Ways to save

Decide on a figure - I want to save R100 every month, for example

Shop around for the best offers available in terms of minimum returns you can get:

- Important to consider interest rate, if you are going with a fixed term savings account

- Important to consider the fees, if you are going with a Retirement Annuity or buying unit trusts with the help of a brokerage firm

- Important to consider your will power as it will determine if you should go it alone or join a savings group that will help you stay on track as you avoid disappointing them by skipping on your savings.

You only need one other person who will keep you accountable to stay the course, and it cannot just be anyone, it must be someone you respect and would not want to disappoint

- What my friends & I did was we opened an account which had joint signatories and when we contributed, we sent proof of our contributions every month to the one we had elected to keep track of the contributions and every month this person would broadcast to the group a spreadsheet showing each person’s payment and the date they made it

Select the vehicle that will help you stick to your savings, based on what you have determined your will power to be:

- buy a unit trust and pay via debit order, the D/O will keep you honest

- Open a fixed term savings account and pay via stop order/recurring payment, the S/O or R/P will keep you honest

- Open a share trading account, transfer your savings, select what equity to invest in based on your investment strategy, and make that buy transaction. Your willpower needs to be strong for this one but you can use the recurring payment/stop order to transfer/pay into your trading account, but the implementation of the rest of the steps will be based on your due diligence and not wavering, but revising based on objective analysis of what is working or not working with your formulated strategy

- Join a Stokvel and make your contributions via stop order/recurring payment

If you make sure that your savings go off first, you truly implement the principle of paying yourself first.

Refer to my blog for ideas on how you can save and invest your savings in the context of the topic under discussion  Living below your means

Follow me on Twitter, Facebook, Goodreads
Email me on reubexg@gmail.com to order the books you see all over this blog

Her Heart R210.00
His Joy R160.00
Their Hope R185.00
Our Triumph R220.00
The Dry Tears of a Bleeding Child R200.00 for softback

If you are outside South Africa, visit my good reads profile, select the title you want and click the Amazon or Online store button for all the options

Thank you for reading!

Your comments are welcome.


Pictures sourced from pexels

Moral dilemma - a short story

She was sitting at her desk, punching away at the keyboard keys when he walked in. She looked up as the door to the office opened and saw that it was him. She blushed in an undetectable way. He cheerfully greeted everyone in the office and said something along the lines of "you choose blah blah blah..." She was not really listening to him but she watched him do his theatrics, while wearing a bemused expression. 

He was dressed casually, unusual for a Tuesday, because she had come to know him to dress up during the week. He only went casual on Fridays. He went about taking his work equipment out and laying it on his work-space. Then he walked over to her and gave her a friendly hug. He made a point to linger and prolong the contact of their bodies. As was now usual, her body came alive with sensations that only he could awaken in her. She longed to kiss him. To discover for herself what that would feel like. She wished everyone could just disappear but alas, that was not to be.

"What's got into you?" began the tirade of questions that always followed similar episodes in the past.

"He is a married man. And who says he is even into you?"

Nevertheless these guilt-ridden questions did little to deter the desires of her heart. She wanted this man even though she could not understand why. He was not exactly her type. Not that she had one, but married-with-kids would not be one if she had.

She was feeling under the weather, but in her desire to answer to her baser urges, she seemed to have no qualms about spreading her germs, sharing them with this man in a saliva infused dance of their lips and tongues. 

These thoughts scandalised her, because she had never been one to think positively or even remotely favourably towards french kissing. Yet here she was dreaming about such a kiss with some other woman's husband.

She had to attend a meeting with her other colleagues, so when they started shuffling out of the office to the meeting venue, she reluctantly followed suit. He was standing by the door, laughing while ushering everyone out. She could not even remember what had started the hilarity. He made sure to touch her arm as she passed him. He was certainly sending her a message that he was drawn to her, or at least that was what she thought.

Perhaps in the past she might have done something to discourage him, but he was laying the groundwork to immoralise her.

The week that was the prelude to the long Easter weekend, on that Thursday afternoon, as they were leaving to go home, he insisted that she take a lift with him to her car. She wasn't parked very far, but it was raining and his car was closer.

So she obliged him, after-all being with him gave her such pleasure that she was secretly pleased to prolong it. He drove his car the short distance to hers and took the empty parking immediately to the right of her car. 

They sat and talked, and while they did that, he opened a bottle of red wine, which happened to be in his car. She, not being a fan of alcohol, expected this discovery to break some of the chains he had enlaced around her proverbial heart, and endear him less to her.

He used her water, to rinse a glass into which he poured the wine and started drinking. She couldn't get over how handsome she found him. Sitting there, laughing or smiling. She told him she wanted to kiss him and he said she had his permission.

She brought her face to his, and he leaned towards the passenger seat, and their lips met. She was steeling herself for the repulsive smell of alcohol from his breath, which never came. At the back of her mind she worried about getting the urge to hurl and offending him. The urge never came. Instead, the sweetest interlude of lips happened.

This, being a first kiss where she was a willing participant, was unlike anything she could ever have had words to describe. It created a mind shift. Caused her to view kissing more favourably. She loved kissing him. She wanted to kiss him some more, but she didn't want to appear overzealous.

