Tax is probably the only thing I managed to get right about my finances when I first started working. I had no idea what was going on, but I was sufficiently scared of the government to pay someone else to deal with it. The R800 rebate I got that year might as well have been ...

Education is a tough nut to crack. It’s an investment, to be sure, but just like any other investment, the rewards need to outweigh the risks. Unlike other investments, however, risk and reward are extremely difficult to measure in education. Private school kids could be doing better later in life because of their education or ...

That’s a wrap, folks! 2018 had a lot to teach us and none of it pleasant. In this episode Simon and I talk about some of the assumptions we have to challenge after this year. Mine borders on cynical: doing things by the book doesn’t always get you ahead. Nothing like buying a house to ...

In finance, more options are always better. The more competition there is, the lower prices tend to go. With three new banks entering the market, we are sure to see banking costs come down. Is that reason enough to change banks? In this episode of The Fat Wallet Show, we consider when it’s a good ...

View this post on Instagram Ever stoic, producer Squack waits for @simon_brown_za and I to get down to it. Double episode recording today, fuelled by strong coffee and many questions around RAs. . . . #fatwallet #podcast #justonelap #investing #retirement #squackthecat A post shared by Kristia Van Heerden (@fatwalletkris) on Nov 16, 2017 at 8:42am ...

Sorting out money between partners can be fraught, but it's a walk in the park compared to parents and siblings. We spend our formative years trying to secure the love and acceptance of the very people who we now have to say "no" to, which is why we are Money Enemy Number One. Your best ...

The world has gone mad with talk of a bear market. As someone whose experience of a bull market has to do with how much bullshit it is that the market makes money, facing a bear market seems especially unfair. In this episode we discuss what a bear market is, what it would look like ...

There’s nothing intuitive about the stock market. Most of what we discuss on this show relies on a basic grasp of the stock market, which is possibly asking too much. Every year I learn something new about the market. When I do, I get this horrible sense that everyone else already knew that and thinks ...

I blame the advertising industry for the idea that living a good life is somehow related to money. If we don’t think about what we want our money to do, we’re living someone else’s idea of a great life