Personal Finance Newsletter - latest Issue

A change to the law governing medical insurance recently came into effect, resulting in many policyholders being stripped of their healthcare products. Members of medical schemes were unaffected, but poorer South Africans who were able to afford health insurance that covered their basic needs are now left unable to pay the higher cost of joining a medical scheme.

Is the thought of planning a barrier for you when it comes to investing? Or are you guilty of overanalysing and underacting? In the search for answers, it can become easy to refuse the simple ones.

On the surface, locally-listed media and internet behemoth Naspers doesn’t have much in common with US electric vehicle producer Tesla—but scratch below the surface, and the companies have more in common than meets the eye.

The Joseph family from Johannesburg could be spending all of the rental income from their two buildings in Louis Botha Avenue on property rates over the next five years—and still have to pay in from other sources. This follows after the valuations for the buildings were drastically increased in the latest City of Johannesburg general valuation roll published on 20 February this year.

Johannesburg mayor Herman Mashaba announced on Sunday 15 April 2018 that his administration won’t require property owners to pay rates according to disputed property valuations while objections and appeals are pending. This follows after the city received 40 000 objections related to new property valuations contained in the 2018 General Valuations Roll that attached new valuations to all properties in the city, totalling about 900 000.

Key upcoming tax submission dates

I woke up one morning recently—1 April, to be exact—to find that my life’s calendar had gently tipped over into that big number that all us Baby Boomers fear: 65. However, there was no rush of blood; no feeling of excitement or despair. In many ways it was just another day.

In a report issued in April 2018, business rescue practitioner Herman Bester made the unsurprising yet nevertheless chilling observation that all income or dividends paid to members of Choice Lifestyle Change “were paid from their own money, and that the activities of the company were in fact illegal”. In other words, they had been investing in a Ponzi scheme. In total, Bester found that R597 million had been deposited into two bank accounts opened by the company. Almost none of that remains.

My late father’s wicked sense of humour was proudly displayed on a sign behind his bar that read: “A fool and his money are soon parted—we hope!” If ever there were words needed to outline the modus operandi of creators of Ponzi schemes, they were on clear display in Dad’s pub. Here’s a few questions to ask of any ‘investment’ scheme, so as not to become one of those ‘fools’.

Towards the end of 2015 it had become obvious that the Cambist platform, which had offered returns of 19.5%, had just about collapsed. A High Court judgement declaring a number of emolument attachment orders (EAOs) unlawful and invalid had effectively torpedoed the business model. Cambist relied on EAOs as it sold debt contracts on its platform backed by these orders, which ensured monthly repayments. Once these orders became unenforceable, however, payments dried up and those left holding the contracts had no way to recover what they had paid for them.

Are you tired of being in debt and want to get rid of it? If your answer is ‘yes’, you’ve probably read many articles on how to do this.

I’m not sure if this was deliberately intended by Ingé, but for this 80’s teenybopper the article’s title is a definite reference to the Alphaville song by the same name. Trouble is, I’ve been stuck with the moth of all earworms as the song was not only stuck in my head for the entire time I spent doing the editing and layout for this particular piece, but for the rest of the day as well.

For long-term investors, international exposure is an important part of a sensible, well-diversified portfolio. Often, however, the decision to externalise money from South Africa has been a knee-jerk response to rand weakness. This was (anecdotally) confirmed by advisors who were polled about the issue at Glacier International’s Navigate seminar in Johannesburg, with roughly 90% of intermediaries saying that investors tend to externalise money when the rand is weakening.