It may be mid-Winter and it may be cold but there is a lot of heat being generated by all the media coverage the Malema is currently getting. Not sure whose agenda it is serving but someone is surely behind it all. In the light of this, there was an excellent interview with Professor Steven Friedman on 567 Cape Talk last night: “Professor Steven Friedman says while much of the public debate portrays Julius Malema as an immensely...

But not for long… If you are looking for income from your cash then the RSA Retail Bond (2 year fixed-rate option) is still offering 8% – that’s about the best “guaranteed” option available. But that rate is likely to fall by about 0.5% at the beginning of December (the repo rate was cut by 0.5% to 5.5% last week). To qualify for the 8% rate you need to have invested the money with them before the end of November, so you...

Got an email from friend this week which went something like this…”Just got a mail from Nedbank to say I have 300 000 odd ‘Greenbacks’, their loyalty programme. I can exchange them for until trust investments. Wanted to know your opinion?  I’ll have to put R5000 cash to open an account but can get around R11 000 or so more through the Greenbacks I got sitting in an account.” What a great idea…I...

I enjoy using lines from movies when talking to clients about investing and financial planning. For example there is the classic line by Jack Nicolson’s character from “A few good men” when he is on the witness stand and being asked about the truth of an investigation to which he replies…”You want the truth? You cant handle the truth”. Sadly we get to use this when telling clients the truth about being...

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...