People end up over spending and come January they are literally bankrupt. Christmas comes once a year and people should be able to plan for it. People seem not to plan their spending over the festive season as they get consumed by the festive mood. As a result, some people end up buying things that they do not need - and will never need or use. It is very important and advisable that people should plan for Christmas as early as the beginning of the year. Banking institutions offer saving facilities and people should take advantage of these services so that when Christmas comes they will have accumulated enough money to spend.
Yes, Christmas is a time of giving and as such friends and relatives expect gifts. But Batswana must learn to save. From the studies that have been carried out in the past, it was found out that Batswana are not in the habit of saving but rather they are a consuming society. The arrival of the micro-lender (machonisa) on the scene has created more problems in that if one has no security to secure some kind of 'no-mathata' loan from major banks or financial lending institutions, the tendency is to go to micro-lenders because their repayment terms are not as stringent as those demanded by commercial institutions. As such, desperate workers eager to buy a gift or two for their loved ones are driven to loan sharks who are exacting more than a pound of flesh. This is a bad habit especially for people who for a number of months preceding Christmas were ridden with debts because they will be paying back what they took from the micro-lenders long after the festive season. For some it will be difficult to do anything, as the micro-lenders would have impounded their Automated Teller Machine (ATM) cards. Borrowing money to the extent of a personal ATM card being "seized" as security is a sign of budgetary indiscipline of the highest order on the part of any parent or guardian. With the re-introduction of school feels, parents should be saving and investing the money in the education of their children rather than spending it on luxuries what will not help Botswana achieve Vision 2016 objectives.
