A road trip to financial freedom
Resources for the journey to financial freedom
The best tools, calculators, infographics, blogs and courses that I’ve come across on my journey to financial freedom.
Buy vs let calculator
A great buy vs let calculator when you can’t decide whether to buy your first property or continue renting. On top of that, this top-quality blog covers a whole range of investment topics.
Personal finance blog
This personal finance blog is by Maya Fisher-French, a veteran in investigating money issues relevant to South Africans.
Veterinarian turned financial adviser, Pieter Marx de Villiers, has a refreshing and authentic YouTube Channel covering a wide variety of personal finance and investment topics. Lots of practical information to help you make decisions.
Also, for daily tips on personal finance, stocks and long-term investing, make sure to follow @mommy_moneyza and @EMukumbo
Best interest rate
This is where I go when I need to find the best possible guaranteed interest rate for my mother, who is a conservative investor. I also use it for myself when I need to invest money for a specific use 2 or 3 years down the line - like building or renovations or a new car.
Tax-free savings tool
Use this tax-free savings tool to find out how much tax you save when you choose a tax-free unit trust instead of a standard one. If you want to invest in, say, any balanced fund (Allan gray, Satrix, etc) select the M&G Balanced Fund in the drop-down box. The tax-saving result is similar for all SA balanced funds.
Tax calculators
This is a relatively new site by Walter, who is also the owner and creator of RateCompare. It answers the most common tax questions South Africans ask, and also has a few great interactive tax calculators.
Retirement tool
Under review
In 2017 PPS launched an excellent reirement tool to calculate whether you’ve saved enough for retirement. Sadly, this is no longer available to the public. Discovery briefly had a good online calculator too, but their new version is too inflexible for the FIRE community, so I'll do a comparison of the latest and greatest retirement tools early in 2021. In principle, avoid previous-generation retirement calculators, such as Old Mutual's, that assume you're aiming for 75-100% of your salary income in retirement, ignoring people who are living well below their means and may need only 50% of their salary level after retirement and want to retire before age 55.
Compound interest calculator
Just ignore the dollar sign. This compound interest calculator works just as well for rands. ‘Principal’ is just another word for the capital you’ll be investing.
Unit trust fund comparison
A comparison of unit trusts preferred by a selection of top financial advisers. Compare the funds in terms of the fees they charge, how they are rated by 3rd-party ratings agency Fundhouse and see which are the competitors in specific fund categories.
Everything ETFs
Kristia and Simon are doing a phenomenal job introducing exchange traded funds - ETFs - to the public.
Retirement annuity and tax relief infographic
If you're a high income tax payer, you can save a substantial amount of tax every year by contributing to your private retirement annuity (RA) - aim for saving at least 15% of your income. This infographic shows the tax relief on an RA for someone earning R250 000, R500 000 and R1 million per year respectively. There are more tax benefits to an RA than the annual refund, though. More on all the tax aspects here.
Free online money management course
Some facts only apply in the US, but overall this online money management course is very useful. These guys make an effort to make a very dry topic come to life.
Financial life coaching
I did financial life coach Mary's Money Mastery 6-month course and was amazed at how my money and energy started flowing towards my life purpose.
Kim is a financial planner and established life coach who can shed some light on the blind spots we have in our relationship with money.
MBA graduate graduate and yoga teacher Vangile looks at both the left- and right-brain activity needed to build a positive relationship with money. She can also help to heal ancestral money stories.