Plan. Plan. Plan! We’ve had a few posts about this, and it may seem repetitive, but the truth is that planning is what we’re not doing much of when it comes to our finances. That’s how we end up overspending and having more month at the end of our money. This is particularly amplified over the holiday season. If you want to have a less stressful holiday, get your budget ready now. Plan for every cent […]
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Surviving the holidays: Part 2
The holiday season is meant to be a time of joy and celebration and it is also fraught with deals and specials that you simply cannot do without. It is also, unfortunately, when scammers are also hard at work to have you part with your hard-earned money. You must always be vigilant, but particularly during the holiday season, and be able to recognize when a deal is actually a scam. Cyber security This extract from Symantec, […]
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Surviving the holidays: Part 1
The year is almost done and feels like it flew by. There are four full weeks left before December and the festive season begins two weeks after that. Many companies in South Africa pay December salaries on the 15th to allow people to make travel arrangements and to do some last-minute holiday shopping. The issue with this is that most people are usually out of funds by the first week or two of January making that […]
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Minimalism
Modern day living is not only very complex but expensive too. Given the current state of the economy, it is important to pause and regroup every now and then in order to manage. I mentioned in a previous post that the tiny house movement has gained momentum in the past few years and one of the reasons for this momentum is the realization that we don’t need a lot in order to live well. In fact, […]
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The art of simple living
One of my favourite things to do is spending time at the bookstore not far from where I live. The eastern philosophy section is my favourite part of the store and I can easily spend hours browsing through the books on display. The most recent and truly fascinating find is ‘ZEN – The art of simple living’ by Shunmyo Masuno, a monk and head priest of a 450-year-old Zen Buddhist temple in Japan. In this book, […]
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If it sounds too good to be true…
I learned of a new scam this past week – a stokvel administered via social media. A mere week into the scam and already people were complaining that they’d been swindled! It is understandable why people fall for these scams – times are tough, and people are having to make-do with very little. In the same breath, a lot of people are tempted due to ignorance and plain greed. When deciding to commit your hard-earned cash […]
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The effect of your emotions
“DALBAR’s Quantitative Analysis of Investor Behaviour Study (“QAIB”) has been analysing investor returns since 1994 and has consistently found that the average investor earns much less than market indices would suggest. “ This has everything to do with emotions – investors, with the best of intentions are their own worst enemies when it comes to managing money. they get excited when the markets are positive, greed kicks in and there is an expectation that markets will […]
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Goal setting
In the past two blog posts, we dealt with budgeting and risk-profiling – two very important initial steps to take when formulating a financial plan. Goal setting is the third vital step. During this process, it’s important to figure out what you need and what you want and to prioritize the former over the latter. Often, the lines are blurred, and clients need to be reminded of the difference. ‘I need that sports car’, a client […]
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Risk profiling
We’re spring cleaning our finances this month. Once your budgeting process is sorted, you need to consider getting profiled in terms of risk. A client’s risk profile is one of the first and most important things we try to understand during the financial planning process. There are many methods and as many outcomes to risk profiling but the ultimate point of it is the following: To try and understand how an investor feels about risk To […]
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Women and risk
Women are accumulating less funds in their lifetime and many are retiring financially insecure, as compared to their male counterparts. A major contributor to this is low levels of financial literacy which has a negative impact risk perception. Risk perception refers to how an individual makes a personal judgement about the likelihood of a negative outcome. This extract from The Influence of financial literacy and risk perception on investment on choice of investment by Aren et […]
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