64% of Working South Africans Keep Savings as Cash at Home. It Jumped 11 Points in One Year

The Biggest Single-Year Move in the Study

The Old Mutual Savings and Investment Monitor 2026 has tracked unbanked cash savings — money kept at home, outside any financial institution — since 2020. The trend has been climbing steadily. This year it didn't climb. It jumped.

This Is Not a Poverty Story

The instinctive explanation — people too poor or too unbanked to use financial institutions — is contradicted directly by the data. Every respondent in this survey earns R8,000 a month or more and is formally employed. And the behaviour is most common at the top:

This is a choice being made by people with full access to banks, investment platforms and financial advisers. Which makes the reasons behind it far more interesting than "people don't have bank accounts."

And It's Becoming the Main Savings Vehicle

More concerning than the headline number is what's happening underneath it. The report asked people how much of their total savings this cash represents:

So it isn't a bit of emergency money in a drawer alongside a proper portfolio. For close to half the people doing it, cash at home is the savings plan. And the report notes this is particularly true of lower earners, the group least able to absorb what it costs.

Why People Do It

The report asked directly. The answers are more reasonable than you might expect:

Notice also which reason is growing. "Feeling safer having cash at home" has risen every year, from 33% to 39%. That's not a financial calculation. It's a confidence one.

What It Actually Costs

Cash at home earns nothing. Not a low return — zero. Meanwhile South African inflation has run around 5% to 6% in recent years, which means the purchasing power of that money falls every year with certainty.

R50,000 kept at home, at 5.5% inflation:

Now the opportunity cost. Take R1,000 a month, held as cash at home versus contributed to a TFSA holding a diversified equity ETF at a long-term average of 10% a year:

Over twenty years, the same R1,000 a month is the difference between R240,000 and R759,369 — and every cent of that growth is tax-free. Worse, the R240,000 in the cash column isn't really R240,000, because it was losing purchasing power the whole time. In today's money it's worth closer to R147,000.

For a sense of scale using the report's own figures: the average stokvel contribution it recorded was R1,448 a month. That amount in a TFSA over twenty years is R1,099,566.

Taking the Reasons Seriously

Dismissing these reasons doesn't work, because most of them are partly right. Here's the honest response to each.

"It's more convenient and accessible" — 53%

The most common reason, and the most defensible. When income is irregular and expenses arrive unannounced, instant access has genuine value.

But a TFSA is also fully liquid. There's no lock-in period, no penalty for withdrawal, no retirement age. The difference is a settlement delay of a few days, not an inability to access your money.

The real answer is that these solve different problems. You need some instantly accessible cash — that's your emergency buffer, and it's legitimate. What isn't legitimate is treating your entire savings pool as though it all needs to be reachable within ten seconds. Money you won't touch for five years doesn't need to sit in a drawer to feel accessible.

"I feel safer with cash at home" — 39%, and rising

This is the reason growing fastest, and it's the one where the perception is most inverted.

Cash at home has no protection whatsoever. It can be stolen, lost in a fire, or damaged, and standard household contents insurance typically covers only a very small amount of cash — often a few thousand rand, if any. There is no recovery, no recourse, no record it existed.

Money at a licensed institution is regulated. Bank deposits are covered by the Corporation for Deposit Insurance up to R100,000 per depositor per bank. Investments at a licensed provider are held in your name under FSCA oversight.

The feeling is real. The safety is backwards.

"Saving on bank fees" — 29%

A genuine and quantifiable concern, and the right response is to quantify it. If you're avoiding, say, R70 a month in fees on savings of R50,000, that's R840 a year. Meanwhile inflation is taking roughly R2,750 a year in purchasing power from that same R50,000.

You are avoiding the visible small cost by accepting the invisible large one. And several TFSA platforms charge no monthly administration fee at all, leaving only the ETF's own total expense ratio — commonly between 0.1% and 0.5% a year. On R50,000, a 0.35% TER is R175 a year, less than most transactional account fees.

"More private" — 24%

Worth being clear about: a TFSA is not a tax dodge, because there is no tax to dodge. Growth, dividends, interest and withdrawals are all tax-free. Providers do report to SARS, which is precisely how your contribution limits get tracked, and that reporting exists to protect your allowance rather than to tax you.

If the privacy concern is about family or community expectations rather than SARS, an investment account is arguably more private than a stack of cash at home that everyone in the household knows about.

"The interest is too little to be worth it" — 21%

This is the most important one, because the people saying it are completely correct about the wrong comparison.

If your alternative is a transactional account paying 1% or 2%, then yes — the interest is negligible and cash at home is barely worse. That reasoning is sound.

But that isn't the alternative. A TFSA holding a diversified equity ETF has a long-run expected return closer to 10%, with no tax on any of it. The comparison isn't 0% versus 2%. It's 0% versus roughly 10%, compounding, untaxed.

Almost two thirds of the country is making a rational decision inside a comparison that leaves out the actual best option.

"I don't know how to go about it" — 7%

Small, but rising. The fix is genuinely a single afternoon: most TFSA providers open an account online with an ID and proof of address, and platforms like EasyEquities let you start from R50 a month.

What You Should Actually Keep as Cash

None of this argues for zero cash. It argues for a deliberate amount.

Keep as accessible cash: one to three months of essential expenses as an emergency buffer. This is what stops an unplanned expense turning into debt — and the same study found 62% of all personal loans were taken out for exactly that. Keep it in an accessible interest-bearing account rather than at home, so it's insured, earning something, and slightly harder to spend by accident.

Don't keep at home: anything beyond that buffer. Money with a horizon longer than a year or two belongs somewhere it compounds. Cash at home is guaranteed to lose to inflation, and for 46% of the people holding it, that describes most of their savings.

The Bottom Line

Eighty-one percent of working South Africans say they have a savings goal. Forty-four percent say they save consistently. The intent is genuinely there.

But 64% are routing that intent into the one place where money is mathematically certain to shrink — and it's rising fastest among high earners and under-30s, the two groups with the most to lose from a decade of it.

The reasons aren't stupid. Convenience, safety, fees and low interest are all real considerations, and most people have weighed them honestly. They've just weighed them against a low-interest savings account rather than against a tax-free investment account, and that single missing comparison is worth hundreds of thousands of rand over a working life.

Your Next Step

1. Count what you're actually holding at home. Most people underestimate it.
2. Decide your emergency buffer: one to three months of essential expenses. That much is legitimate — move it to an accessible interest-bearing account where it's insured and earning.
3. Take everything above that buffer and open a TFSA with it. You can start from R50 a month.
4. Compare the real numbers for your own situation: the bank fees you're avoiding against the inflation you're absorbing. Write both down.
5. Put it in one diversified low-cost ETF and automate a monthly contribution.
6. Check the total expense ratio before you choose. On a long horizon it matters more than almost anything else you control.

Statistics in this article are from the Old Mutual Savings and Investment Monitor 2026, an annual survey of 1,519 employed South Africans aged 18 to 65 earning R8,000 or more per month, with fieldwork conducted in April 2026. Investment projections assume a 10% average annual return compounded monthly, a long-term historical assumption for diversified equity, not a guarantee. Inflation projections assume 5.5% per year. Deposit insurance and fee details should be confirmed with your provider.