Shopping, I like to think, is a sport at which I excel. So too, fortunately, is adapting. As women we do it all the time. No sooner have we settled into one shade of lipstick or a shoe-shape that works, than they change it all and we have to set about reshuffling.
More than once we’ll find they’ve done away with our chosen foundation, hair spray and blusher all in one day. Besides the disturbance and sense of loss, setting about putting all that right, as most good women will tell you, is no easy task. But we manage, bearing in mind always that it can get worse. Finding new jeans, for example, is probably what they make girls do fulltime in Hell. Throw in The Other Half being with you at the time, and it really can’t get much worse. Rule Number One while you’re still on Earth: never go shopping with a man.
Life’s a beach
And that applies to off-shore shopping too. It happened almost by chance. A good girl-friend and I were discussing which beaches we’d most like to visit this July. Of course that led to chatting to about how many new swimsuits we’d buy. And that led to other purchases including boots, food and home décor. As our suitcases got heavier, and we knew that even my prized light-packing tips weren’t going to convince any airport official, we glanced at the exchange rate.
And suddenly we knew that it wasn’t the airport officials who were going to need convincing. They would be easy bait in comparison. It was going to be our men who’d need every move in the book to get them crossing borders in the near future.
Go global
And then we came up with it. A little research showed that the best way to beat the Rand slide was actually to join it! Flexibility! Not having all our apples in one basket! With our global wealth as South Africans declining at the speed of a spring avalanche, investing abroad is the obvious answer. Creating a portfolio of positive global wealth of course leads to the ultimate financial freedom!
Yes, we were a little shaken by the revelation, but the reality is that if we’d started a few years ago, or if we, at least, got our children to invest abroad now, we’d all have more long-term freedom of choice. Just because we live in this gorgeous country doesn’t mean we need all our assets tied up here making us susceptible to political and economic events beyond our control.
A quick visit to our favourite website confirmed they had loads of international properties available, and the next step of course was to research just where and why to buy. Like buying new jeans though, we knew we’d have to reconvene soon: investigation comes before the perfect fit.
