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Hi all, I recently wanted to compare fixed deposit rates across different banks. I realised that there is no such thing as a quick comparison of the fixed deposit rates. Sites like mytreasury.co.za and hippo.co.za require contact details (& they ended up sales calling me - arghh) & only give a partial view. So I ended up going to each banking website. Some banks quote nominal rates. Others effective (yay for effective annual rates), others simple interest and then others come up with their own terminology. Frustrating. Anyway, it took me a while, but I ended up understanding what the banks are quoting on their website & converted all the rates to effective rates. Here are the results of my findings, which have been made public at www.ratecompare.co.za. Best 3 month rates - African Bank & Discovery Best 6 month rates - African Bank, Discovery, Capitec Best 12 month - African Bank, Sasfin, Discovery Best 2 year - African Bank & SA Retail Bonds Best 3 year Sasfin & SA Retail, Capitec Best 5 year - African Bank, SA Retail and Capitec

/does happy dance: https://www.sharenet.co.za/free/sens/disp_news.phtml?tdate=20191031100000&seq=22&scheme=default

Well, some "big dividends" for PTXTEN came in today - a special final dividend payout up until the date it changed to CSPROP it seems. And this one is substantially larger than last month's payout!

It's hard to know which local ETFs are best to invest in. At least with the offshore ones, ASHGEQ or STXWDM are no-brainers and either of them serves as excellent all-rounders. But locally, we don't get "All-rounders" of the same quality. Your Top40 and Top50 ETFs are market capped and you end up having 70% of your money in four or five shares, which is certainly not great. Then, there are the myriad of smart beta ETFs, each claiming to have a better methodology than the rest, but all untested. So for now, with my local ETFs, I have one third of my local portion of my TFIA in the new multi-factor SMART, one third in the momentum methodology NFEMOM and a third in quality shares with great fundamentals (STXQUA). But if you had to choose just one (or two) local ETFs, what would it be and why?

Ok so I had some spare time. Browsed through all the SA banks' websites, scraped their fixed deposit rates, read the fine print and converted them to effective annual rates. I have made this research public & now you can see all of SA's fixed deposit rates on offer at https://www.ratecompare.co.za . I plan to update the rates on a monthly basis. Comments welcome for other banks to add or any feedback in general. I hope someone can draw value from this!

@Bandit - thanks . Jack has been addressed & now features a light colour.

ASHGEQ or STXWDM - 65% SMART or CTOP50 - 35% That's if I had to have local exposure. Else I would just go 100% ASHGEQ. That's very simple.

You as an individual cannot open a pension fund. The company you work for can. As an individual, you can open an RA. RA - matures at retirement age. You'll then be able to buy an annuity with it which will provide you with income. Other than that, the only way to get money out of an RA is to formally emigrate or you have to prove that you'll basically die if that money doesn't become available (I've only heard of this, can imagine that it is borderline impossible). Pension - when you leave your current place of employment you'll have four options: Take the Pension money and move it into an RA Move the pension money to your new employer's pension fund Take the money and run (you'll pay tax on it) Move it to a preservation fund Preservation fund uses the same type of funds (regulation 28) as your pension and RA does, however you have the option of withdrawing from the fund once before retirement. Not sure if that restriction is per fund or per tax entity (you). Personally, I have a pension fund at 10x and an RA at Allan Gray. When I leave my current place of employment I will move my pension to a preservation fund. If I had to start an RA and only have one - 10x.

Hi guys. I have an appointment tomorrow morning, to finally get my will drafted. (Free of charge) Just want to say thanks for the help and guidance.

