In this week’s episode of the Property Magicians Podcast, we talk to Palesa Lengolo, a finance professional with over ten years of experience in investments, banking and accounting.   She’s also an author of a book called ‘Stokvels - How they can make your money work for you' and told us that the stokvel industry is a R50 billion (US$3 billion) in South Africa.   She grew up seeing her mom being part of stokvels. She became interested in stokvels when she started working for a pension fund company and learned about investing; she realized that the way the pension funds were working was very similar to stokvels.    The first stokvel she was part of was non-monetary - for funerals, where the members would provide food for funerals, eventually the stokvel evolved and members started sending money.   Her mom then joined a stokvel that evolved into a lending stokvel, where they loaned money to teachers and postman for 30%.    Her work with pension funds led her to connecting with other stokvels at the Stokvel Academy and she asked them if they were interested in investing.   She then volunteered to work with the Stokvel Academy and to teach them about investing and creating financial freedom. She then started doing research on stokvels and property stokvels instantly popped up.   She shares that there are 4 ways of making money in property stokvels: Trust - setting up a trust and investing in assets Fund property deals or be an equity partner in property deals Form a Pty and buy properties under a Pty and the members are shareholders under a Pty Bond - where the stokvel members are paying each other’s bonds     In this podcast Palesa also talks to us about the importance of trusts and structuring within stokvels and explains that as a group you need to have a clear goal for your stokvel.