The Broke Friend Who Outsaves You

We all know one. The friend earning half your salary yet somehow managing to travel, stay debt free, and build real savings. It feels unfair until you realise it is not luck. It is behaviour.

South Africa’s savings culture remains among the weakest in the world. Research from the Expert Journal of Finance found that 72% of South African adults do not save regularly. Another survey done by Momentum and the University of South Africa (Unisa) showed a similar pattern.

The Momentum and Unisa survey showed that among financially stable households, only about half work from a written budget, and barely a third keep both a budget and detailed spending records. The problem is not income. It is structure.

A higher salary does not fix the issue. It usually just raises the baseline for consumption and makes overspending feel justified. The so-called broke friend succeeds because saving is not an afterthought. It is a built-in reflex. Where high earners rationalise every new expense, the saver locks in routine. They live beneath their means, automate savings before they spend, and resist lifestyle inflation.

Over time, the compounding effect of small consistency beats the volatility of high income. This is not a morality tale about being frugal. It is a lesson in agency. The data makes one point relentlessly clear. Wealth grows from habits, not windfalls.

The broke friend is not secretly rich. They have simply mastered the oldest financial truth out there. What you keep matters more than what you make.