“I need R100 000 per month plus retirement benefits to make it worthwhile me taking this job”.

This was an answer I received the other day when I was chatting to an entrepreneur who was looking at joining a start-up business in a leadership role.

“Why do you NEED R100 000?” I asked, pointing out that this was an unrealistic monthly financial burden to place on an early-stage business.

“Well I’m 42, I haven’t really saved anything, I have 2 children in decent schools that I need to put through varsity and the cost of living in Johannesburg is high.. and frankly I’m tired of struggling to make ends meet every month” he replied.

With this rolling around in my head, I went to PayScale and pulled up the average annual salary for somebody living in Johannesburg and I was surprised – it was lower than I thought it was …. R248 298 per year. Or R20 691 per month.

If you put that figure to most middle-class families in Johannesburg, they would profess to *never* be able to live on R20 691 per month … but the reality is that, that is what the average employed person in South Africa is pulling in. Much of the rest is being funded by credit.

While this 8 minute TEDx Talk below is out of America, it does give us pause for thought as to what we define as financially successful.

The presenter is Gret Glyer is the Founder of DonorSee, an app that lets you help the world’s poorest people seconds after downloading and then proves it with raw video updates. From 2013 to 2016, Gret lived with the world’s poorest people in Africa, where he built more than 100 houses for the homeless, and famously crowdfunded $100,000 to build a girls’ school in rural Malawi.

Enjoy.