Siphiwe Tshabalala is amongst the players who have bucked the trend of going broke shortly after calling time on their careers and continues to be financially savvy. But 'Shabba' reveals his financial discipline started even before he joined Kaizer Chiefs.
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When Shabba joined Chiefs from Free State Stars in 2007, he already had multiple streams of income, although it was not the mammoth numbers he started earning at the Glamour Boys.
The dreadlocked midfielder is a Nedbank Cup ambassador and has been sharing his financial story with members of the media.
'Shabba' details how he managed to implement sound financial decisions upon turning professional back in 2004 - something that has kept him afloat 20 years later.
"So with me I started to plan life after football immediately when I started turning professional so I didn't wait to play for Chiefs to start thinking, investing, investing, investing," he told journalists.
"I started when I was still at Free State Stars earning a little and I developed that into a habit and then from habit it was a principle now. Whenever you have money, you save and then you spend what's left. You don't spend and save what's left. Yes, there were mistakes.
"I got my fingers burnt. I managed to recover. So it's best to start early, make your mistakes, learn from them, recover, pay your school fees. That's what they say, rather than putting the whole body and getting burnt. So when I arrived at Chiefs, already I had an extra income from my appearances and now the brand grew and then and then I think endorsements [came]. So I would tell myself in my mind the investments were not from the money that I made outside, including your national team bonuses. That money was not for me to use, but for me to invest. So I was so comfortable doing that because I was used to it. It was a principle. Even though I've made mistakes but it was a principle, that's why I survived and not to say I didn't want those things, I wanted them. There were temptations. But when you are guided by principle then there's that resistance and now it's even better.
"You have Nedbank that also provides a platform to have these kinds of conversations with people that have the expertise on this. So you've got players who've walked the journey that can tell the story and the story will bring about positive change. You've got professionals as well that will help you to look after your money and lose that narrative that when you go to the ATM to check the balance, you see the zeros, you are happy. Even if there's no zeros, but your money is somewhere there, it's still fine it it's still a win. So that's where the Nedbank finance team comes in, to give you different options and not only players. I'm talking about you as journalists. I'm talking about professionals, lawyers, doctors, everyone. It's a problem that we encounter but the sad thing is that with that our career, it’s short so once you encounter this problem it's difficult to recover, so we need to learn quickly how to save and also how to value money, how to respect money.
"And when I speak to people, I always tell them to respect money, value money and value each and every cent that you have and if you take care of the cents, the rands will take care of themselves so. If you have R20, you value R20 by the time you have R1000 you’re good. So that's my view, my attitude and that's what I've been doing that's been working for me and I'm quite happy with the progress that I've made thus far, but there's also an opportunity for me to learn as well and be a better person, and also be a better business person in that regard," he said.
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