It is easy to think that the terms Medical Aid, Medical Insurance and GAP Cover refer to the same thing. Although they all serve to help you afford medical care, there are some subtle differences. Getting a clear understanding of these words will help you get savvy with your options. If you already have health coverage you’ll be more informed about the benefits and extent of your health plan. However, many of us sign up for […]
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How much is enough?
Medical aid (including insurance products) contributions need to form part of our overall financial planning. Every year these products are adjusted slightly – both in how much they cost in monthly premiums and in what they cover. These increasing costs can feel burdensome and unnecessary to those who seldom use their medical cover, but they remain a crucial part of our financial planning. Unforeseen medical expenses can completely decimate our savings and future opportunities if we […]
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Pre-Lockdown vs Post-Lockdown Spending Trends
The largest factor in our wealth creation, and our wealth protection, is our behaviour. How we choose to save and how we choose to spend are the habits that will determine if we are able to grow our money over time, or if we will erode it over time. There are other factors, certainly. We can’t forecast all the transitional events in our life, nor precisely when they will happen – so attitude and external factors […]
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Why we need losers in our portfolio
There is a strange behavioural effect where investors tend to sell winners early and hold onto losers for longer. You would think that investors would offload their losers as soon as possible and hold onto their winners so that they keep winning, but the opposite is often found to be true. This is known as the disposition effect. This effect is thought to occur because people value gains and losses differently. Specifically, people dislike losses more […]
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ETF not EFF
Not to be confused with the EFF (the South African political party or the lesser-known Electronic Frontier Foundation…), ETFs have been gaining popularity in investment portfolios for about a decade. ETFs (exchange-traded funds) were first developed in the early 1990s by Nathan Most, they offer both retail and institutional investors a great passive investment option. Nathan initially started thinking about the ETF option in this way: “I started thinking about a warehouse receipt holding the shares […]
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Stay abreast of your healthcare cover
Whilst October is Breast Cancer awareness month, cancer has become a disease that was touted in 2018 as the second leading cause of death. It’s a tragedy that has most likely affected your family, and the families of your friends, colleagues and neighbours. The World Health Organization claims that between 30-50% of cancers can currently be prevented by avoiding risk factors and implementing evidence-based prevention strategies. Firstly, we should consider the categories of external agents that […]
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Markets don’t make you money
Markets don’t make you money; your habits… make you money. As creatures of habit, we ultimately become our own best friend, or our own worst enemy. This is why it’s important to be mindful of how our emotions affect our choices and influence our behaviour. We can remind ourselves of this time and time again, but still we might find ourselves slipping into old habits and allowing emotional decisions to vilify our investment strategies. This is […]
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Why hobbies help
Time is our greatest investment opportunity – we should invest the time that we have in a diverse portfolio of activities that will provide us with positive returns. Having a solid routine helps us to squeeze utility out of our time. However, if we get stuck in the same routine for too long it can start to feel monotonous and laborious. Especially so if we are spending our down time on low value activities such as […]
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The impact of the economy on small businesses
In a 2018 article, Tim Davis (President of The UPS Store) said this of small businesses: “Small business is the backbone of the economy. … It’s these businesses that are driving local economies, providing jobs for local residents and impacting key community organizations, through charity and service.” Whilst small businesses are crucial to the infrastructure of a robust economy, they are equally affected by the health of that very same economy that they drive. If we […]
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What did you do with your first paycheck?
One thing we can always know for certain is the past; but with far less certainty, the future, and even ‘later today’… eludes us. Despite knowing this, we often fall into the trap of thinking that we should have done certain things better, because we can see (looking back…) what a difference it would have made in our lives today. Some of the lingo we repeatedly hear says: “Do something today that your future self will […]
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