Cobie and I like to keep this newsletter and our podcast evolving. We’d love to hear from you about what you like or dislike, what you’d like more or less of – both in the newsletter and podcasts. Do you have topics you’d like to hear a blog on? Do other people’s wealth journeys interest […]
The years in the run-up to retirement, probably from the age of 55, are probably going to be the most important in terms of what your eventual retirement looks like. You at least have some wiggle room to improve the outcome. It’s also the time to do some serious adulting – risk and gambling have […]
Cobie and I like to keep this newsletter and our podcast evolving. We’d love to hear from you about what you like or dislike, what you’d like more or less of – both in the newsletter and podcasts. Do you have topics you’d like to hear a blog on? Do other people’s wealth journeys interest […]
Cobie and I like to keep this newsletter and our podcast evolving. We’d love to hear from you about what you like or dislike, what you’d like more or less of – both in the newsletter and podcasts. Do you have topics you’d like to hear a blog on? Do other people’s wealth journeys interest […]
Cobie and I like to keep this newsletter and our podcast evolving. We’d love to hear from you about what you like or dislike, what you’d like more or less of – both in the newsletter and podcasts. Do you have topics you’d like to hear a blog on? Do other people’s wealth journeys interest […]
Self-insurance – does it work? Everyone, including me, hates the grudge purchases. The medical aid when you’re never sick and probably cross-subsidizing old folks and hypochondriacs. Short term insurance on house, car, contents, valuables when you never claim. Life insurance that goes up in double digits but with minimal benefit increases and your kids are grown. […]
Cobie and I like to keep this newsletter and our podcast evolving. We’d love to hear from you about what you like or dislike, what you’d like more or less of – both in the newsletter and podcasts. Do you have topics you’d like to hear a blog on? Do other people’s wealth journeys interest […]
Cobie and I like to keep this newsletter and our podcast evolving. We’d love to hear from you about what you like or dislike, what you’d like more or less of – both in the newsletter and podcasts. Do you have topics you’d like to hear a blog on? Do other people’s wealth journeys interest […]
When we look back on it, life seems to happen along a nice, neat timeline, but we all know it is never that simple. “Life” happens along the way, sometimes pushing us forward – in our career, relationships, health and wealth – but sometimes settling us back years. Nothing ever stays the same, and if […]
Cobie and I like to keep this newsletter and our podcast evolving. We’d love to hear from you about what you like or dislike, what you’d like more or less of – both in the newsletter and podcasts. Do you have topics you’d like to hear a blog on? Do other people’s wealth journeys interest […]
Cobie and I like to keep this newsletter and our podcast evolving. We’d love to hear from you about what you like or dislike, what you’d like more or less of – both in the newsletter and podcasts. Do you have topics you’d like to hear a blog on? Do other people’s wealth journeys interest […]
Biomes and Ecosystems grow naturally – but not quickly, and certainly take way longer than a human working lifetime – because unlike your wealth, they do not have a manager. Left to their own devices an ecosystem will take a very meandering route to maturity – and many don’t make it. A cycle of droughts […]
Cobie and I like to keep this newsletter and our podcast evolving. We’d love to hear from you about what you like or dislike, what you’d like more or less of – both in the newsletter and podcasts. Do you have topics you’d like to hear a blog on? Do other people’s wealth journeys interest […]
On the first of September (called T-day) the long awaited two pot retirement system came into effect (it was announced and promulgated on 1/3/2021) and it is still difficult for the man on the street to decipher exactly how this will affect them. There are some good visuals, videos and calculators around to take you […]
Cobie and I like to keep this newsletter and our podcast evolving. We’d love to hear from you about what you like or dislike, what you’d like more or less of – both in the newsletter and podcasts. Do you have topics you’d like to hear a blog on? Do other people’s wealth journeys interest […]
THE PODCAST RELATED TO THIS BLOG IS AVAILABLE HERE One of the so-called sensible decisions most of us make when we start a family or buy a house is to take out ‘Life cover’. I know this is a grudge purchase – but think of it like this – it’s one way of ensuring that your […]
The podcast of the newsletter is available and you can download it HERE. We welcome all your input so please don’t hesitate to contact us if you’ve got any queries or suggestions. Many of our clients come from referrals from our existing clients, often through the forwarding of this newsletter – so if there is anyone […]
THE PODCAST RELATED TO THIS BLOG IS AVAILABLE HERE Having spent decades building up your wealth ecosystem so that it can sustain you in your old age – whether that’s by the way of traditional investments, a property portfolio or building a company so that it has valuable shares that can derive a sustainable dividend […]
The podcast of the newsletter is available and you can download it HERE. We welcome all your input so please don’t hesitate to contact us if you’ve got any queries or suggestions. Many of our clients come from referrals from our existing clients, often through the forwarding of this newsletter – so if there is anyone […]