She asked him why she could not smell the wine on his breath, and he said it was because he knew what to drink. He alluded to this knowledge of what to drink drawing forth from his many years of drinking. She brought her nose close to his mouth to smell it, and she caught a gentle whiff which was not offensive to her at all.

He stole a brief kiss from her while her nose was leaning in to smell his breath. Her mind was racing a mile a minute. Analysing. Speculating. Postulating. Wondering what was happening to her when she was around this man, that things that once repelled her were not, when he was doing them.

She wondered if she was losing the essence of herself in him. She was becoming amorous with him, when she had never been so with anyone in the thirty-seven years of her life. Or maybe we could say in the twenty-four years since becoming a teenager.

She had often found it difficult to understand why, women seemed to act and make weak decisions, when it came to men. Now she was eating humble pie, because she not only understood, but was subject to the same faulty logic now.

When the rain had stopped, she thought it wise to jump out to her car, but still she didn't. She found herself not wanting to leave this wonderful love cove they were having in his car. She kissed him again and kept it brief, then she opened the door and got out before she could change her mind. He needed to go and so did she.

***

Follow me on Twitter, Facebook, Goodreads
Email me on reubexg@gmail.com to order the books you see all over this blog

Her Heart R210.00
His Joy R160.00
Their Hope R185.00
Our Triumph R220.00
The Dry Tears of a Bleeding Child R200.00 for softback

If you are outside South Africa, visit my good reads profile, select the title you want and click the Amazon or Online store button for all the options

Thank you for reading!

Your comments are welcome.

Pictures sourced from pexels

To Frugal or Not To Frugal?

Someone on twitter expressed an opinion contrary to what I believe this other week.

I will paraphrase what they said...

They alluded to the notion that living below your means would not lead to financial freedom because people are insufficiently paid.

This person has a point. People are underpaid, that is true.

But what is also true is that there are people who are reasonably paid too but they are not financially free either as indicated by this tweet https://twitter.com/Linda_Khuz/status/1214884517800038400

It has often come to light that people who earn little can make their money stretch better than those who earn more than them.

Case in point https://twitter.com/CassidayJacobs/status/1226038549042147329

So this means that earnings are not the issue.

This also means that this person's reasoning about frugality not bearing fruit is not reasonable either.

I will use myself as an example here:

When I started working in 2004 I earned the kind of money that could allow me to go to the movies as often as I wanted during the month.

I was grossing R7k and I was paying 7.5 % of the gross towards my pension and had medical aid costing about R0.7k which was subsidised by my employer, in part, to result in me paying about R0.3k, if I remember the amounts correctly but they were around there.

I qualified for credit in clothing stores.

I could buy household appliances & furniture on higher purchase.

I did none of that.

I opted to buy lunch only when I had not had a chance to grocery shop, which happened if I had to work overtime.

I bought clothes and shoes that I could afford cash and saved before buying them, I mainly bought clothes appropriate for work so I never had nice clothes outside of those my sister bought me out of the generosity of her heart, which she bought with a clothing store credit that I often berated her for having. I did not want to make her feel bad but I discouraged her often from buying me clothes with her credit and helped her to pay them off. I even paid them off to encourage her to close them down.

I did however have to get into debt to buy a car as my employer had stipulated own transportation in my employment contract.

In 2008 when I bought my first property for less than what I qualified for & it was not a new development, I had money to defray the transfer and bond costs of about R12k from the savings I had accumulated by not doing any of the above.

I was also able to buy my very first fridge and bed cash, the fridge cost me R7k and the bed R5k. In 2016 I bought my first sofa cash (seats 4 & is brown leather) for R13k.

Today I am not financially free, but I am well on my way as I have to date:

1. 1 paid up property
2. 1 rental property that has a tenant who pays on time financed by a second bond
3. 2 investment portfolios of about R150k & R120.k respectively, current market value notwithstanding, which give me dividend payments or varying amounts and percentages throughout the year. I started the first portfolio in 2013, the second in 2017
4. A TFSA account
5. A pension preservation fund
6. A retirement annuity that I started in 2009 paying R0.5k increasing by 10% annually
7. A matured unit trust I had with Sanlam for 5 years which amounted to just a little over R100k when it matured in 2014, giving me a mere R5k growth from my capital contributions that started at R1.5k and increased annually by 10%
8. A silver Mandela coin which I bought for R27k in 2013 from savings collected over the 12 months of 2012 as part of a savings group
9. 4 unit trusts I started in 2013, one of them financed by the savings collected over the 12 months of 2012 and 10 months of 2013
   
10. 2 notice deposit accounts for myself and 1 for the tenant's deposit that are earning 9% pa

So what then is the problem?

I see it this way;

People will always aim to spend what they have, some even aim to spend more if they are able to spend what others have, by borrowing from friends and family, clothing stores that offer credit, food stores that offer credit, and even banks.

Credit should be used to leverage, not to fill a gap created by frivolous spending because the person who is spending is seemingly able to absorb this cost because they can always use the credit card or borrow transport money from their close relations.

