The Ultimate Retirement Annuity Guide

Get some coin! 

*Updated - September 2021

We all hope to have enough money to pay for our monthly expenses (and some extra for fun stuff of course) once we hit retirement. No one wants to eat dog food 3 times a day. Except your dog of course. But I digress...

Retirement Annuities are one of a number of different products designed for the sole purpose of helping you achieve financial freedom in retirement.

Could The Tax Penalty For Exceeding Your TFSA Limits Be Worth It?

Is it possible to score from a TFSA
penalty? 

Those of you with TFSA accounts should be familiar with the annual and lifetime limits which apply. As it stands, there are severe penalties for contributing more than R36,000 to your TFSA in a single tax year, and more than R500,000 over your lifetime.

In other words, you are allowed to exceed the limits, but SARS will bring out their big, 40% stick.

How To Calculate Real Returns (For Real)

Real returns - better than fake ones. 

We need to get real. Realistically speaking, as much as we would really like to keep all of the return our investments generate, the reality is inflation secretly steals some of that return.

Okay that was really bad! Doh! Oops, I did it again!

Right, let’s try that again…

Is Mirror Trading International (MTI) A Scam?

The Egyptians would be so
disappointed! 

With the extremely tough economy we find ourselves in, and the ever increasing number of retrenchments and pay cuts, many people are looking for other ways to generate an income. I honestly cannot blame them – loss of income (or even reduced income) doesn’t mean the bills follow suit.

Unfortunately for these people, their eagerness to try earn additional money makes them vulnerable to getting scammed. Something that has been doing the rounds lately is by a company called Mirror Trading International or MTI.

University Education For R500/Month

Cheques and balances

Those of you who have stuck it out and put up with my ramblings over the last 4 years may remember an article I did back in 2016 which covered how we were planning on investing for our son’s University education.

The cost of Tertiary education is something that scares me almost as much as how fast University related expenses are escalating each year, and so I wanted to start putting money away towards this expense as soon as possible. So I set up an account pretty much the month he was born.

Investing A Lumpsum - All At Once Or Over Time?

Tipping the scale in your
favour. 

It’s a question I get pretty often – I have a lump sum to invest, should I invest it all at once, or phase it in over time?

It’s another one of those questions which I love because there isn’t really a wrong answer! Either way you are getting money into the market, and with a long term view this can only be a good thing!

The Cash Glide

Gliding to safety 

Common thinking on the street is that, as you get closer to your retirement date, you should de-risk your portfolio by reducing your allocation to Equities, and have more of it in safer stuff like Cash and Bonds.

And that thinking is pretty solid – imagine working for all of 40 years and then, just as you are about to retire, the market pulls a Covid-19 on you wiping out a third of your capital because you had everything in equities.

Could You Retire Comfortably Using Just A TFSA?

TFSA - the coolest account by far? 

In a pretty unexpected move back in February, Government decided to up the annual contribution limits on Tax Free Savings Accounts (TFSAs) from R33,000 a year (R2750/month if you want to invest monthly) to R36,000 a year (or R3000/month if you want to do it monthly). 

People celebrated everywhere because now it meant that you had a nice round number as a monthly amount :-P. 

Saying Hello To R100k

Make sure you sterilise it after
picking it up!

I recently made an extra R100k in just 12 days.

This must be the easiest money I have made in my life (even easier than the R83,000 I recently made by sending an email).

Prepare to be amazed as I divulge exactly what I did…

Saying Goodbye To R300k

Don't you hate it when you lose your
wallet and it has R300k in it?

The numbers don’t lie!

My total investment balance:
End January 2020 – R1,577,324
End March 2020 – R1,280,113

The value of my investments went from the highest they have ever been back to where I was in January last year. Ouch!

Market Crash FAQs

The market is a wreck! 

Let’s not sugar coat it, the markets have received an almighty PK over the last few weeks. It’s been pretty brutal with nowhere to hide. Top40, S&P500, small caps, large caps, REITs, Offshore, Onshore, and every other investment-y sounding term have all been walloped.

Proper.

Position Your Portfolio For A Mermaid Invasion

They're coming! 

I am sure you have all seen headlines of the type “Position your portfolio for [x]”. And x could be anything really - from the Corona Virus, to junk status, to the 4th Industrial Revolution.

I used to devour these types articles. And why not? The experts and market commentators quoted always had solid reasons about why it was a good idea to move some of your portfolio out of this and into that. It always made perfect sense.

TFSA vs RA

Tax wars

*Updated November 2020

Yeah I know, I know, you’ve heard it all before– you need to save for retirement, pay yourself first, and look after your future so that you don’t have to leech off your kids in your old age.

And it’s true, one day you won’t be able to earn an income, and you are going to need to have an investment big enough to pay the bills (and hopefully a little extra for some fun too).

Check Out What These 9 Experts Hold In Their TFSAs

What are the experts cooking inside
their TFSAs?  

I really love some of the ideas which readers of this blog send through from time to time. One really cool one which came through recently, was a suggestion to try find out what some of the top personal finance and investment experts, thought leaders, and media peeps were holding in their TFSAs.

So I did just that! And, in the true spirit of the South African personal finance community, most of them were more than happy to help out.

The Easy-est Way To Start Investing

Time to start watering your financial

freedom garden. 

One of the more common questions I receive is of the variant “I want to invest my money, where do I begin?”

Boy do I love this question!

The reason it’s one of my favourites is because it shows a person’s willingness to be proactive and to try forge a better financial future for themselves! And this means they are already off to a great start!

So Long CoreShares, And Thanks For All The Fish

Something fishy going on at
CoreShares? 

Today, 9 July 2019, is the last day you will be able to buy and sell the CoreShares Equally Weighted Top 40 ETF (CSEW40).

The reason it will no longer exist is because the second round of voting went in favour of CoreShares changing the CSEW40 ETF into something CoreShares say will be new and improved (I wrote about the proposed changes to the name, index tracked, methodology and fees and why I liked none of it over here)

Money Bunnies - A Compound Interest Calculator

If only I could think of a good analogy
 for compound interest... 

A calculation which each and every person should run (at least once a year) is to work out how much they need to be financially free. The problem is, the number this calculation spits out is often terrifying! You may be left wondering how on earth you will ever get to the 7 or 8 digits required?

This may lead you to end your quest for financial freedom then and there, because the number seems more demotivating than inspirational. 

If only there was a way for money to multiply like bunnies...

War Of The Worlds

No aliens were harmed in the writing
of this blog post. 

Don't worry, I haven't gone soft on you by changing the blogs direction from FIRE and personal finance to movie reviews!

Just to clarify then, this article will be about checking which one of the four currently available worldwide ETFs is the best - and that's way more exciting than the Spielberg interpretation of the classic book, right?

Good, let's begin then...

CoreShares - Thanks But No Thanks

Tough choice 

Us buy and hold ETF investor’s lead pretty boring investment lives. Once we have settled on the ETFs we like, we simply continue buying them month in and month out, and we never have to sell.

This means that nothing exciting ever really happens (although some of us may have been caught doing a happy dance when ETF dividends land - but that's as much excitement as you'll get!)

A Reader's Story - The Great Rip Off

Seems fair? 

I recently wrote about one of the great rip offs of investing – financial advisers who charge percent based fees. My main issue with the way these advisers operate is that, despite them using the same set of skills, the same amount of time, and the same resources for each client, the clients with more money pay more.

As your investment grows, your adviser takes more and more money from you, despite him performing the same service.