A year or so ago my kids introduced me to a very cute you tube clip, “Dumb Ways to Die” which was a public service campaign to promote rail safety in Melbourne, Australia. It quickly went viral – you can watch the clip here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IJNR2EpS0jw
For some reason I found myself humming the tune while I was on my way to work recently and while I was driving my focus turned to dumb things people do, financially speaking, that is. Without much effort I quickly came up with “(10) Dumb ways to die (financially)”.
Here is the list (which I will explore in greater detail over the next few posts):
- Withdraw from your retirement fund when you change jobs.
- Withdraw from your preservation fund before retirement.
- Fail to contribute to your retirement fund at the maximum level.
- Don’t have a (valid) will.
- Invest via any insurance based product.
- Fail to budget.
- Fail to pay off your credit card in full each month.
- Fall behind on your tax returns/get on the wrong side of SARS.
- Fail to take sufficient equity/volatility risk on your investments.
- Buy last year’s winners when investing.
I am sure I could add many more to the list but that’s enough for now.
Look out for the “explanation” of each of them in coming posts and enjoy the song/video clip .
