The article in Personal Finance this weekend re the high costs of investments (http://www.iol.co.za/business/personal-finance/financial-planning/investments/costs-are-wiping-out-real-returns-1.1036412) really got up my nose. And not for the reasons you might think. The article did not frustrate me because it “exposed” the truth about investment costs but rather because it is too easy to be negative about these things and it is my...

“They prowl the empty streets (at night), waiting in fast cars and on foot”* looking for unsuspecting consumers. Yes, it’s that time of year again when Retirement Annuity salesmen are on out in full force. February is “traditionally” RA month as it signifies the end of the tax year and anyone needing to put money into an RA has until the end of the month to do it. RA’s have received a lot of press (not all of it good) and...

Ok, so almost everyone accepts that a unit trust RA is currently the best retirement annuity available in SA…(for reasons of cost, transparency and most importantly, flexibility). And while government is (apparently) intent on encouraging retirement savings, it seems that they really are only paying lip service to the issue because you can only access a unit trust RA if you are well-heeled. The very people who so...

Following on from my post last week about direct insurers being so much more expensive than normal insurance companies (even at full commission) I thought I would get a few quotes from them. I asked for R1million life cover for a 44 year old male, non-smoker, top income and health bracket and this is what we got back. We also tried to compare apples with apples and so the premium escalation structure is a simialr as we could get...

Results released from the Finscope 2009 report (www.finscope.co.za) are startling and reveal quite a bit about the country in which we live: 69% of adults are from households that have at least 1 person who is unemployed and looking for work FinScope SA 2009 findings indicate a decline in the percentage of adults with formal as well as informal employment (28% of adults get money from formal employment whilst 16% get an income from...

Tis the season to be jolly…well almost if the shop decorations are to be believed. And I have also had two calls from people looking for advice re magazine articles they are writing for January editions on “how to avoid over-indulging” during the month of December. So perhaps it is fitting to start thinking about it and planning now before it is too late. One of the biggest issues we face is the length of time between the November,...