At the end of 2016 I took occupation of a shiny new apartment, which I bought off-plan from a developer. R85 000 is what departed from me almost a year before that as a deposit. I was young, 25 in fact, 85 000 was a lot of money for me. It was the majority of what I had saved up for the past 25 years of my life. I didn’t know it at the time, but I was taking a big risk. I wasn’t familiar with the area I was buying in, other than what I had learnt from working down the road for the past two years. I never had to pay rent for the past 25 years, and my salary at the time although qualifying me fo ..read more

When a market experiences a correction or a collapse, news and events create a chain reaction of investors selling their investments to limit future loses. This doesn’t mean that their money is lost forever, and the remainder of their lifetime will be spent trying to recoup their loses, but the evidence shows that selling in a time of crisis generally hurts your chances of an easy recovery. Timing the market is generally a terrible idea. The market often rebounds when no one expects it and does so in volatile swings that cause you to question whether it is the start of a rally or just some mor ..read more

Because much of the news we hear is exception cases, such as stories of how an investor made a fortune in a mid-2000 IPO, or a Reddit forum giving a select bunch of novice investors information to achieve unbelievable returns overnight. We are often tempted to skip all the groundwork and create investment strategies that we feel will kick-start our journey in a similar fashion. Most of the retail traders buying holdings in cryptocurrency today is based on this same thought process. There are a lot of emotions at play with an investment strategy based on fear-of-missing-out. This type of “inves ..read more

The practicality of how people fund their living expenses after they are no longer working is not often expressed openly. Maybe it's due to the sad fact that many people can’t afford to take any form of a backward step in their income levels when they reach retirement age. Most of the narrative around funding retirement is advertised by life insurance companies focusing on purchasing living/guaranteed annuities using your retirement fund products. They provide you with calculators which assume that your only means of retirement is what is saved in your retirement annuity or pension fund. The r ..read more

With the year in context, the opportunity just to be alive today gives me reason to be happy. I am lucky that I can look back on the last year with the most memorable experiences of my life to date. I got engaged (Jan), worked from home (Mar-present), conceived a child (May), got married (June), finished a post-graduate degree (July), improved our home (Aug/Sep), completed 13 peaks (Dec), had the best year in my career, and grew my net worth by a record value. In certain ways I feel guilty for having a list of positives when thinking back on the year. I had some failings too. After being cauti ..read more

Investing is a long-term commitment and in these times a non-negotiable to ensure that you can live comfortably and build wealth to the benefit of your family. In this article, I want to talk about one of the most important choices involved your investment decision-making process, and that is how you structure your investment portfolio based on location. Our natural biases Everything which leads us up to this point in our lives has gradually built up our unique perspectives of the world. These unique perspectives build up biases in our mind which play out in every way in which we live and make ..read more

Life is not easy for millions of people right now. The nationwide lockdown has hit the pause button on many households income. It’s a difficult and unprecedented time for our financial positions. In a time where the income of so many has come to a screeching halt, it is useful to use this time to focus on improving areas which are under your control. Tough times spark action, and if you are in a position where your finances have been severely affected, this is a good time to improve your understanding of your financial makeup and to set up a plan for how you are going to bounce back from this ..read more

Mistakes, we all make them. We get that little bit too impulsive and somehow end up with something we really don’t need. We get enticed by that cool looking car and convince ourselves that we can afford to pay that repayment back every month. We are all human. Some mistakes are more costly than others (especially those that involve borrowing money) but the most important thing about making a mistake is that we try and teach ourselves something from it. Mistakes are tough, they drive feelings of regret and tend to lead towards avoidance rather than dealing with the mistake. Lessons may not show ..read more

I often get asked what Exchange-Traded Funds (ETF’s) I recommend for investing, and sadly I think the answer bores most people. You see, we tend to think that investing is something that only rich people do. We think they are putting their money in fancy investments we have never heard of. We think complexity means dollar signs and simple means average. I want to suggest the opposite to you. Long-term investing is not something that you should be thinking about every night, it’s a process that happens incrementally over decades. And because of this, whatever you decide to invest in (this appli ..read more

You know when you read those financial articles and they say blah blah blah your financial plan blah blah blah? Well every time I have read those words I have thought to myself “right my financial plan”… “I know what that is right”… “I sorta know it in my head”. Well I have been one of those people writing personal finance content saying you need to know your financial plan, you need to understand your financial plan, you at the very least should have a financial plan! I didn’t have one… Well not really, it was sprinkled across many spreadsheets (my budget, my balance sheet, other planning sor ..read more