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In this episode of Ghost Stories, The Finance Ghost is joined by Colleen Wagner, CFO of Satrix, to unpack the concept of decision fatigue and why it so often causes long-term financial goals to fall to the bottom of the priority list.

The conversation also explores the disproportionate burden many women carry in managing households and caregiving responsibilities, and how this translates into retirement outcomes. Colleen shares practical strategies for breaking the cycle, including automation, goal-setting and simplifying investment decisions.

The episode is ultimately a reminder that successful retirement planning doesn’t require perfection or expertise. Instead, it needs consistent, manageable actions that can quietly work in the background while life carries on.

In this episode:

• What decision fatigue is and why modern life makes it so difficult to focus on long-term financial goals.
• The link between mental load, caregiving responsibilities and poorer retirement outcomes for women.
• Why small, consistent actions can be more effective than attempting a complete financial overhaul.
• The role of financial advisors in reducing uncertainty and creating structure around major financial decisions.
• How ETFs and automated investing can help simplify wealth creation and reduce investment-related stress.

This podcast was first published here

Transcript:

The Finance Ghost: Welcome to this episode of the Ghost Stories podcast. Today we are talking about decision fatigue. This feels very personal right now as someone who is tired, I’ve got to tell you. 

Day-to-day demands of school WhatsApp groups and apps, endless emails, the always-online expectations of work, that friend group you keep meaning to reply to (frankly, that friend you keep meaning to reply to) and that message from your mom you haven’t gotten to in two days as well.  

Now, layer on everything from what clothes to wear through to remembering to wish someone happy birthday and, frankly, you have a brain that is being assaulted from all angles at the moment, no matter how smart or how professional you are or what fancy job you’re in. In fact, I think if you’re in one of those jobs, it’s even worse.  

What tends to fall over in this case?

Well, as Satrix has highlighted to me, something that very quickly becomes a victim of this crazy modern world is your retirement goals. The challenge of just getting through each day can have quite painful long-term effects on not just your physical health, but your financial health as well. 

To further set the scene and bring us lots of insight into this topic, I’m welcoming a new voice from Satrix, which is very exciting: Colleen Wagner, the CFO of Satrix. She’s joining me to talk today about this concept of decision fatigue and how it affects our retirement savings.  

I’m going to quote a stat here that Colleen shared with me ahead of this. It’s from the DebtBusters Money-Stress Tracker in 2026 – women reported their highest financial stress levels in five years (so, that is since, basically, the middle of COVID), with close to three out of four women reporting financial stress.  

Now, we’ve been celebrating the women in our lives this month, but they are going through a lot. I really am not sure that it’s much easier for men either these days, especially ones with kids, because they’ve taken on much more of a role with the kids than in generations gone by.  

It’s a wild time to be an adult, Colleen, so thank you for taking time out of your stressful schedule to do the show with me. It’s lovely to have you here. 

Colleen Wagner: Thank you for having me, Ghost, and I couldn’t agree more. It is a wild time to be an adult. 

The Finance Ghost: No, it really is. It’s not called ‘adulting’ for nothing, as a terrifying verb. As a starting point, please walk us through how these multiple roles we play in our daily lives directly lead to this concept of ‘decision fatigue’ that you’ve brought to the fore. 

Colleen Wagner: I think an important starting point is that decision-making doesn’t happen in isolation. It accumulates throughout the day. Most of us are making countless micro-decisions before we even get to the bigger financial decisions that require proper thought and attention.  

 And the decisions that you’re making relate to family logistics, school admin, work priorities, household finances, caregiving responsibilities, and of course, social commitments, and everything else that sits in the background of your daily life. 

The mental load is not only about doing the tasks. It’s also about remembering what needs to happen for all of those decisions – anticipating what could go wrong, planning around everybody else’s needs, and being the co-ordinator for all the moving parts. This is mentally exhausting.

Even when others can’t see what you’re doing, there’s this constant stream happening in the background of your life, so by the time you get to your long-term financial decisions, there’s no bandwidth left for that.

Things like retirement planning, increasing contributions, reviewing investments – they fall by the wayside because it feels like it’s not as urgent as your current day-to-day decisions. And when you do get to those decisions, it’s not that you make bad decisions, it’s just that your decision is delayed.

The Finance Ghost: Yeah, it’s a funny thing, right? I think back to being a teenager and all I wanted was a smartphone. Now, at the ripe old age of 38, all I want to do is be able to get rid of my smartphone. Sheer bliss for me would be to just get rid of my phone for a week and not have it actually bother anyone. And it’s because we are just assaulted by all these things, right?  

