Return to search

Determining budgeting skills of government social grant holders

The lack of budgeting skills in Government Social Grant recipients has significantly added to an inability in many of the grant recipients to address the existing poverty in their households. This situation has been exacerbated due to exploitation of social grant recipients by illegal money lenders charging excessively high interest rates trapping grant recipients in a vicious cycle of perpetuating debt. In remote rural areas poverty and lack of literacy and numeracy skills go hand in hand. Psycho-social and economic factors play a role in grant recipients’ poor budgeting and financial decision making skills, contributing to them falling into debt in the first place. Aggravating the situation is legislation that limits access to financial resources of those without employment, rendering illegal money lenders the financial entity providing finance by default. The research was conducted in a poor rural area around Tarkastad, Eastern Cape and sought to identify challenges caused by, amongst others, the lack of decent education, poverty and poor budgeting skills, all negatively influencing different social grant holders. Analysis of data from this qualitative study took place by means of a thematic classification against the background of a critical theoretical framework. The researcher believes that this study shed light on issues surrounding exploitation by illegal, unregistered money lenders and that the suggested recommendations, if implemented, may bring about a change in lending patterns and saving behaviour of communities in remote areas.

Identiferoai:union.ndltd.org:netd.ac.za/oai:union.ndltd.org:nmmu/vital:28647
Date January 2016
CreatorsMatanga, Sive
PublisherNelson Mandela Metropolitan University, Faculty of Business and Economic Sciences
Source SetsSouth African National ETD Portal
LanguageEnglish
Detected LanguageEnglish
TypeThesis, Masters, MA
Formatx, 76 leaves, pdf
RightsNelson Mandela Metropolitan University

Page generated in 0.0021 seconds