Fifteen years ago this month, Sunél left a two-decade career in stockbroking to start Foundation Family Wealth. She had wanted to leave for years and told herself that her financial obligations and young family made it impossible. Sunél looks at what she eventually discovered was holding her there, and why so many people with the means to create almost any future choose to stay in the cage.
Most of Sunél’s clients earned and saved their way to wealth, without inheritance or windfalls. That route is getting harder. Wealth has grown far faster than wages, and the climb that once took about 20 years of saving now takes 40 years. Sunél looks at what happens when inheritance, property and school fees start deciding financial standing, and why education and hard work no longer guarantee the climb.
August brings a flood of advice telling women to be more responsible with money. Sunél looks at what the research shows: South African women contribute more diligently to their retirement funds than men, and still retire with 21% less. She unpacks why the gap is not in the pay cheque, but in the years before it.
Sunél's airport driver always answers the same way: "Always good." It's a habit happiness researcher Arthur Brooks would recognise: he found that ticking off his entire 40-year-old bucket list by 50 left him less happy, not more. Sunél explores why our brains keep chasing more, and what it takes to want less instead.
A few slow, cold days in the Cederberg led Sunél to a conversation she usually avoids about money, with her own kids. She reflects on why the technical side of financial planning was never the hard part, and why honesty, not perfection, is the real work.
Why having too many options can leave you stuck, and what David Epstein, Herbert Simon, and a good financial plan all have in common. A short read on choosing "good enough" and moving forward.