As you said there: co-ordinating all the moving parts. I think that’s exactly how daily life goes, and it’s difficult. And I think we can all acknowledge that women, on average, do play a huge role in the co-ordination of our general daily lives, our household affairs. And yet, according to the 2025 Sanlam Financial Confidence Index, women are 21% behind men in reaching their retirement goals. And that’s a really big gap. And that’s a gap that compounds, which is also concerning.  

Do you believe that at least part of this impact is the disproportionate daily toll that women are perhaps carrying, versus men? Again, on average. There are always going to be exceptions. This is an averages game. That’s how statistics work. 

Do you think that’s having an impact on the retirement savings of women? 

Colleen Wagner: I think there’s a very real connection there, Ghost. The evidence increasingly suggests that the mental load women carry every day has long-term financial consequences.  

I think it’s important to note up front that it’s not a question of whether women are capable investors, because in many households they are already deeply involved in managing day-to-day finances and making important financial decisions.  

The issue is that this responsibility and that pressure and constant co-ordination make it much harder to prioritise long-term retirement planning. 

And in South Africa, the stats show that women carry a disproportionate share of household and caregiving responsibilities. The Stats SA General Household Survey 2021 showed that more than 40% of children live only with their mothers, compared to about 4% that live only with their fathers. 

And the practical financial implications are that women have greater childcare responsibilities, higher household expenditure, more career interruptions, and very often less room to actually save consistently for retirement. 

And as you mentioned earlier, this also shows up in the pressure that women experience in terms of how they use their retirement savings. The research shows that women are 1.3 times more likely than men to withdraw from their retirement savings under the two-pot retirement system and 80% more likely to use those withdrawals for school fees.  

This also tells us that women are often using their long-term savings to solve immediate household needs, which is completely understandable in the moment. But every withdrawal reduces the amount that can compound over time. 

The Finance Ghost: Yeah, it’s such an indictment on society in so many ways. I like to think that there are no deadbeat dads listening to anything that I do, because I think that this is a financially savvy audience who understand responsibility. But this is a reality facing South African women. It really is.  

I think the other thing that is worth mentioning around the disproportionate load is that – particularly young kids and preschoolers, and this is my lived experience – it doesn’t matter how involved you are as a dad. We can convince ourselves of everything we want to try and convince ourselves of, but the reality is that a three-year-old and a four-year-old want mommy more than they want daddy. They just do. It’s one of those things. And it creates an additional source of decision fatigue.  

Obviously, this balances out as kids grow up, but I think it’s a time in our lives that’s so difficult. You’re in your 30s (maybe even early 40s, on average). You’re upwardly mobile in your career. You’ve got preschool kids. It’s a time where it’s absolute crunch time for your career and everything else. And that’s the exact moment these days where we have children running around who need an enormous amount of time from us, as opposed to back in the day when our parents were having us in their early to mid-20s.  

By the time my parents were late 30s, we were in high school (well not in my case, but still). And it’s just a completely different life now, a completely different time to be carrying all the strain. 

Plus, today, unless you have a dual-income household… good luck! Whereas back then, you could get away with a single-income household or a primary income / secondary income household. These days, if you want your kids to go to the good schools, etcetera, chances are very good that both of you are working.  

And that just talks to those points you raised around two-pot withdrawals and using that money for school fees. I mean, this is retirement money going into school fees, so it’s tough out there. There’s a huge daily load.  

And I think you’re seeing it come through in the birth rate, right? You’re seeing fewer people have children. If I look at my own peer group as well, people are just too scared to take on this responsibility because it’s a huge amount of time and it’s a huge amount of money. I’m guessing you’ve probably seen some of that in your peer group as well? 

Colleen Wagner: Absolutely. I think in my peer group, the average age of having kids is so much later than our parents, because it is so expensive to have a child. It’s not a decision that you can make lightly because you do have to think about school fees and supporting someone for at least 18 years, if not longer.  

And again, it seems counterintuitive that you withdraw your retirement savings to pay for school fees (the long-term effects of which can be quite detrimental to your retirement), but in the moment, when you need that money, it makes absolute sense because retirement is a decision that is happening in 10, 15, 20, 30 years. 

The Finance Ghost: Of course, all we’re doing is the stress is just flowing down through the family, right?  

Colleen Wagner: Yes. 

The Finance Ghost: So, we withdraw from retirement savings to help our children today. But there’s almost this implicit social contract of like, “Well, one day, when I’m much older, then you’re going to need to help me.” And then the birth-rate issues just compound because then our children can’t afford to have their own children because they’re too busy looking after their parents.  