In nature, weather is one of the volatile elements that ecosystems, concrete jungles and ordinary humans all must deal with daily. One of the reasons that humans have survived to become the dominant species over millennia is their ability to adapt the environment to suit themselves. They grow their food and don’t have to forage […]
The podcast of the newsletter is available and you can download it HERE. We welcome all your input so please don’t hesitate to contact us if you’ve got any queries or suggestions. Market Watch Despite global markets going into a bit of a panic Monday following the global sell-off – which will be discussed – the […]
The podcast on this post is available HERE Pruning plants is a task most of us gardeners are very familiar with, especially at this time of the year. A good pruning leads to better fruit, and flowers in the next season. Pruning is often done during the growing period too – it’s called “pinching out”. […]
The podcast of the newsletter is available and you can download it HERE. We welcome all your input so please don’t hesitate to contact us if you’ve got any queries or suggestions. From this week we are going to be publishing a second podcast on Thursday mornings based on Dawn’s Wealth Ecology posts (which can be […]
The podcast of the newsletter is available and you can download it HERE. We welcome all your input so please don’t hesitate to contact us if you’ve got any queries or suggestions. Market Watch The JSE has reverted to its factory settings for the moment and is tracking sideways but has hung onto the gains we […]
The podcast of the newsletter is available and you can download it HERE. We welcome all your input so please don’t hesitate to contact us if you’ve got any queries or suggestions. Market Watch The JSE has managed to hang onto those post-election gains and is taking a breather. The Nasdaq has retreated off its recent […]
The podcast of the newsletter is available and you can download it HERE. We welcome all your input so please don’t hesitate to contact us if you’ve got any queries or suggestions. Market Watch The JSE has recovered somewhat after the GNU jitters settled down and hopefully, everyone in government gets on with the job we […]
Over the last few weeks markets and exchange rates have been exceptionally volatile as the horse-trading and negotiations around the GNU go on behind the scenes. While the ministerial positions have now been announced, this volatility is probably going to continue until everyone carves out their niches – and the ‘official opposition’ is not going […]
The podcast of the newsletter is available and you can download it HERE. We welcome all your input so please don’t hesitate to contact us if you’ve got any queries or suggestions. Market Watch The JSE has recovered from the previous week’s wobble while the GNU was being thrashed out and now looks like it’s sustaining […]
The podcast of the newsletter is available and you can download it HERE. We welcome all your input so please don’t hesitate to contact us if you’ve got any queries or suggestions. Market Watch Uncertainty has crept back into the market thanks to the delays and public horse-trading around cabinet seats – remember, this is […]
The podcast of the newsletter is available and you can download it HERE. We welcome all your input so please don’t hesitate to contact us if you’ve got any queries or suggestions. Market Watch The markets last week gave the new political dispensation a resounding round of applause. The JSE is now up 6.6% year on […]
The podcast of the newsletter is available and you can download it HERE. We welcome all your input so please don’t hesitate to contact us if you’ve got any queries or suggestions. Dawn is going to be hosting Michael Avery’s Classic Business Radio show on Fine Music radio next week. You can stream it off the […]
The podcast of the newsletter is available and you can download it HERE. We welcome all your input so please don’t hesitate to contact us if you’ve got any queries or suggestions. Market watch As expected, the turmoil around the direction of the government has created turbulence in the markets which have retreated over the week, […]
The podcast of the newsletter is available and you can download it HERE. We welcome all your input so please don’t hesitate to contact us if you’ve got any queries or suggestions. Market watch The JSE All Share softened over the week, probably more in line with the US markets softening than the local elections. On the […]
The podcast of the newsletter is available and you can download it HERE. We welcome all your input so please don’t hesitate to contact us if you’ve got any queries or suggestions. Market watch The last month has seen a good runup in the JSE as you can see from the graph below – a 9.3% […]
The podcast of the newsletter is available and you can download it HERE. We welcome all your input so please don’t hesitate to contact us if you’ve got any queries or suggestions. Market watch: The US markets have been on a tear, making new highs (more about that later) but the JSE is also seeing a […]
The podcast of the newsletter is available and you can download it HERE. We welcome all your input so please don’t hesitate to contact us if you’ve got any queries or suggestions. Market watch: The JSE has shown a marked improvement over the last 3 months – double the growth in Wall Street over the same […]
