Category Archives: Financial Independence

Welcome to 2018, it’s a new year with new opportunities. Sadly Donald Trump is still the president of the USA, and in South Africa, we still have President Gupta at the helm but hopefully that will all change soon.

When looking ahead to a new year I always like to consider what I learnt in the last, so here are my top 7 money lessons from last year:

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Once upon a time there were two boys living in the vibrant city of Johannesburg. The boys were best friends, and did everything together.

Unlike the last time I compared two very similar people these two boys were similar in practically every way. They were both sporty, very smart and both just obtained tech degrees. There was just one difference, Chris absolutely loved cars, while Mike thought they were only fun on his PlayStation.

Now this story is going to have a lot of numbers in it, and as it takes place over a working lifetime, we need to deal with the inflation problem. There are two ways to do this.

1. The hard way, which means you have to constantly convert back and forth between today’s money and the inflated money. This is a lot of work, and you often end up with numbers which can’t be understood; or
2. The easy way, to simply take inflation out of the picture. This means you don’t count it in price increases over time, but you also don’t count it in investment returns. It makes the calculations much easier for me, and should make the numbers more meaningful for you. A complete win win for once!

On to the story.

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Like many people nearing the end of their working career, Andre and Lisa can’t wait to travel the world when they retire next year. Unlike most though, they won’t be enjoying any pensioner discounts along the way. That’s because Andre will be just 46 years old, and Lisa practically a teenager at 36!

When most people hear this they generally assume that the couple have either inherited money, got a BEE deal, or lived a totally dull life and never left the house so they wouldn’t spend any money. But this couple have had none of that luck, and as you’ll see a little further on and in the slideshow at the bottom of this post, they most definitely haven’t spent their time sitting at home eating beans and rice by candlelight.

Of course I had plenty of questions for them, and thankfully Andre was kind enough to answer, and boy did he answer well.

You’ll want to read this interview!

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Dear Investor Challenge

I love my job, it’s easily the best thing since the slow motion running scenes on Baywatch. I love the office politics and the free food I get during the endless hours of meetings discussing nothing in particular, and the hours spent behind my desk trying to find the balance between actual productivity and complete boredom.

I’m just scared that eventually I’ll have too much money and won’t need to go in to work every day. Once my wife sees that, she’ll definitely want me to retire, and that will mean I’ll go from being the big man at the office, to replacing her handbag yorkie taking instructions, all day long.

My days will then be spent getting dragged around Mr Price Home trying to decide which of the two identical shades of blue towels would best match our guest bathroom, and cleaning my perfectly disorganised garage so that it has space for the treadmill my wife has recently developed an allergy to.

All this while being called Schmoopie is already too much, but it will also almost certainly mean I won’t be able to get drunk at the annual Christmas party, and flirt with my inappropriately young secretary.

Is there any way I can avoid this disastrous chain of events from becoming a reality?

Schmoopie

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