The Dilbert cartoonist, Scott Adams, earned a MBA from Berkeley, worked at a bank (got held up twice at gunpoint), and is worth millions. So we presume he knows a thing or two about money. In an interview with the Akron Beacon Journal, Adams says he read about a dozen personal finance books and began working on one himself. However, he found it all boiled down to these nine points and he “couldn’t figure out how to fluff...

I had to make a trip to SARS in Cape Town this am to hand in the 6 paper provisional tax returns that I cant get on efiling – this is despite several email and telephonic requests to SARS to get them on e-filing. As I arrived there I was greeted by the site in the picture below… this is a many-hour queue (and it has been like this since November last year according to the SARS lady that helped me). Fortunately, I did not have to...

So Eskom’s been granted increases of 24.8%, 25.8% and 25.9% for the next 3 years. Not as big as they wanted but still significant. What does it mean for us as consumers? There is a beautiful little rule called the “rule of 72″ which states if you want to know how quickly something will double in value/cost you need to divide the number into 72. So based on this, an increase of 25% means that the price of electricity will...

Oh dear…the old adage certainly rings true (yet again). Following on the most recent post about Fundisa, a friend and I were re-doing the maths…seems like I got it totally wrong…apologies for that! The returns seemed too good to be true – the problem is with my maths and understanding of how the product works…which raises some important issues that need clarifying by ASISA re the product. I am just making sure...

PLEASE BE AWARE THAT THE EXPLANATION OF FUNDISA’S RETURNS IS INCORRECT – IT WILL BE CORRECTED IN A LATER POST. Gregg Currently the cost of a university degree is about R31000-R35000 per year, so over 3 years that is pretty much R100000. If varsity fees continue to increase at levels above inflation then this will increase to somewhere between R200000 and R300000 per year for my 3 year old son. That’s between R600000 and...

2010, it’s finally here… In just over 1 months time it is the end of the 2010 tax year and there are 2 important deadlines that go with this. They are: Retirement annuities: RA contributions need to be made before the end of Feb. This year the 28th is on a Sunday so all contributions will have to be done by the close of business on the 26th Feb in order to qualify for the 2010 tax year. But dont leave it to the last minute...