The
National Gambling Board revealed recently that gross gambling revenue hit
nearly R60 billion last year with online platforms raking in over R150 billion.
Advisor
Rebekah Pillay says with the economy struggling, gambling is eating into money
meant to be kept aside for essentials.
She has
warned that if people are gambling more than 1 per cent of their income, that
is already too much.
Pillay
says better financial planning and awareness are key to avoiding the dangers of
problem gambling.
“A
lot of households already have a lot of income constraints. Obviously, money is
not flowing as easy as it was. So, using any money that’s coming into our
households before, which is supposed to be channeled to paying our bills and
feeding our families, we don’t have the luxury of spare money.
“Anything
channeled into gambling is actually eating away money that we were supposed to
be using for our households and paying our debt.”
Pillay,
who is a financial adviser at Consult by Momentum, has pointed to unemployment
as one of the drivers behind the rise in gambling.
“There’s
a lot of pressure with sometimes big households, or as we call it Black Tax,
and you have to stretch what you have. Just the amount of pressure that they
are under with little money to do a lot.
“A
very wealthy client said to me that if you are now in South Africa and you are
managing to pay all your bills, you are rich. So, I think that kind of gives
you perspective in terms of whether we are all able to afford our monthly
expenses. And that will tell you we are not.”
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