Medical aid (including insurance products) contributions need to form part of our overall financial planning. Every year these products are adjusted slightly – both in how much they cost in monthly premiums and in what they cover. These increasing costs can feel burdensome and unnecessary to those who seldom use their medical cover, but they remain a crucial part of our financial planning. Unforeseen medical expenses can completely decimate our savings and future opportunities if we […]
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Pre-Lockdown vs Post-Lockdown Spending Trends
The largest factor in our wealth creation, and our wealth protection, is our behaviour. How we choose to save and how we choose to spend are the habits that will determine if we are able to grow our money over time, or if we will erode it over time. There are other factors, certainly. We can’t forecast all the transitional events in our life, nor precisely when they will happen – so attitude and external factors […]
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ETF not EFF
Not to be confused with the EFF (the South African political party or the lesser-known Electronic Frontier Foundation…), ETFs having been gaining popularity in investment portfolios for about a decade. ETFs (exchange-traded funds) were first developed in the early 1990s by Nathan “Nate” Most and offer both retail and institutional investors a great passive investment option. Most initially started thinking about the ETF option in this way: “I started thinking about a warehouse receipt holding the […]
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Markets don’t make you money
Markets don’t make you money; your habits… make you money. As creatures of habit, we ultimately become our own best friend, or our own worst enemy. This is why it’s important to be mindful of how our emotions affect our choices and influence our behaviour. We can remind ourselves of this time and time again, but still we might find ourselves slipping into old habits and allowing emotional decisions to vilify our investment strategies. This is […]
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The impact of the economy on small businesses
In a 2018 article, Tim Davis (President of The UPS Store) said this of small businesses: “Small business is the backbone of the economy. … It’s these businesses that are driving local economies, providing jobs for local residents and impacting key community organizations, through charity and service.” Whilst small businesses are crucial to the infrastructure of a robust economy, they are equally affected by the health of that very same economy that they drive. If we […]
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What did you do with your first paycheck?
One thing we can always know for certain is the past; but with far less certainty, the future, and even ‘later today’… eludes us. Despite knowing this, we often fall into the trap of thinking that we should have done certain things better, because we can see (looking back…) what a difference it would have made in our lives today. Some of the lingo we repeatedly hear says: “Do something today that your future self will […]
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Lessons from the lighthouse
Here’s the thing about the lighthouse – it’s focus is always offshore. At the time of writing this article, the world is still flailing under the storm of the Coronavirus and the conditions have caused us all to rethink many of the foundations in our lives that we once thought secure. Just like the view from the lighthouse, the seas can go from calm to savage in a matter of hours, the visibility can decrease from […]
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What the low interest rate means for you
In light of the difficult times recently, Southern Africa has been awash in low interest rates. When South Africa significantly cut its base interest rate from an already-low 6.25% down to 4.25%, it officially became the lowest interest rate the country has ever had. In late 2019, the Bank of Namibia’s Monetary Policy Committee reduced the rate to 6.5% from 6.75%, then lending rates at Bank Windhoek were slashed further come 2020. Interest rates, particularly interest […]
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Ways to save when times are tough
Most of us are chronic under-savers even in the best of times. Yet with the current economic environment, lots of previously hypothetical concepts like ‘what if I’m retrenched or have my salary cut?’ are far more concrete – and, unfortunately, more likely to happen. There’s never been a time when saving is more important, but there’s also likely never been a time when it’s more difficult. Do you want to put something away for a rainy […]
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Are you a savings statistic?
Most Sub-Saharan African countries are chronic ‘dis-savers’. But, you don’t have to be. Before we look at the options, let’s take a snapshot of recent events. Last July, the South African Savings Institute gave the country a wakeup call when it said that the average household rate had fallen from 0.5% per month in 2018 to 0.4% in 2019. While 2020 figures are not out yet (at the time of this blog) anywhere in the continent, […]
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