Info

The Fat Wallet Show from Just One Lap

The Fat Wallet Show is a show about questions. It’s about admitting that we don’t know everything, but that we’re willing to learn. Most of all, it’s about understanding as much as we can to make us all better investors. Phrases like, “I’m not sure” or, “Let me look that up and get back to you” or, “I don’t know” don’t exist in the financial services industry. If you ever had a financial question you were too embarrassed to ask, you know what we’re talking about. In this business, appearances matter, and nobody wants to seem like they don’t know how things work or what the outlook is for the buchu industry. It’s easy to excuse that little vanity, except that people in the investment industry are meant to service investors - people like you and me who need to figure out what to do with our money. There’s no such thing as a stupid question in this show. If you have unanswered financial questions, this is your opportunity to have them answered in a way that even I can understand. Pop them to us at ask@justonelap.com. Hosted by Kristia van Heerden and Simon Brown
RSS Feed Subscribe in Apple Podcasts
The Fat Wallet Show from Just One Lap
2021
March
February
January


2020
December
November
October
September
August
July
June
May
April
March
February
January


2019
December
November
October
September
August
July
June
May
April
March
February
January


2018
December
November
October
September
August
July
June
May
April
March
February
January


2017
December
November
October
September
August
July
June
May
April
March
February
January


2016
December
November
October
September
August
July
June
May


All Episodes
Archives
Now displaying: September, 2016
Sep 25, 2016

This podcast forces me to do an annoying amount of personal growth. This week I had to work out what I disliked more: being wrong or being irrational.

My early 20s was a haze of red wine and shopping on credit. In three short years I managed to rack up debt ten times my monthly income. If you’ve ever had debt you couldn’t honour, you know how terrifying that is. When I finally worked up the courage to tackle my debt, I developed a strong aversion to big corporations taking my money.

Cancelling my cell phone contract was one of the first things I did. Getting a new phone every two years was part of my consumer mindset. Naturally I didn’t want a manky-ass entry level phone either. Top of the range, baby, or nothing. What a moron I was.

Cancelling the contract saved me a huge amount of money. At the time I kept my airtime to a minimum and I started holding on to my phones and replacing them with second hand phones when needed. It was an important part of developing the financial discipline I needed to get out of debt.

It’s been three years since I settled my final debt. I stayed on prepaid, when along came Petrus Booyens, who apparently thought it was a good idea to ruin my life.* His calculations indicated it was more cost effective to get a contract to buy a new phone. “Surely not,” I thought right away. “If this is true, I’ve been wrong for a very long time, and that totes doesn’t sound like me.” Ha!

This podcast is me eating a huge serving of humble pie. Here are some of the incorrect assumptions I made about being on prepaid:

  • While I only budget R300 a month on airtime, in reality I spend on average R553 per month.
  • I remember the cost per minute being much lower on prepaid than contract when I researched this long ago. That either was never true, or it stopped being true since then.

Over a two-year period, I spend R29 178 on my phone. The three Vodacom contracts I looked at worked out to R27 816, R29 256 and R21 096 respectively. Only one contract is more expensive by R87, and that contract has 700 minutes of talk time, vs the roughly 200 I get in a month. Dogdarnit, Petrus. What did you do?

I hope I made a mistake somewhere and I’m wrong about being wrong about this. If I am, let me know at ask@justonelap.com.

Please also let me know what you think would happen if all the world suddenly paid off its debt. I’ve been obsessing over that question for nearly two weeks now. Drop some knowledge!

Kris

*I’m being hyperbolic for dramatic effect, Petrus. I’m actually very grateful that you wrote us.

Sep 18, 2016

WARNING: This episode contains some insipid moralising. Vomiting might ensue.

Please allow me a moment to be a little philosophical. It’s my birthday week. This can be your gift to me. Last week I featured the NewFunds NewSA ETF. It’s an ETF that invests in companies based on their empowerment ratings. As our bestie Nerina Visser points out in the article, the ETF has a few glitches. It’s over exposed to the local market, because locally-listed international companies aren’t required to be BBBEE compliant. The weighting methodology leads to problematic exposures. All things considered, it’s not the best investment choice.

However, it gives me the feels. I want to live in a country where the workforce reflects the demographics. It means 51% of the workforce would be women. You can guess why I care about that one. Black South Africans would make up 80% of every team. This really matters to me. Should my investments reflect that, even if it’s not the most rational financial choice?

I’d love your thoughts on this. Are you an ethical investor? Tell us at ask@justonelap.com.

Then, finally, we get to some questions we received after our retirement podcast. We consider two questions in this episode:

  1. If you only had R30 000 per year, should you put it in a tax-free account or a retirement annuity?
  2. Should you consider in-house products that don’t offer a tax benefit if the fees are really low?

If you love us, please tell iTunes

Kris

Sep 11, 2016

Fat Wallet listener Kennith Brand asked us to unpack the advantages and disadvantages of endowments. In this podcast, Simon and I try to wrap our heads around what these products are, why they’re offered by insurance companies and whether you should be putting your money in them. Regular listeners will be unsurprised to find that we end up in ETF territory without trying very hard.

I can see a world where endowments would be useful. If you struggle to keep your hands off your savings or investments, endowments could become a savings vehicle. However, opting for an expensive product with little transparency might not be the best way to address this issue.

I am a firm believer that your financial house should be in order before you start investing. You can’t grow your capital if you still have debt. You should have a financial fail-safe in place in case you become injured or disabled. You should have an emergency fund so you don’t have to sell your ETFs when you need money. Putting all of these things in place should help you develop the financial discipline you need to save towards a goal and to invest without needing to sell your investments.

Simon totally stole my thunder by doing a presentation on the basics of wealth creation like a boss, which is good, because he is my boss. I highly recommend you spend the hour.

Sep 4, 2016

It’s really great to be part of a community - especially when it’s a community of excellent individuals. While many didn’t love what we had to say in our homeownership podcast, almost all of the feedback was of the intelligent allow-me-to-disagree variety. There wasn’t even a light shanking. I am grateful. We should all hang out.

In this episode we go through all the counter-arguments and feedback. We also answer questions about shorter payback periods and cash purchases. The biggest criticism was failing to account for rental escalation and the inclusion of structural insurance in levies. Many people also pointed out that the situation would look very different if you paid your bond off over a shorter period. These are all excellent points, which I concede.

For all the comments and calculations go here.

Kristia

1