The media and the Government have voiced their feelings against micro-lenders, which they refer to as “abomashonisa”. The cry has been that they enslave the poor making their lives unbearable. The fact of the matter is that it is not only the poor who find themselves slaves to the micro-lenders. The educated with better paying jobs than the poor, including teachers are also micro-lending clients. This prompted the researcher to investigate the financial management competencies of teachers. Although teachers are better paid than the poor, the manner in which they conduct their financial affairs will determine whether they live like the poor or not. Even for the poor, poor financial management skills is one of the important factors that cause them to be enslaved by micro-lenders. To meet the dissertation’s aims a literature study focusing on the origin and the development of micro-lending in South Africa and the financial management acumen of teachers in South Africa, was conducted. An empirical study was then undertaken to investigate the financial management competencies of teachers in Port Elizabeth. Based on the information obtained from the literature study and the results from the empirical survey, various recommendations and conclusions were made.

Thesis (MDF)--Stellenbosch University, 2014. / ENGLISH ABSTRACT: This research assignment measures the relative odds of certain savings and debt related outcomes based on various domains of financial literacy, I.E. financial control, financial product choice and financial knowledge/understanding? It also measures the relative odds of certain savings and debt related outcomes based on individual elements of each of these domains. Finally it measures the significance in which overall financial literacy, as a product of the various domains, affect the odds of certain financial outcomes relative to other more conventional demographic determinants, such as income, education and age? The data that informs this research was obtained from the Financial Services Board (FSB) of South Africa, who commissioned the Human Sciences Research Council (HSRC) to conduct the original data collection process by means of a national survey, in 2011. The salient findings of this research include that the relative odds of savings outcomes are by and large more significantly affected by both the individual elements of– and the various domains of financial literacy, than debt related outcomes. Financial control as a domain of financial literacy has the greatest impact on the relative odds of both savings and debt related outcomes, while financial knowledge/understanding has a comparatively weak influence on the relative odds of savings and debt related outcomes. Financial control also has a significant influence on financial outcomes relative to conventionally significant determinants of financial outcomes, namely income and education, especially among lower income and or non-tertiary educated segments of the population. The individual elements of financial control that appear to be most significant in its influence on the relative odds of savings and debt related outcomes, include the use of a budget and an individual‟s reliability in paying his or her bills. The individual elements of the financial product choice domain that have the largest and or most consistent influence on the relative odds of savings outcomes are the extent of research before obtaining financial products and the level of general awareness of financial products. On the other hand, for debt related outcomes, the most influential independent variables (part of the financial product choice domain) are recent regret regarding financial product choice, recent wasteful expenditure on financial products as well as the extent to which an individual is able to identify suitable products. In terms of the individual elements of financial knowledge and understanding, the ability of individuals to understand compound interest affects the relative odds of debt related outcomes most consistently. Forevery savings outcome of interest, the predictor variable (part of the financial knowledge/understanding domain) with the most significant influence is the ability to understand interest on deposits. The research furthermore uncovered that overall financial literacy has a consistently significant influence on savings outcomes relative to conventional determinants of financial outcomes such as income, age and education if the highest categories of income and education are omitted from analysis. Financial literacy is therefore a very good predictor of saving related outcomes when considering the lower income and or non-tertiary educated segments of the population.

published_or_final_version / Education / Doctoral / Doctor of Philosophy

This study was carried out with the purpose of discovering what factors are predictive of money management behavior; Plan, Implement, and Evaluative Feedback. The data used in this study was subset data collected during 1988, under the NC-167 project entitled "Family Resource Utilization as a Factor in Determining Economic Well Being of Rural Families". Three hundred and seven financial managers in families from Arizona completed and returned the questionnaire used in this study. It was found that (1) the power money attitude, the inadequacy money attitude, and gender were predictor variables of plan behavior; (2) the inadequacy money attitude and age were predictor variables of evaluative feedback.

This study will furnish the reader with general and specific investment advice as taken from questionnaires sent to a group of men who specialize in giving investment and financial advice -- financial analysts.