So, there’s a hard thing going on out there that I think people are not talking about quite enough and it all adds to stress. And this is the exact point, right?  

You’ve got your daily life, you’ve got your money concerns, you’ve got your impact on your health from these things, which then drives additional fatigue, which I think makes you even less likely to get it right around retirement savings and believing in, frankly, just being around 30 or 40 years from now, let alone thinking, “What will my quality of life actually be?” It’s a tough time and there’s a spiral going on here. I think a lot of people get caught in it and it can be very damaging and very dangerous.  

But I know you’ve got some practical steps here that people can actually put in place to just try to break that tailspin and start to at least level out and get back to where they want to be getting to. 

Colleen Wagner: I think, Ghost, people think they need a complete financial overhaul to get out of that financial stress cycle, but in reality, the opposite is true. Momentum starts with small, manageable actions.  

And if I can break it down into five frameworks or principles, I’d start with reducing friction. Make the next step as easy as possible. That could mean simplifying your accounts, choosing fewer but clearer investment options or deciding in advance what your first action will be.  

Then the next one is to automate where possible, and I can’t emphasise this enough. It takes away the pressure of having to make a decision every month. If you decide upfront what you’re going to be doing, what you’re going to be investing, and where you’re going to be investing, and automate that, then it’s one less decision that you need to make on a daily basis. 

Set clear and realistic goals. If a goal is too vague, it can actually be overwhelming. It adds to your stress. But if a goal is specific – it’s a set amount that you’re going to contribute to a certain savings plan or investment – it’s easy to track and it’s easy to stick to.  

I would also say schedule regular financial reviews and stick to those reviews, because it also means that your retirement planning doesn’t fall to the bottom of your to-do list. And it avoids the pressure of having to make decisions about this every day, because you decide once a year or twice a year what you’re going to be doing, in terms of retirement planning or investment saving.  

And then I think the last point is to use advice and trusted frameworks. You don’t need to make your financial decisions in isolation. There are advisors and trusted experts that you can use, and this will reduce the uncertainty around making these decisions and providing structure.  

For me, it all speaks to the fact that small actions matter. So, progress creates confidence and confidence creates action. And then you’re in a sort of positive cycle, in terms of addressing financial stress. 

The Finance Ghost: Yeah, some really great stuff coming through there. I think something else that I find very helpful is to just write things down. I know it sounds ridiculous but just write them down, because now it’s out of your head.

This concept of ‘headspace’ is an enormous thing. We hold in so much all the time that we have to try to remember, then we forget things, and then we feel even worse about that. That’s where the spiral really comes in. And it’s amazing how just having that good, old-fashioned to-do list makes a huge difference.

Personally, I like actually writing it out. Well, I say that. I should do that. Sometimes, it’s just a reminder in my Outlook.

In fact, my all-time low, which I remember my wife laughing at a lot because it was very funny, was I had a particular Thursday in my calendar in Outlook and at 8am I’d written, as a diary entry, “Thursday, 8am”. Helpful, right?  

So, I obviously wanted to put something there. But what I ended up writing in the Thursday 8am slot was “Thursday, 8am”. Great reminder, very useful. Really helped me understand what I needed to do in that moment.  

So, that’s how your life can end up going. It’s the senior citizen problems that we joke about. You lose your glasses, you lose your wallet, you write things like “8am Thursday” in your diary, and it’s because you’re just overwhelmed and you’ve got to get it under control. It’s so difficult, right? 

Colleen Wagner: If you think about your diary, you’ve got your work meetings in your diary because those are important and things that you cannot miss. So, why wouldn’t you have things like “review financial plan” or “set up debit order” or things that are important to your financial well-being? Why not put that in your diary as well, or on your to-do list? 

The Finance Ghost: Just do a better job than me. Don’t write the date and time as the date and time. You have to do better than that if you’re going to write reminders. 

Colleen Wagner: [laughing] 

The Finance Ghost: Let’s move on to some of the financial stress that has a longer-term flavour to it, as opposed to the day-to-day stuff – managing budgets and that kind of thing. In my experience, I think women tend to be all over that. Honestly, I just think on average you guys are way more organised than us men and just on top of it and stick to plans and all those kinds of things, which is amazing.  

And research does seem to suggest that. St James’s Place in the UK, their research found that 84% of women are involved in household finances. And the reason why that stat is relevant is because the same research then showed that only 34% of women lead investment decisions.  

So, they are very, very involved in the day-to-day of how the house is run, but then only a third of them, roughly, take the lead on the investment decisions. And that obviously leads directly to a conversation around retirement saving. 