You are also spending all the income you are generating because your mindset tells you that you must spend all that you earn because:

• You worry about losing your money if you don't spend it.
• You recite philosophies such as "Money is earned to be spent", "You only live once", "Reward yourself so that you won't be bitter about having to work so hard" etc...
• All these mantras rob you of the mindset required to prepare for a future you clearly desire, I mean no one wants to die young, and can reasonably ascertain by the choices you make throughout your life.

The solution is not to look at what you earn, but why it is that you insist on spending every penny that is accessible to you.

If you are already underpaid, you are finding ways to supplement that income if it does not reach the end of the month. If you are borrowing from close relations, this is not a sustainable solution.

Start something while you keep employing this temporary solution so that later you can employ a more sustainable one and stop borrowing from your loved ones.

To be able to do that, you need a lump sum.

To build a lump sum you need to give up something in your life that you consider a thing that you reward yourself with.

This giving up is only until such time that you have build your lump sum and can start entering spaces previously closed to you due to the absence of some financial leverage.

It may take several years but you can alternate months that you are doing the giving up so that you do not go completely cold turkey until you are ready. As you see the benefit of doing this, it will become easier to make the decision to do without other things that you will identify as well.

If you consider that you are living below the poverty line with your minimum wage of R3.2k, if your aim is to expend that entire R3.2k, you can still do so and save a portion of it

What you do is include your saving as an expense that is included in what you are spending, i.e. R3.2k

Refer to my blog for ideas on how you can save and invest your savings in the context of the topic under discussion  Living below your means

Follow me on Twitter, Facebook, Goodreads
Email me on reubexg@gmail.com to order the books you see all over this blog

Her Heart R210.00
His Joy R160.00
Their Hope R185.00
Our Triumph R220.00
The Dry Tears of a Bleeding Child R200.00 for softback

Chulumanco R140.00

If you are outside South Africa, visit my good reads profile, select the title you want and click the Amazon or Online store button for all the options

Thank you for reading!

Your comments are welcome.

Pictures sourced from pexels

What of these strategies they go on and on about?

Investment strategies are an investor's guiding principle.

They help the investor know what to invest in, and where they would like their investment efforts to take them. They fortify the investor's resolution when they begin to waver, because the market is going through scary a downturn.

They provide the confidence to speak authoritatively about one's investment efforts, and resultant portfolio composition.

Formulating an investment strategy is a personal undertaking. You may outsource it to someone, but that might mean you don't know your own compass, and you wander aimlessly in the investment galaxy.

There are countless blogs about how to formulate strategies and this blog will not rehash a topic so many have discussed to exhaustion. You can read here about Investment Strategies and Speculation as a strategy

I will discuss strategies I have adopted and adapted for my financial needs and goals, therefore, I have some understanding thereof.

Asset allocation is a strategy that looks at spreading one's investment resources across all known and available assets classes, in percentages that are aligned to the investor's goals, and risk appetite, taking into account one's dynamic circumstances over time.
The advantages of this strategy are that your portfolio benefits from the stability of a well diversified position. In seasons of poor performance by some industries, the thriving industries are there to help your nerves, while you ride out the storm. You become a less volatile investor.

I have investments covering most, if not all asset classes, and within each asset class I have sub-strategies.

My equities sub-strategy is income based, meaning that I prioritise shares that pay regular dividend, and I use the dividends to speculate on shares with price volatility and high liquidity, where the aim is to buy low and sell high. 

• price volatility denotes frequent up and down movements of the share price
• liquidity denotes shares that always have buyers and sellers throughout the day's trade

As you can see, this means a small percentage of my overall portfolio is speculative. Timing the market is a gambler's pastime and I use it to inject some life and adrenaline into my veins, otherwise the monotony of the other strategy, in between dividend payments, would be sleep-inducing.

So the speculative side of things involves deciding on a percentage of price appreciation from your entry point to lock your gains and look for the new one to speculate, meaning that you won't try to guess the bottomed out price or the bubble bursting point, and even when you decide to enter you look at where the share price is sitting, relative to the highest and lowest price in the preceding 12 months, and what the split is between the buy and sell offers on the market. 

This is the selection criteria after doing your due diligence on the fundamental aspects of the company you wish to speculate the price thereof. This strategy also takes into account the income element of the share under consideration, as even in speculation it can happen that you need to hold long before you achieve your stipulated lock gains percentage, so during the wait there should still be gains made.

The income side of it involves deciding what minimum dividend yield I want, based on the type of shares on offer. It means checking the historical dividends and their frequency, the growth rate and whether the dividend is cumulative or not.

Get my book and learn about how I formulated these strategies, it's called Senyethe

Buy my other books, as seen on the background image of this blog by emailing reubexg@gmail.com

Her Heart R210.00
His Joy R160.00
Their Hope R185.00
Our Triumph R220.00
All 4 R610.00
Cost of delivery is R50.00 via PAXI or R99.00 via Aramex which delivers to your door (within ZA)

Thank you for reading. Comments and questions are welcome.

Images I use on my blog are found on this website.