In the early nineteenth-century United States, many social reformers, public commentators, and legislators argued that workers must engage in prudent financial planning in order to remain independent in a capitalist economy. Their belief that personal mismanagement was the primary cause of poverty led some of them to create the first financial institutions to help Americans of limited means save and invest their earnings: savings banks. From this modest start rose both a widespread ideology that related personal financial practice to personal virtue and a multibillion dollar industry that used the savings of millions of American workers to finance government, business, and personal debt. "Little Capitalists" charts this evolution from the philanthropic savings banks of the early-nineteenth century to the myriad commercial, cooperative, and public financial institutions for the working classes of the early-twentieth century. It shows how conceptions of individual and civic responsibility interacted with actual savings practices to integrate American workers into the national economy, building the financial apparatus that funded the expansion of wage-labor capitalism by harnessing the capital of wage laborers themselves. American institutional savings pioneers sought to address increased poverty wrought by urban growth and the creation of a wage-earning class in the first half of the nineteenth century. These reformers organized the country's original savings banks on the premise that all workers were capable of saving some of their earnings--no matter how little--so that they could remain financially independent in times of unemployment, injury, or old age. Their institutions tried to teach workers how to save money by providing secure facilities in which they could do so in the small amounts that no other financial institutions would handle. They also offered depositors a chance to earn a small profit from interest paid on deposits. Because this interest derived from investing those deposits in securities, mortgages, and other loans, savings banks brought millions of nineteenth-century wage earners into the American economy as investors. In this way, these institutions promoted the idea that working-class depositors could be their own "capitalists." As more Americans saved growing amounts, legislators, political economists, social reformers, and other observers took it as evidence that any worker who exercised virtues like thrift and self-denial could save money. Because generations of Americans viewed these personal attributes as the bases of moral civilization, they increasingly looked to savings institutions to foster a better citizenry and nation. The US Congress chartered the Freedman's Savings and Trust Company after the Civil War not only to provide financial services to former slaves but also to train them for a life of citizenship grounded in the principles of free labor ideology. Likewise, a nationwide movement beginning in the late-nineteenth century brought together governments, educators, and bankers to create a system of school savings banks to inculcate virtue in children by teaching them how to save pennies and nickels. In both cases, the point was to mold a working class steeped in the social, political, and moral values that would make them amenable to the emerging system of wage-labor capitalism. Even as some savings institutions attempted social indoctrination, workers' growing deposits also demonstrated their financial power. From the 1870s to the 1910s, this motivated entrepreneurs and legislators to design and encourage new institutions to collect savings deposits and invest them widely, including: industrial life insurance firms, employee thrift plans, trust company and commercial bank savings departments, and a postal savings system. Meanwhile, organizations like building and loan associations slowly added the extension of working-class credit to the collection of working-class savings. These new institutions gave many Americans increased discretion over how to save (and spend) money. But as they began to utilize them, workers also became a significant component of the nation's for-profit finance economy as both creditors and debtors. In the process, they assumed new financial risk. "Little Capitalists" outlines this history. It shows how a group of social experiments designed to foster an independent working class in the early-nineteenth century spawned, by the second decade of the twentieth century, both an ideology of saving at the center of popular perceptions about good citizenship and a small finance industry that was indispensable to the American economy.

The aim of this research was to investigate staff turnover in the Mabopane area serviced by a well-established insurance company. This area is comprised of three different offices; Brits, Kudube and Mabopane. The offices are of the insurance company in the Mabopane area and over the years they have experienced high staff turnover. This research examined factors that contribute to the problem of high staff turnover. The primary instrument used to acquire information for this study was a questionnaire. This questionnaire has sections that require information about demographics, staff turnover factors, perspectives of respondents and a section for yes or no answering. Copies of the questionnaire were distributed to 60 participants who were currently employed, newly employed, those who worked outside the Mabopane area and others who no longer worked in the Insurance Company's offices. Through this method a lot of data was acquired and it helped give a clearer picture. The findings were that high staff turnover generally occurred between managers and financial advisers. Managers handled staff turnover and the high staff turnover mainly occurred after 1994. The employees agree that those who are behind with their workload are not willing to work over weekends. Since there are hardworking personal financial advisers (PFAs) among the employees according to the findings, the company should remedy the situation by concentrating on hiring those who are willing to work overtime, and are not overwhelmed by their job. / (MBA) North-West University, Mafikeng Campus, 2004

No description available.

Thesis (Psy. D.)--Wheaton College, 2005. / Abstract. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 59-70).

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Michigan State University. Dept. of Economics, 2008. / Title from PDF t.p. (viewed on July 7, 2009) Includes bibliographical references. Also issued in print.