National Savings Month: How to Invest in Your Domestic Worker’s Financial Future

Every July, National Savings Month arrives with the same familiar invitation: look at your finances, tighten your budget, plan for your future. We revisit spending habits, download budgeting apps, and make quiet promises to ourselves about the months ahead. There is nothing wrong with any of that.

But this year, I found myself sitting with a different question. As someone who employs a domestic worker and has spent years working in the nanny employment space, I started to wonder: when we talk about financial wellbeing this month, are we only thinking about ourselves?

The Stories I Cannot Stop Thinking About

In 2022, during a difficult season when I was between jobs, I spent a lot of time with my grandmother. She had worked as a domestic worker herself, and she had friends who had spent entire careers in private households. She would share their stories over long afternoons, and many of those stories have stayed with me.

One friend’s employer built her a house. Another’s employer paid for all her children’s school fees. Those children are now adults with careers, financial independence, and a completely different life trajectory than the one they were born into. My sister has a friend whose mother worked as a domestic worker, and that employer’s contribution to her education permanently changed the direction of her family’s life. And I know a man whose mother passed away while working for a family. That family adopted him as their own. Decades later, they still support him. He is doing incredibly well.

My grandmother told these stories with warmth and quiet gratitude. But what struck me was not how wealthy those employers were. It was how intentional they were. They decided, at some point, to think beyond the transaction.

That is what I want to talk about this July.

A Financial Conversation We Are Not Having

National Savings Month is an annual awareness campaign run by the South African Savings Institute to promote financial education and build a savings culture across the country. But this conversation rarely reaches the people who need it most. According to the 2024 SweepSouth Report on Pay and Working Conditions for Domestic Workers, 75% of domestic workers surveyed are unable to save money monthly. For many, this is not just a statistic. It is a lived reality shaped, in large part, by the conditions of their employment.

As a nanny employer, you are part of your domestic worker’s financial ecosystem, whether you think about it that way or not. The question is not whether you influence her financial well-being. You do. The question is whether you are using that influence intentionally.

Wealth Is Not Only Money

When I raise this topic, people often assume I am talking about grand gestures. I am not. I am talking about a shift in perspective, because wealth is not only money.

Wealth is also stability. When a domestic worker receives her salary on the same date every month, without delays or excuses, she can plan, save, and budget properly. Predictable income is one of the most foundational building blocks of financial security. As her employer, you are in complete control of whether she has it or not.

Wealth is also an opportunity. In 2017, I was pregnant and going through a difficult season in my marriage that had affected our finances. Our nanny came to me asking for an increase that, at that point, I genuinely could not afford in full. My older daughter was three years old and attending daycare during the day, which meant that for a few hours, two days a week, our nanny had very little to do. So, instead of simply saying no to her request, I found a solution that worked for both of us. I spoke to neighbours in our complex and arranged for her to do their laundry during those quiet hours. By the end of the month, she was earning over a thousand rand more than she had been. That was significantly more than the increase she had originally asked for, and it came from me releasing her to use her own time and skills to earn it. When our baby arrived, we increased her salary again. But that arrangement in the meantime was not charity. It was creative leadership. And it changed something in our working relationship. She knew I was on her side.

Not every family can offer this kind of arrangement. It depends on your circumstances and your nanny’s schedule. However, it is worth asking: are there hours in your nanny’s day that are quiet, particularly when children are at school, that could be released for her to earn elsewhere? Sometimes the most valuable thing you can give someone is not money. It is time and access.

Wealth is also skills and development. Investing in a short course, whether in early childhood development, first aid, or basic digital literacy, increases what your domestic worker is worth in the labour market long after she has worked in your household. That investment not only benefits you while she is with you; it benefits her for the rest of her working life.

Wealth is also a record of employment. A properly written reference letter, one that reflects her actual skills and character, is a form of social capital. It opens doors and gives her dignity in future job searches.

Wealth is a healthy working environment. When someone works in a space where they feel respected, communicated with clearly, and treated as a professional, their mental and emotional health improves. And when a person’s mental and emotional health is stable, every other part of their life is affected: how they parent their own children, how they manage money, how they plan for their future. Creating a dignified, respectful working environment does not cost money. It costs intention.

One Action This Savings Month

You do not have to do everything. I do, however, want to challenge every nanny employer to choose one intentional action this July.

If you are not yet doing so, start paying her salary on the same date every month, without exception. If there is a course or skill that would benefit her, look into what that costs. If you know her role may change in the coming years, start thinking about how you will support her transition. And if your household has quiet hours during the week when the children are at school, ask yourself whether there is an opportunity there for her to earn beyond what you pay.

Whatever you choose, start the conversation. Ask what she is saving towards. Ask whether there is a skill she has always wanted to develop. You do not need to be her financial advisor. But asking the question changes the nature of the relationship.

Things to Ponder This Savings Month

In what ways are you, as her employer, contributing to or limiting your domestic worker’s financial stability?

Is there something creative, beyond money, that you could offer her this month?

If someone were to tell her story twenty years from now, what role would you want to have played in it?

The families in my grandmother’s stories did not set out to build legacies. They simply decided, at some point, to see the people working in their homes as human beings with futures worth caring about. Decades later, those quiet decisions are still echoing through generations.

What will yours echo?

Reference:

SweepSouth, 7th Annual Report on Pay and Working Conditions for Domestic Workers (2024): sweepsouth.com/blog/7th-annual-domestic-workers-report-on-pay-and-working-conditions-for-domestic-workers-in-south-africa/