After listening to a very entertaining and informative talk by financial expert John Maudlin, who wrote EndGame a book on the global debt spiral, I was struck by how US/Euro centric his observations were. Yes we know the developed world is...
Why the markets are so volatile
The rout in global financial markets is continuing, characterised by extreme swings of up to 5% in some markets. According to Dr Prieur du Plessis, chairman of the Plexus group and author of the Investment Postcards blog, there are a couple of...
Investors are ignoring value stocks
Geoff Blount, CEO of Cannon Asset Managers, shows that the market has all but abandoned value stocks over the last few years with most investment managers shifting their portfolios to more expensive growth stocks. This will have significant...
Why your inflation rate is higher than the official CPI
Whenever the inflation figures are released, consumers must wonder what basket of goods StatsSA could possibly be using because one thing is for sure, our cost of living is going up far quicker than the official 5.3%. As an example, just this week...
Don’t write-off residential property
The Weekend Argus Personal Finance page carried an article on whether it is better to buy or rent property. This was prompted by research by Henno Vermaak, an analyst at PSG Asset Management, which suggests that you may be better off renting and...
How do I find the cash to save?
The bottom line is that saving is very difficult – if it was easy our savings rate would be far higher. Every age group has its specific expenses. Someone in their early twenties is most likely paying off student loans, possibly have parents to...
Can you live without debt?
I was recently asked whether or not it was possible for a family of four to live without short-term debt. I think the question needs to be reversed. We need to be asking why we believe we need debt in order to live. According to the Old Mutual...
Did you change your locks?
Today I received a press release from an insurance company which made me realise I have been very lax about my security. The article raised the point that most people do not change their locks when they move into a new home. I just realised I never...
Financial media vs the financial adviser
Can the financial media replace the financial advisor A recent survey by financial services company acsis looked into the financial security of middle income South Africans. They were specifically interested in how secure people felt around their...
Want to sort out savings? Get rid of FICA
hile National Treasury bemoans our low savings rates and looks at ways to encourage savings, it should first look in its own back yard. In South Africa’s desperate attempt not to look “third world”, our financial authorities have burdened the...
Previous Articles
Should you fix your mortgage?
In some cases, the banks will only offer customers a fixed interest rate, in other words no matter what happens to the prime lending rate, your home loan repayments remain the same. This is usually for customers who have had a problem with their credit history in the...
Retirement
Should you cash in your pension to settle your mortgage? Pension surveys show that around the age of 35 many people who change jobs will cash in their pension fund to settle their mortgage. The question is whether this makes financial sense. Let’s assume you are a 25...
Deciding between a unit trust or an ETF
I recently wrote about how a R200 a month investment became worth R35 000 by just investing investing in Satrix 40, an index-tracking exchange traded fund. I mentioned that the returns could have been even better if I had selected one of the top performing unit-trust...