I bought my Huyndai Atos at a time when I seriously couldn’t afford to buy a new car. Between 0km and about 50 000km I only serviced it once, because it was as young and invincible as I was at 24. I still find it miraculous that we both managed to survive that time of my life relatively unscathed.
It pains me to say that perhaps the end might be looming for my dear Atos. I can remove the key from the ignition while the car is running and nothing happens. I’m told this is not normal. Thankfully my Atos and I have matured together. I’m hoping to get three more years out of the old so and so before buying a new car. I want to spend that time saving for a new one.
If my portfolio performance over the past three years is anything to go by, the stock market isn’t the place to save for a new car. With a short investment horizon, what is the best way to save?
In this episode of The Fat Wallet Show, I masterfully manipulate Simon into telling me what I want to hear. It’s true. Listen for yourself.
Send your pressing money and investment questions to ask@justonelap.com. I’ll see if I can do it again.
Kris
I hate the legwork that goes into making decisions about insurance and medical aid. Imagine, then, my delight when Wesley Amos asked me to do a show on choosing a medical aid. I procrastinated for a while, but then my friend Amy added her voice to the chorus. Et tu, Amy?
@kristiavh please look at doing a show based on medial aids cause this is a huge cost for most people some spending more on this than on RA
— Wesley Amos (@wba1310) October 24, 2016
This week we forego some of the feedback and attempt to give Wesley and Amy a base to work from. There are actually a few local medical aid comparison sites that help you choose between different funds and options. I liked this one. However, they won’t be of much use if you don’t know what to look for.
A photo posted by Kristia Van Heerden (@k_r_isis) on Nov 17, 2016 at 2:33am PST
The strategy I came up with is simple: start with cover for whatever is most life-threatening and build from there until you run out of budget. I am a happy taxpayer, but watching my grandmother ail and finally die in a public hospital with minimal care has impressed upon me the importance of access to well-staffed, well-funded medical services. Nothing like actual, literal death to bring that little lesson home.
Because I abhor the idea of doing the paperwork to change medical schemes, I make sure that I make the most of the plan I have. For example, for some reason it’s perfectly acceptable for medical aids to make you pay for your medical care from your savings account and your pocket until you reach a certain amount before jumping in. It’s a fuckery I don’t understand, but I take it very seriously. Every medical transaction is a bullfight. Come at me, bro.
The worst part of the whole medical aid business is watching myself get slowly screwed over the years. I received the annual “benefit and contribution changes” email at the beginning of November. Not only will my contribution go up by 12.5% per month next year, my out of hospital benefit has been scrapped, my threshold level has been increased, reimbursement rates have halved, prescribed medication limits have decreased. The list goes on and on. It’s death by a thousand papercuts for which you can receive no medical attention because you can’t afford it.
This show is a reminder that world is a crazy, cruel place. If you’re looking for places to storm, start with your medical aid headquarters.
This week’s episode is a little like The Twilight Zone. By sheer fluke, we received three questions from two Chrises and a Christo. While the questions aren’t related to each other, by the end of the episode Simon and I realise that the entire episode is about one thing: having a plan.
With a new year comes new financial decisions. People are changing jobs, moving house and rethinking medical aid and retirement funds. I’m in two minds about my own portfolio. In March I bought Simon’s Momentum Portfolio, but I don’t love the mess of individual shares. ETF methodology makes more sense to me and I know ETFs take care of themselves.
My foray into individual share investing made me realise my portfolio really needs a strategy. Currently I’m all about the equities, with a light splattering of property. Come the new financial year, I want to start balancing out my portfolio.
We are launching ETF baskets soon. The baskets will offer a guide for investors looking for ETF suggestions based on their investment time horizon. Because I fancy myself a young'un, I’ll be going for the aggressive portfolio. I need to up my property exposure, which I’ll do within my tax free account. I also need to invest some money locally. Currently my money is mostly in x-trackers. I used to like that, but Donald Trump and Deutsche Bank and hell in a handbasket.
The basket I'll be looking at has 40% exposure to the CoreShares Equally-Weighted Top 40, 40% in db x-tracker World and 20% in the CoreShares Proptrax Ten. Because I'm a smart-ass, I'll probably end up doing 40% in CoreShares' new offshore property ETF since I already have most of my portfolio in DBXWD, 40% in the equally-weighted 40 and 20% into bonds, because bonds excite me.
Come to think of it, perhaps I should cash the whole thing in and spend the end of days on a boat.
Simon is back from holiday and all is well with the world again. In this episode we catch up on some of the feedback and questions we received over the past two weeks. Coincidentally all of the questions we didn’t get to were submitted by people named Chris. Next week we’ll do a Chris episode - a Christening, if you will.
In the episode I mention that both David Pretorius and Alec Viljoen recommended I try investing.com for free data. What both of them failed to mention is the aggressive sales call that followed my registration on the site.
5 missed calls from the UK over 2 days. My imagination flies. I finally get to answer. Telesales. pic.twitter.com/qaUHggmAqj
— Kristia van Heerden (@kristiavh) November 3, 2016You know it’s a sales call, because the person on the other end says, “Thank you for asking” when you ask them how they are. This person also asked me if I don’t trade because I don’t like money. I can’t make this stuff up.
We also delve into how private placements work, how they differ from public offerings and what this means for people like us.