the facts and the
05:15figures with you and go in with confidence yes go in showing absolute confidence not not any pity party
05:23or anything like that be absolutely confident and if need be if your salary is not sufficient start
05:30looking for other income streams because if you can do this that extra income can be helping with
05:36things like um reducing your uh your for example debt yes because if you can get rid of your debt
05:45that is one of the biggest it's like a mountain on your shoulders having debt and if we can all
05:51just get
05:51rid of debt then it's makes such a difference um in our lives because it allows us to build long
05:58-term
05:58security you're touching on a couple of important points here and and something i want to maybe just
06:04double click on a little bit the there's a fear effect or there appears to be a fear factor where
06:10women don't negotiate hard for themselves you said it's important to negotiate right at the outset
06:16before you're in the job or you're about to negotiate your position and your entry point
06:20before you take the position you have that that so when we speak about identity of women in your
06:25experience and some of the training you did with women what comes out for you where women shy away
06:30from that hard negotiation i was actually recently doing a talk in fact it was overseas
06:35uh new zealand and i was talking to a group of women and just saying that what we observe
06:40is the fact that men will apply for a job when they're not even qualified for that job
06:46but women will tend to say well have i got all the qualifications am i the right person
06:51just go for it okay stop that follow what men do for a change and actually just bite the bullet
06:59and
06:59say i can do it and even if you have to learn on the job because let's face it when
07:04it comes to
07:05things like leadership yes we all those of us who have been in leadership we didn't know about
07:10leadership before we went in but we learned it on the job and that is what's made us successful
07:16so don't think you have to know everything about for example how to lead a board or how to lead
07:22a
07:22team don't think you've got to know it all before you start you will also learn when you're there just
07:28go for it just go for it i like that thank you you said you had five points tell us
07:33what's the second
07:33point yes i do so something else that is really important is protecting and i spoke about it a little
07:40bit earlier protecting yourself and protecting those loved ones around you in times of really
07:46difficult times so you've got to ensure that you need to have the right cover in place that's what
07:52we call risk benefits when we're talking in in my profession okay so i'm talking about things like
07:58life cover i'm talking about things like disability cover income protection medical aid um short-term
08:06insurance all those sorts of things but you know it's quite interesting because we most of us insure
08:11our cars we insure our homes in time for times of difficulty but what we do is we so often
08:18forget to
08:20protect our income now if you lose your income say you get hit by the proverbial bus and you can't
08:26work
08:26for a number of months or heaven help full-time you can't work what about your income where are you
08:36income protection comes in and i'm going to say that i think the most important cover that we
08:41should have other than a medical aid is income protection because income protection if you don't
08:47have an income how will you manage anything else so that for me is probably the most important thing
08:54and i would agree and even more so for single mothers even more so for single mothers if you don't
08:59have that income then what you know it can be pretty daunting and overwhelming and um please lead
09:06us into your to your third point i think people are probably sitting with pen and paper and i hope
09:11they're taking this down because it's incredible yes so so i love talking about saving because if we
09:18if we get into that habit of saving consistency consistently we will succeed all right so things like
09:27retirement savings i mean that's probably the most common thing that we need to save for we need to
09:32make that a priority we live in a country where i can tell you that the the grant government gives
09:38you two and a half thousand or whatever exactly it is we can't manage on that that is absolutely
09:43ridiculous so you've got to here do it for yourself all right you've got to be prepared to make it
09:49a
09:49priority when you start saving and and of course things like compound interest we know it as the
09:53as the eighth wonder of the world we talk about that it it's there for a very good reason because
09:59the more you start to save the more it's going to grow and in fact the statistics are that if
10:05you
10:05are the age of 25 and you start with saving 15 percent of your income every single month until you
10:14are
10:14about 60 years of age you'll be able to retire with about 80 percent of your final salary but the
10:20problem
10:20is how many of us start at the age of 25 with 15 in fact majority of people don't even
10:27save 15 when
10:28they're 40 years old let alone when they are 25 and so the later you leave it the the more
10:34difficult
10:35it is going to be so retirement savings vital there's many other savings you can have it could
10:40be for children's tertiary education it could be towards putting down a bond a deposit on a bond or
10:45home loan or whatever the case is i was just speaking really mainly then about retirement savings but
10:50something else that i think is absolutely invaluable is to have an emergency fund yes and then because
10:57when something goes wrong when the fridge packs up or when you get your tire gets ripped for whatever
11:02reason on a pothole that you drive through you need to have enough savings to pay for that in your
11:09emergency fund and people often say to me how much money should i have in an emergency fund well
11:16financial planners tend to say between three and six months but everybody's different and if you look
11:22at it people have more gadgets in their home for example if you've got a pool pump if you've got
11:28an
11:28electric fence if you've got all those sorts of things the more technical things you have like that
11:33the higher your your emergency fund in fact needs to be because there's more the more things that can go
11:39wrong as such so make your own decision as to how much you should have in your emergency fund but
11:44we
11:44always suggest at least i'm going to say three to six months worth of income and that money needs to
11:51be highly accessible and perhaps in a money market so that you can get to it literally within a day
11:57okay that mustn't be something it mustn't be something in a unit trust which is you know ideally a long
12:02-term
12:03investment it needs to be something highly accessible so that you can get it get to it as soon as
12:08that
12:08emergency has actually arisen so timing is definitely of the essence because with everything you
12:14mentioned there's a time factor that we cannot ignore and i think we need to be educating our
12:18young people early our young ladies young single mothers early that start even if it's in small
12:24measure and it's not 25 start somewhere because then you're conditioning them into a certain way of
12:30behaving in a way of showing up and the compound interest of course it's a powerful powerful concept
12:36yeah and i don't think many people know about that kristi tell us about your fourth um