It was a tough choice between Discovery Bank and FNB, because I have posted before asking about ebucks and we have quite a few threads about it. I did set out to open an FNB account, but had endless hassles online and it ultimately required me to go into a branch so they are out - I do not want to rely on a branch in 2020 for banking. I then decided oh well let's give Discovery Bank a try, maybe I get a good deal from Virgin Active from this exercise, because make no mistake they (Discovery) are the most expensive bank in SA. Here is a link to all the accounts available on Discovery. If you read this thread, pop over to this FNB vs Discovery Bank thread first to see some of the pros and cons of each and whilst you are at it there is a great thread about FNB's Ebucks as well to give further insight in what is available in the South African banking landscape today in terms of rewards and loyalty programs. Anyway to get back to the point I'll try to write this the same as I did for the How to open a TymeBank Bank Account thread. Speaking of Tymebank to open a Discovery Bank account was relatively straight forward, but nothing compares to Tymebank that process is smooth and quick it took me less than 5 minutes to open a Tymebank account, it took about an hour fiddling with files and setting up syncing etc to get everything ready for the FICA process of Discovery, I will get to that in a moment. How to open a Discovery Bank Account Step 1: Register on this page (it won't work if you go straight to the app, you'll sit in a queue) - where the button says leave your details, fill that in. You will then receive instructions with a formatting issue telling you to go login on the app. Step 2: Download the Discovery Bank app and then login using the ID Number you registered with in Step 1. Step 3: Follow the instructions to FICA your account and you are done. When you do Step 3 they will ask you for various documents which you need to upload from your phone (there is no website just an app) this means you need to make sure those files are on your phone. In my case I logged on to Rawson on the PC and downloaded my latest Invoice and Lease Agreement. I then uploaded that to dropbox and I then downloaded and synced dropbox with my phone, but the Discovery App cannot access dropbox, so you need to go to dropbox on your phone and then "export" the pdfs to your phone (save it to the device) then it should sit in your phone's download folder, you can then through the Discovery Bank app navigate to your downloads folder and upload the files. I did the same for my Capitec bank statements. I logged into Capitec on the website and then downloaded the last 3 months worth of bank statements and then synced it to my phone through dropbox and exported it to enable Discovery's app to access it. Once that schlep is done you should get an SMS and E-mail to welcome you. I received a call from the courier company about 3 hours later confirming my delivery address, because they will deliver your Discovery Credit Card to you. There is the option for you to collect it as well, but I am paying them R400 per month so I ticked the "deliver it" option even though the bank's office is down the road - sorry, not sorry. Notes: There is ZERO website - I do not know what on earth they are thinking and I am not a predictions man, but I am fairly sure South Africa is not ready for a "App only" bank not in Infrastructure to make that happen and most certainly not in education and access (expensive data, limited coverage and cost of beefy "capable of driving a bloated banking app" phones.) Besides the "infrastructure" shortfall there is also the compromise angle - Alternatives exist so why would I want to use the app to pull and print statements when I can log onto Capitec or FNB on the website and do a lot more administrative tasks more efficiently. This comes back to earlier about Tymebank, they are an App based bank, but when you want to make use of power features and do administrative tasks the website is there and your PC is connected to the printer and have excel on it to pull your CSVs into - Goodluck trying to do that with discovery without going through a whole process between devices and using third party apps to sync it all. Like @SimonPB would say "make no bones about it" this app only approach will make it more difficult for less technologically-adept customers to print out bank statements and facilitate transactions. Concerns: I found quite a few formatting issues and some bugs (screen would freeze if you navigate between transactions and pay) I reported this to them, but have not gotten anything back and they don't respond to it on twitter either. Normally that won't bother me, but if you are going to be an expensive bank without any physical presence then I expect you to be around 24 / 7. The app is also sluggish, but I suspect that is due to latency since it appears they use AWS as well. Overall my entire experience with Discovery Banking so far is perfectly summed up by @Bandit With that said one thing I am excited about (as a Discovery shareholder) is the fact that Discovery (JSE DSY) now have a key insight into all aspects of our lives from health and insurance all the way to banking. This should in theory put Discovery in a position to do incredibly advance psychometric analysis on its users and map psychological traits for risk evaluation. As someone with a very keen interest in behavioral psychology this aspect fascinates me especially when it comes to credit facilities because with the transactional banking data Discovery can now create a far more accurate risk assessment based on who you really are not what you have done in the past. Bonus: Here's some screenshots of the app

I suppose it is easy for a Capitec client to be impressed... /runs

Very nice, some feedback though: .... I can't see Jack.

If I had to do a simple long term low-maintenance portfolio for my child, I'd probably do: Local (40%): 20% STX40 20% SMART Offshore: (40%) 40% ASHGEQ Property: (20%) PTXTEN 20%

Hi Guys and Girls : question 1) your opinion on best all round ETF combination for your child’s minor East equities account? Example mix of offshore / local and property maybe? I want to keep it simple and long term strategy. I have just opened account for my son and Daughter . Question 2) For Tax Free easy Equities account . How would you split it % local vs offshore vs Property? Which ETFs would you choose . Bare in mind I have an existing RA with 70/30 split anyway local vs offshore ? Any feedback or opinions will be greatly appreciated . Thanks in advance .

