By Paul Leonard, CFP®, Regional Head, Citadel It is often said that there are no right or wrong investments but rather appropriate and inappropriate investments. Much has been written about tax-free savings and investment accounts (TFSAs) and there...
The move by banks to make it easier for individuals to reverse unauthorised debit orders has been an important step in maintaining the integrity of the banking system, especially after increases in illegal debit orders where syndicates would obtain...
Recently the MD of a small company asked me if I thought they should provide employee benefits such as life cover and retirement funding for their employees. Currently the company leaves that entirely to each employee to sort out for themselves....
If you are looking for ways to save in 2017, you might want to consider tossing your car and Ubering instead. MyTreasury.co.za, which helps South Africans find the best savings account to match their needs, crunched the numbers to see when it makes...
How many SLOW Lounge visits will you qualify for? My husband and I both travel frequently for work and the SLOW Lounge offers a little bit of respite from the general chaos and mayhem of airports, so we tend to maximise our usage most months. The...
More than half of the top 60 Android shopping apps collect users’ personal information through trackers, a new study finds, with South African favourites LetGo and OLX among apps with the highest number of trackers. The result is from a privacy...
Changes to the taxation of estates could leave a surviving spouse with a hefty tax bill. Last month the Davis Tax Committee (DTC) issued an update on its tax recommendations especially around so-called “death taxes”. Some of the key recommendations...
I recently returned from an overseas trip that I started planning nine months ahead of time. I used the time to plan, budget and make sure that when I returned from my well-deserved break that there would be no scary credit card bills to deal with....
Research finds that the tax-free savings account is still misunderstood. If there’s one thing the financial industry is good at, it is complicating things that should be fairly simple. Tax-free savings accounts (TFSAs) were meant to be really...
by Nthati Khumalo, Tax Compliance Trainee at BDO South Africa The High Court recently held that Mr Julian Brown must submit a response to a SARS lifestyle questionnaire or suffer the consequences. SARS may in terms of the Tax Administration Act...
There is a big difference between knowingly investing in a high-risk technology business and being sold misinformation. I recently wrote about a group of companies: AllQuotes, BuyDirect and MiBiz, which fall under a parent company called FinGroup. I wrote about...
We recently ran an article on the various options for offshore bank accounts and highlighted foreign currency accounts (FCA) which are effectively on-shore accounts that are linked to your local bank account and have low minimum deposit rates. These could be used, for...
Insiders raise the alarm over the business practices of AllQuotes and BuyDirect. When one receives anonymous tip-offs about unethical business practices, there is always the concern that the information is accurate and not just a disgruntled employee taking a dig. So...
You don’t have to be a high flier to have a foreign currency account or even an offshore bank account which have now become an easily available and relatively affordable option for South Africans who would like to hold some funds offshore. As exchange control has...
Times are tough and even though the inflation rate might be slowing down, prices are still going up. This means your cost of living is only going to increase as the months go by. According to the latest BankservAfrica Disposable Salary (BDSI) data, the average South...
By Mark MacSymon, Certified Financial Planner and Wealth Manager at Private Client Holdings An increasingly common issue in South Africa these days is adult children still being financially dependent on their parents. This is due to low entry-level salaries,...
By Mike McDougall, CEO of the Actuarial Society of South Africa Faced with empty wallets and rising costs, thousands of South Africans are placing their faith in ‘get rich quick’ schemes that lure desperate consumers with promises of unrealistic investment returns....
The focus around higher interest rates has mostly been the effect it will have on our debt repayments, but what we forget is that higher rates are really good for savers who, for a long period of time, have received less and less interest on their cash deposits. Since...
Esther van Schalkwyk, senior tax consultant at BDO South Africa unpacks some of the important aspects of cellphone allowances and highlights the value of proper tax planning. Many employees receive a cellphone allowance in some form or other as part of their...
When analysing clients’ budgets, debt counseling firm Octogen found that entertainment is consistently a category people tend to overspend, so it is perhaps not surprising that when interviewing 22seven users as part of the Show Your Money Who’s Boss campaign, the one...