Now in the modern world, where pretty much everyone is working and the gender pay gap is (hopefully, at least) closing a lot – I mean, I don’t know, I’m probably the wrong person to ask. I don’t even work in corporate anymore, but I like to think that these issues are starting to fall behind us. It feels like there should be equilibrium, then, in taking the lead on investment decisions. There’s no logical reason why it should be male dominated.  

So, how do you believe that equilibrium can be achieved in that space over time? How can more women feel empowered to actually play a major role here in the long-term thinking, not just keeping the lights on every week and making sure that the household doesn’t collapse? 

Colleen Wagner: So, Ghost, I think this is extremely important because research shows that women’s life expectancy is longer than men’s. A healthy 65-year-old woman is going to outlive a healthy 65-year-old man by approximately two years. And in practical terms, women are retiring with less money, but they need that money to last longer. 

Therefore, retirement investing isn’t optional or secondary; it’s central to long-term financial independence. 

And I think the way to get equilibrium in financial planning is to normalise women as long-term investors so they’re not just household budget managers. Because women also demonstrate investor behaviours that are associated with success: patience, discipline, goal orientation, long-term thinking and a willingness to seek advice. 

Another important point is that, very often, people think that in order to invest, they need to be experts before they participate. In reality, you don’t need to be an expert. Confidence will follow action, so the more you act, the more confident you will be. 

This is also why investment conversations need to be less intimidating. We need to move away from jargon-heavy discussions and focus on clear questions. What am I investing for? How long do I have? How much do I contribute? What level of risk am I willing to accept? 

This also feeds into education, because education is a key confidence builder. Knowledge reduces uncertainty, and very often uncertainty is one of the major factors that feeds into the inertia related to decision fatigue. So, long-term investing should be viewed as an act of self-care and financial independence as opposed to something secondary or something that you will get to “when you have the time”. 

The Finance Ghost: Can’t possibly put it better myself. I love the self-care reference there. I think that’s so important. I also love the point around not needing to be an expert, because you don’t need to be an expert.  

 You can go and find any of the research you like, go and listen to some of the podcasts I’ve had with experts, even from the Satrix team. Kingsley, Nico, Siya, Duma – they’ll all give you much the same message, which is to say that over the long term, the stats show us that participating in the market is going to give you the best long-term returns.

It might give you some short-term volatility (or, it will give you some short-term volatility), and it might not look the best over six months or one year (or even three years, if you get unlucky with the cycle), but long-term diversified equities work, and that is where you don’t need to be an expert. You just need to be consistent and believe that what you are doing today is going to be worth it in 10, 20, 30 years’ time.  

And of course, using things that exist, the structures that are out there. Like a tax-free savings account, which is a very rare example of a free lunch. If ever there was a free lunch – I know Kingsley always says, “There’s no such thing as a free lunch,” – but if ever there was one, then it’s got to be the tax-free savings account.  

It’s literally a gift from government to say, “Hey, max this out every year and never pay tax on anything you earn in this account.” That is my go-to every year, to first get the tax-free savings account done and then worry about what to do with the rest.  

So, there are some just really good rules of thumb out there that you can use. Plus, of course, speaking to a financial advisor is very important because it brings some much-needed structure to the conversation and it frees up headspace, which as we’ve discussed is actually something very important.  

From your perspective, Colleen, how do you see the importance of financial advisors and the roles that they play? 

Colleen Wagner: Advisors play a very important role, Ghost, because they turn an overwhelming topic into a structured conversation. When you’re already carrying a lot of mental load, the value of advice is not only the technical stuff. It’s also about creating clarity, narrowing your options, and helping you make a decision in the right order.  

An advisor can help you prioritise your goals, understand the trade-offs, and set up a disciplined plan that you can then commit to even when markets are volatile. I think that matters because uncertainty, again, is one of the biggest drivers of decision fatigue. 

The Finance Ghost: Absolutely. Let’s finish off with a point around ETFs, because this, of course, is the Satrix bread and butter. It’s what you are known for. In fact, you basically created this market in South Africa – we’ve had some good chats before on the show about the history of ETFs here. 

They really are a handy solution. There are ways to invest in them with small amounts consistently every month, which sounds like it ties up with the financial plan and the sort of advice you were giving there around how to just break the spiral.  

And there’s obviously SatrixNOW, which makes it nice and easy, but there are a number of different ways to invest as well. So, just give us an idea of how the Satrix product suite can actually reduce the mental load here.  

