There are many reasons that people get into debt, usually they can be categorised into one of the following three: Ignorance, Indulgence, or Poor Planning Debt is often the symptom of some “other” issues but that is the subject for another post. In this post I want to look at the first category: ignorance. This is where someone has no idea of the real cost of the debt. For example, few people stop to think that the total cost...

I heard an advert on the radio last night for Nedbank’s new “Park-it Limited Edition Investment account”…seems that if you give them R10000, they will give you up to 6.25%* interest per annum and after the first 14 days you can have access to your funds with 24 hour notice. There are at least 2 problems with this… “Up to” 6.25% (turns out you need to invest R1million to get this rate –...

I have been a huge fan of Fundisa, having written about it often and having encouraged many of my clients to invest in it…however, after initially being a huge fan of the product, I have done some more work on it and as I see it, the big hurdle that Fundisa has is the underlying fund and its potential returns over a 15 year period…so much so, that I am questioning whether or not I can continue to support it. Here is my ...

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...

Much was made about the RSA Retail Bond when it was launched and about how it would provide a safe and cheap investment with a reasonable returns to the “man-in-the-street”. Well, I have been trying to buy some of these for a “man-in-the-street” using the RSA Retail Bond website – what a nightmare. There is an application form online but no details where to submit it or how to pay the funds into an account. So...

There is an old song where the lyrics went something like this “the chances of anything coming from Mars are a million to one, but still they come!” At least the odds were better than the chance of you winning the lotto in SA where your odds are one in 13 983 816 (or 0.000000072%)*. Let’s put this in perspective: if there are 2 draws per week (104 per year) then you would need to play the lotto every draw for 134459 years to have...