Following on from the first post on RSA Retail Bonds, I received a reply from the communications manager at National Treasury who referred me to 2 more people and I finally received a 10 page summary on the bonds. The first section is titled “How to invest” and answers the questions we had but is unfortunately not available on the website (yet)! Turns out though, that if you want to invest via the website you need to...

Just read an article online about how in these tough times one of the positive outcomes is that people seem to be investing more into their retirement funds. The bad news, though, is that it is still usually too little to enable most people to retire financially secure. Of bigger concern for me, however, is that not only are most people contributing too little, but on top of this, most people are probably not taking enough risk on their...

One of the things I enjoy doing is collecting rainfall figures…I have been doing this for over 9 years and have built up a bit of a data base. I know this has nothing to do with financial planning but it is probably a legacy from my student days when meteorology was one of the subjects I studied. Earlier on this year, I posted a blog called “Will it ever rain again in Cape Town ?” This was during one of the driest starts to the year...

All the while that this debate has been going on the market has risen…for anyone who invested at the low in Nov/Dec last year there has been a 22% return from the ALSI already… I think there is a danger of throwing the baby out with the bath water here…equities are the most likely asset class to give you real returns over the long term…but they can be very volatile in the short term…and so the best way to think...