Plain-English guides on compound interest, bond repayment, personal loans, debt payoff strategies, take-home salary, and the two-pot retirement system — with worked examples and real South African numbers.
25 Sept 2026
Packing up and leaving does not hand you your retirement savings on the way out. Pension and provident funds follow the same rules they always did, and a retirement annuity only opens up once you have been a non-resident for three uninterrupted years.
Read more →22 Sept 2026
One annuity type hands the investment risk to you. The other hands it to an insurer. Here is what actually separates a living annuity from a guaranteed annuity, and how to weigh them.
Read more →21 Sept 2026
Applying for a two-pot withdrawal isn't the fund paying you out directly. SARS has to approve a tax directive first, and the amount that lands in your account depends on a calculation most people never see explained.
Read more →19 Sept 2026
Leaving a job means a decision about your retirement fund, whether anyone tells you that clearly or not. A preservation fund is the option that keeps the money growing without handing SARS a large tax bill today.
Read more →17 Sept 2026
SARS lets you deduct retirement annuity contributions from taxable income, but the deduction is not the same as the saving. What it is actually worth depends on your marginal tax rate.
Read more →15 Sept 2026
Retirement funds in South Africa work off a replacement ratio, not a round number. Here is how to turn your own salary into a target, and what it takes to get there.
Read more →13 Sept 2026
All three get you the same tax deduction going in. What actually separates a pension fund, a provident fund, and a retirement annuity is who controls the fund and what happens to your money when you retire.
Read more →12 Sept 2026
A tax-free savings account lets your growth escape tax entirely, but the account you pick underneath it, a bank deposit or a unit trust, changes what that growth actually looks like.
Read more →23 Aug 2026
A dealer will always find you a monthly instalment that fits. Whether that instalment fits your actual budget is a different question, and it is the one worth answering first.
Read more →15 Aug 2026
Credit is easy to get in South Africa and easy to misjudge. Debt is not the enemy, borrowing without understanding the terms is. Here is what actually matters before you sign.
Read more →08 Aug 2026
A better rate at a different bank looks like free money on paper. Whether it is worth the switch depends on the size of the gap, the size of your balance, and what you give up by moving.
Read more →26 Jul 2026
Under the two-pot system you get a real choice every year: take money out of your savings pot now, or leave it to keep growing. Both paths have consequences that only show up properly over a decade or two.
Read more →17 Jul 2026
There is a version of your financial life where the rate goes up, the income drops, or the job disappears. Running those scenarios now costs you nothing. Not running them can cost you everything.
Read more →12 Jul 2026
Every debt you clear is a recurring thought you stop having. The mental load of owing money is real, and it lifts, piece by piece, as the accounts close.
Read more →05 Jul 2026
Most people use a financial calculator once, get a number, and move on. The ones who get the most out of them never stop at the first answer, they ask what happens if everything changes.
Read more →09 Jun 2026
Since 1 September 2024, South Africa's retirement funds are split into two pots. One you can dip into before retirement. The other you cannot. Here is how both work.
Read more →05 Jun 2026
A gross salary is not what lands in your bank account. SARS income tax, UIF, and pension contributions all come off first. Here is how to work out the real number.
Read more →02 Jun 2026
The bond repayment is only part of what owning property costs you. Transfer duty, registration fees, and monthly levies and rates can add hundreds of thousands of rand to the total, before you consider interest.
Read more →29 May 2026
When you've got more than one debt, the order you attack them in changes how much total interest you pay, and how it feels along the way. Here's how the two main strategies compare.
Read more →26 May 2026
Over a standard 20-year term, the bank can end up charging close to as much interest as you borrowed. Extra monthly payments and lump sums are the two levers that change that.
Read more →22 May 2026
A personal loan is a fixed monthly instalment until you change something. Paying extra each month, or dropping in a lump sum, changes the amount of interest the lender ever gets to charge.
Read more →19 May 2026
Two accounts advertising 9% can grow at different speeds. One compounds monthly, one annually, and the headline rate doesn't tell you which pays more. Effective annual rate does.
Read more →15 May 2026
Compound interest means earning interest on your interest, not just on your original deposit. That one distinction is responsible for almost all long-term wealth growth.
Read more →12 May 2026
A compound interest calculator answers one question fast: how big does this get if I leave it alone? Here is how to read the inputs and the result.
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