12:42pools of wisdom yeah it's very interesting thank you so so what i think about here is using the right
12:49investment vehicle now a lot of people think oh when they think about savings what they do they think
12:55oh let me put my money away in a bank account i'm going to say that that is not the
12:59ideal investment
13:00vehicle when you're talking long term when you're saving for retirement or when you're saving for
13:05something that's going to be maybe four or five years away when you're saving for your child's
13:09tertiary education as an example you do not use a bank account why because remember for those of us
13:15who are under the age of 65 once you've earned more than 23 800 rand in interest every year you're
13:23going to pay tax on it so you need to find an investment vehicle where the interest portion is kept
13:30under
13:30the threshold but you have capital growth on the investment and so when you are saving for
13:36something like a retirement you should be using either through your work a pension fund maybe a
13:42provident fund or you should be using a retirement annuity okay because a retirement annuity or a
13:49pension fund is going to give you that ability to get a tax deduction on the money okay so it's
13:56not
13:56only about the amount that you actually invest it's about the fact that you'll pay less tax and
14:02therefore that can go into your retirement savings so that's because you use the correct vehicle for
14:08for retirement for retirement savings and remember when you put money away for retirement what's it for
14:14retirement retirement not for anything else not like do not let me tap into it for this then the other
14:20i want to pay my bond off or whatever the case is no it is specifically there for retirement and
14:25that is not
14:26non-negotiable absolutely non-negotiable even with this new two-pot system where yes you can get a
14:32tiny bit of it i really don't want to i don't want to encourage you to do that at all
14:35i want to say
14:36remember that retirement savings is for precisely that so when it comes to retirement using the correct
14:43retirement vehicle when it comes to using something like a tax-free savings account remember tax-free savings
14:48account is ideal for you to invest in for as absolutely long as possible in fact use it as a
14:54supplement to your retirement savings and i can go into a whole discussion about that i'm sure you can
14:59we're not going to do that right now yes and you mentioned thresholds that we'll speak about another
15:03time i'm watching our time can you quickly run us through the last time because i think advice the
15:08advice we get and take is so important in terms of how we plan yeah well it's about getting the
15:15right
15:15advice and here i'm going to say that you should be using a professional not somebody who just finished
15:22school and said oh i'm going to sell life assurance no no no use a professional you can use a
15:27professional member of the financial planning institute of southern africa but i do recommend
15:31that you use a certified financial planner because that is the highest qualification it's the highest
15:37designation that we get specifically in financial planning and it is an international qualification it
15:44means that they've got a postgraduate diploma in financial planning first it means that they've kept up
15:51with all the education requirements they've kept up with the continuing education requirements and they
15:57are they adhere to the ethics requirements of a certified financial planner which as i say is a is an
16:05international qualification so i do highly recommend if people are looking for advice find a certified
16:11financial planner who can give you that advice thank you kirstie we we're going to to go into closing and
16:18i
16:18really want to make time for prayer i think it's very important so in closing uh reflections kirstie um
16:24with all that you've been through in life loss motherhood rebuilding finding purpose um what does security
16:32mean for you yeah well i guess security means different things for for different people so but i believe that
16:41mothers or let's say women in particular need to start speaking more honestly yes okay it starts with
16:49that uh more honestly about loss about vulnerability about being prepared and you know we often feel that
16:59we need to be strong at all times but that is not the case we do not need to because
17:02being vulnerable
17:04is not a weakness at all it's actually a part of life so there's various aspects where can we feel
17:11secure in life if i think about our homes we need to learn to speak to our families to our
17:15children
17:16about having those financial planning conversations about where is your will what have you done is your
17:22will up to date um for example what cover have you got in place how much are you saving are
17:27you putting
17:27things in place for that and then there's also other things to consider maybe even within our churches we need
17:34to have honest conversations about grief okay and about allowing women to say i'm actually not okay
17:43all right um and without the shame that goes with that and then just from a from a community
17:50perspective um we need to be able to encourage women to have confidence to have that emotional
17:57confidence to have confidence financially as well um and i really believe that through through
18:03trusting god and for through planning wisely um we can live our lives where we prepare well not through
18:12fear but rather through stewardship through love and again through protecting those that we love and we
18:19care the most about love it thank you so much you see there's so much you shared with us this
18:25morning
18:26that uh i'm sure we can go deeper but it gives people hope and it tells us that there can
18:31be a plan you
18:32know if you don't have a plan you set up yourself for failure and there's nothing wrong in being
18:37vulnerable and asking for help and getting the right advice so so thank you for that would you close for
18:43us in prayer please i'd love to um barbara that'll be lovely thank you lord i just bring this time
18:49to us and i
18:49just think of all mothers and i would like to lift them all each and every one of them up
18:54to you
18:55those who are carrying that incredible financial burden uh emotional burden and spiritual weight
19:01of homes of households um on their lives um and i especially pray for those women out there who have
19:08perhaps
19:09been let down by the fathers of their children but i ask that we will be able to open our
19:15eyes to the
19:16burden that those women face and help us to care you tell us to care for widows to care for
19:23orphans
19:23and i just pray that you will help us to be able to do that give those women strength i
19:29pray that you'll
19:30give them wisdom i'll pray that you give them the absolute courage that they need in their lives and that
19:37they will start to trust you and trust you just incredibly deeply to work hard to grow in confidence
19:46and to know that with you at their side they can take responsibility for their families and you will
19:52give them that absolute perseverance that they need not to just rely on others or themselves but to be
20:00able to rely on you so lord please surround them with your sense of peace the way you provide for
20:07their needs and remind them that through christ they are never ever alone alone i thank you lord jesus in
20:16your name amen amen thank you kirstie thank you listeners for tuning in be blessed stay rooted and rising until
20:24next week