And let me just say, very authentically, I firmly believe that something like exchange-traded funds would be a really smart way for the majority of people to participate in the market. I think when you’re going to go down the route of stock picking and trying to be clever, you’re adding to your mental load. You’re not taking it away. You’re choosing to make it a hobby or something you want to really get good at.  

And that’s wonderful, and I love you for it, because it means you’re probably reading Ghost Mail and learning about stocks, but it’s not for everyone. Whereas I think this is a really smart way for people to just get their retirement savings on the right path. 

Colleen Wagner: Absolutely. As you said, ETFs simplify access to investing. So, instead of trying to choose individual shares, one ETF can give you exposure to a basket of securities or a particular market, or even global access. 

This gives investors diversification, transparency, and cost efficiency in a way that’s easy to understand and easy to implement. And when you’re already stretched, simplicity is very important. It reduces that sense that investing has to be complicated before you can participate. 

It also means that you can build a repeatable habit – so, again, it reduces your decision fatigue. You decide, once where you’re investing, what you’re doing, how much you’re investing, and that’s it. 

And at Satrix, our philosophy has always been about democratising investing and reducing barriers to participation. SatrixNOW allows you to invest very, very minimal amounts into a range of local and global ETFs. It allows you to automate your contributions and this means you can build your wealth gradually over time. 

The overall point is that we don’t want to add another task to someone’s already busy life. We want to make investing something that can happen consistently in the background and with a plan that’s simple enough to stick with. 

The Finance Ghost: All of that sounds incredibly sensible, I must say. 

Colleen, thank you so much for your time today. And to everyone out there listening to this who feels like they are spiralling, you are not alone at all. I mean, I’ve had to make some pretty big changes to Ghost Mail lately to just get my own life to a place where I feel like I have a chance of actually watching my children grow up. Because honestly, it was just impossible.  

And if you’re trying to do this on hard mode with young kids and a career, or your own business, or whatever the case is, just stay the course. And wherever you can reduce mental load, just reduce it. Try to simplify where you can. Write things down. It’s hard. It’s really hard. You’re not alone. I feel it all the time. Colleen, I suspect you do as well. 

I guess that’s the message today, really. In all the noise and in the storm, just try to remember there’s a 20-, 30-, 40-year (hopefully) horizon and you do need to just try to be consistent and put the small steps in place today that are going to make your future self thank you in a big way. So, that’s the message today.  

And please do check out the Satrix platform and all the ETFs there. Speak to your financial advisor, as always. Colleen, thank you very, very much for all of the insights today, some really cool stats, and for your time, of course. 

Colleen Wagner: Thank you very much for having me, Ghost.  

Disclaimer:

Satrix Investments (Pty) Ltd is an approved financial service provider in terms of the Financial Advisory and Intermediary Services Act, No 37 of 2002 (“FAIS”). The information above does not constitute financial advice in term of FAIS.

Satrix Managers (RF) (Pty) Ltd a registered and approved Manager in Collective Investment Schemes in Securities. Collective investment schemes are generally medium- to long-term investments. With Unit Trusts, Exchange Traded Funds (ETFs) and Actively managed ETFs (AMETFs) the investor essentially owns a “proportionate share” (in proportion to the participatory interest held in the fund) of the underlying investments held by the fund. With Unit Trusts, the investor holds participatory units issued by the fund while in the case of an ETFs and AMETFs, the participatory interest, while issued by the fund, comprises a listed security traded on the stock exchange.  ETFs and AMETF are registered as a Collective Investment and can be traded by any stockbroker on the stock exchange, LISP platforms and or via online trading platforms. ETFs and AMETFs may incur additional costs due to it being listed on the JSE. Past performance is not necessarily a guide to future performance, and the value of investments / units may go up or down. A schedule of fees and charges, and maximum commissions are available on the Minimum Disclosure Document or upon request from the Manager. Collective investments are traded at ruling prices and can engage in borrowing and scrip lending. Should the respective portfolio engage in scrip lending, the utility percentage and related counterparties can be viewed on the ETF and AMETF Minimum Disclosure Document. The index, the applicable tracking error and the portfolio performance relative to the index can be viewed on the ETF and AMETF Minimum Disclosure Document.

Performance is based on NAV to NAV calculations with income reinvestments done on the ex-div date. Performance is calculated for the portfolio and the individual investor performance may differ as a result of initial fees, actual investment date, date of reinvestment and dividend withholding tax. Some funds may hold assets in foreign countries and could be exposed to risks such as potential constraints on liquidity and the repatriation of funds, macroeconomic, political, foreign exchange, tax risks, settlement risks and potential limitations on the availability of market information.

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