I have recently received quite a few “phishing” emails (i.e. emails from people trying to get info they are not entitled to and usually involving internet banking). This is nothing new and has been happening for ages, but what is incredible is how “legitimate” these emails now appear. Somehow, they have now managed to get it to look like the email has come directly from the bank with the bank address in the email...

I came across a 76 year old lady this morning who was sold a 10 year endowment at the age of 71 (through Old Mutual Horizons) for R10000 per month (yes, ten thousand rand!). 5 years later her situation has changed, she cant afford the premium anymore and needs to make a change…surprise, surprise, she is going to receive huge penalties for doing this. This is just wrong and I dont care how anyone might try to justify this, there is no...

There was a lot of information about medical aids in the weekend press, a lot of it was very critical of the many schemes. While some of it is certainly warranted, what most people dont seem to grasp is that while many of us think that we are members of a medical aid, we are actually just members of glorified hospital insurance schemes. And even then, not all our “in hospital” expenses will be covered by the schemes. Once we...

Saw the TV advert for 1life direct recently…watch out, the cover they are offering is incredibly expensive. Far from cutting out the middle man and therefore being cheaper, it is significantly more expensive than you could get even if you went through a broker who was charging full commission. For example: A quote from 1life direct (with no commission) is as follows: Policy Information Product: 1Life Elevated Life Cover...

One of the things that I just cant get my head around is the price of residential property. If the experts are to be believed, then the average house price in SA is somewhere around R550000. In order to buy this property, you would need to put down a deposit of at least R110000 (20%) and would then have to pay off a bond of R440000. With the prime rate at 11% and assuming you could get 0.5% below prime (not nearly as easy as it used to be)...