Keep Your Eyes on Your Money by Debbie Norrell

While commentating fashion shows I often used the phrase that there is nothing new under the sun, everything old is new again. In short you will rarely find something in fashion that is brand new. If you research fashion or just about anything you will find out it was done before in some format. Lately I have been hearing about something called a “Sou Sou.”

A sou-sou (also spelled sou sou, su-su or susu) is an informal rotating savings club, where a group of people get together and contribute an equal amount of money into a fund weekly, biweekly or monthly. The total pool, also known as a hand, is then paid to one member of the club on a previously agreed-on schedule. The pool rotates until all members have received their share. Everyone agrees on how much and how often they want to contribute. If ten members are contributing $100 a week, each week a member will receive a $1,000 hand or cash lump sum. The cycle begins again after ten weeks. Any member who can afford it, can also double their contribution and get paid two hands in one cycle.

This is according to an Essence article from 2017. So it isn’t new. I remember doing a talk show about the same type of “savings club” back in 1995 and I believe it was called a Kai, and it was primarily an Asian form of savings however the method was the same. It all sounds so simple doesn’t it? Until you get that person or persons in the group that put in their money, get their money and then go ghost. I say the best thing to do if you want to save a certain amount of money is to save it on your own and your own terms.

Email the columnist at debbienorrell@aol.com

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