In nature one of the signs of a robust ecosystem is biodiversity – not only is it common sense, there are plenty of lessons we can learn from that and adapt to managing our wealth. By having that diversity, one event – even a small event cannot destroy the entire ecosystem. We often see the […]
The podcast of the newsletter is available and you can download it HERE. We welcome all your input so please don’t hesitate to contact us if you’ve got any queries or suggestions. Market watch:The graphs below, over a 3-month period, are a cautionary tale of cherry-picking intervals to distort your perception of statistics. Over the last […]
It isn’t easy to find a financial advisor who is sufficiently qualified and experienced to both look after your wealth portfolio and care about your risk-mitigation portfolio but they are inextricably linked.Why is important to look at your wealth holistically? Essentially, your wealth is an ecosystem. No, I am not using that term […]
The podcast of the newsletter is available and you can download it HERE. We welcome all your input so please don’t hesitate to contact us if you’ve got any queries or suggestions. Market watch: The JSE continues to tread water as the US markets slide. There are some signs that China is starting to buy commodities […]
I am sure most of you have experienced that sickening feeling when an investment goes wrong – instead of beating yourself up for being stupid, it might help to understand some of the entrenched emotions and biases that led you to make the bad decision in the first place. Behavioural Finance is a new-ish field […]
The podcast of the newsletter is available and you can download it HERE. We welcome all your input so please don’t hesitate to contact us if you’ve got any queries or suggestions. Market watch: Markets around the world have come off the boil somewhat in the last 10 days or so. While it is much too early […]
Occasionally I am asked straight out what the value of a financial advisor is, and why they should be paying for the advice. It’s not an unreasonable question given the experiences of some, especially those who had a product sold to them or where fees are still being collected from an investment product despite a […]
The podcast of the newsletter is available and you can download it HERE. We welcome all your input so please don’t hesitate to contact us if you’ve got any queries or suggestions. Market watch: Middle East tensions and the fear that inflation may return to the US continue to impact on markets across the world. The fear […]
The podcast of the newsletter is available and you can download it HERE. We welcome all your input so please don’t hesitate to contact us if you’ve got any queries or suggestions. Market watch: The JSE has been on a more positive trajectory recently, but still trading in that band between 70,000 and 75,000 that it’s been […]
There has been plenty of press over the years on how high fees can impact on your investment – and has led to the trend toward ETFs, Trackers and DIY stock portfolios. It’s interesting to look back at the way the average person invests and how that has evolved over the decades. Before 1965 in […]
Market watch: The JSE continues to amble sideways, which is unsurprising as we do not have the AI companies that are driving the offshore markets and commodities are out of favour – for now. The Russell 2000, which is much more broad-based than the Nasdaq, for example, while not showing the same growth in the […]
Market watch: The JSE has returned to it’s factory settings – crawling along sideways only to make sudden movements up or down, just when you don’t expect it. This is somewhat different to the US markets which just keep on going up – with some indications that investors are looking through all the AI froth […]
I am not a fearmonger, and actually abhor people who play on people’s fears to bolster their popularity or business – but the National Health Insurance Bill (NHI) which is about to be promulgated is different.I have been covering news around the NHI for decades. This is not a new concept but was first touted in 2007 with […]
Market watch: For a change I have used the graph below to show the last 3 months returns and not over a year or more as is usually shown – but it still doesn’t show a pretty picture for the JSE. To be fair we just don’t have those AI-focused stocks that are driving the […]
The podcast of the newsletter is available and you can download it HERE. We welcome all your input so please don’t hesitate to contact us if you’ve got any queries or suggestions. Market watch: Although the base effects from this time last year is working out of the year-on-year stats the US surge at the end of […]
Have you ever looked back and remembered what your parents or grandparents were like at your age? While we might not have noticed it while it was happening, we humans are slowly evolving and changing. We just have to look back at our parents or grandparents and what their ‘retirement’ looked like to see how […]
We hope you have all had a great start to the new year. The podcast of the newsletter is available and you can download it HERE. We welcome all your input so please don’t hesitate to contact us if you’ve got any queries or suggestions. Market watch: The markets and currencies did not treat us kindly following […]
The general consensus is that global interest rates are going to start declining this year, after a longer-than-expected run of higher interest rates. Those interest rates started rising when central banks, especially in the US, woke up to the fact that inflation was not ‘transient’ after all and was, in fact, getting out of control. […]