Different approach: if you think local think emerging markets. Rather invest in STXEMG instead of a local ETF. There is a discussion somewhere on the forum on the correlation between local vs emerging market index.

Benefit of a TFIA if you start it early enough is that although your contribution limits are low the years it has to grow in value will result in quite a sum of money. Chances are that those limits will increase a couple of times more in the coming decades before you retire. Once you reach retirement (or have enough funds in your TFIA) you can use it to buy income generating funds which will provide you with additional income (tax free).

For RA's, I'd go for a company like Allan Gray or Alexander Forbes. Companies like Old Mutual , Sanlam and Liberty Life are also reputable, but their fees tend to be higher and their returns lower in my experience (although you should do some research first to verify the facts.) I think Bandit has hit on something very, very important. If you see a financial adviser, the first thing they will try and do is sell you life insurance, because the commission on that is huge compared to the commission on an RA. Don't give in - tell them you want an RA and nothing else at this stage.

All I'm going to say is this: Assuming you bring in a R20,000 pm salary, SARS will take R2,722.06 and leave you with R17,277.94. Assuming you pay 15% of your salary into an RA (and your payslip is structured like a pension fund), SARS will take R1,942.06 and you'll be left with R15,057.94. So for the R3,000 you saved into an RA/Pension, you are only R2,220 "poorer" and scored R780 (that's about 25% growth right there depending on how you look at it). If your salary wasn't structured you'd get back almost R10,000 from SARS come EFiling season provided you include it on your tax return. Now, it's not all sunshine and roses. The money in the RA/Pension will be taxed again at some stage and you don't know what the tax climate is going to be like at that time. They're also talking about prescribed assets (Eskom, Telkom etc) which is a concern. I reckon that if you can afford an RA you should definitely make use of it (a Pension Fund is even better imo, less rules). If you cannot easily afford it you should probably go speak to a financial advisor but I'm willing to bet good money that their response will be the stock standard: Get insurance Settle debt Secure retirement Look at other investments (TFSA). So if you do go see an FA, get one that charges for the consultation and with a good reputation and most importantly: DON'T SIGN ANYTHING. Listen...

But in all seriousness - if you had ASHGEQ and SMART you probably have a better portfolio than most other people out there. Can't go wrong with that combination for a strong investment foundation.

Locally it would have to be SMART (sensible choice) and ETFRHO (for now...because it is flying). I'm up 150% with ETFTHO (kicking myself I didn't have the foresight to push my entire life savings into it ) but it can't continue like this forever.

Yes, it is definitely worth getting an RA! An RA works as follows: - You pay a monthly investment premium not exceeding 15% of your income (or you lose some tax benefits). -The premium is invested in actively managed funds (similar to units trusts) on your behalf by the finance house. - When you do your tax return each year, SARS refunds all the tax paid on the amount you invested during the tax year for your RA. (In other words, since you will not be relying on a state pension later, SARS will waive the tax now of any money earned that you invest in an RA as an incentive). - You cannot withdraw the money until retirement age. (Well, theoretically you can draw the money before retirement but there are extremely heavy penalties plus you have to pay back all the tax you ever got refunded, leaving you with very little). - The money is untouchable by anyone, even if you go insolvent - it will be there when you retire. On retirement, you have two choices (or you can split your money into these two options according to the percentage you choose): 1) You can buy a life annuity from the insurance company with your money (or part of your money). This means you pay a once-off premium (a percentage of your RA savings) for a guaranteed salary (plus inflation-related annual increases) for the rest of your life. You will receive a guaranteed salary until the day you die, irrespective of the age that you die. After you die, you don't get any of your capital back from the money spent on this option. 2) You can invest in a living annuity with your money (or part of your money). This means that the capital is invested and you take a certain earnings from the investment each month. Your salary is not guaranteed, but varies according to the market. This option pays a higher monthly retirement salary, but at some age, if you live longer than estimated, the money may run out (since you draw a little of the capital each month). If you die earlier than expected, the remaining capital forms part of your estate. Most people do a mix of the two - for example, use half their RA to make sure they are supported until death, and the other half to live the good life until, say 80 years old.

I was happily surprised by SMART's distribution. It's the first time SMART has distributed (being a new ETF) and it was way better than I expected at 44c per share.

Black Friday will take place Friday, 29 November 2019. When you come accross good Black Friday deals please post them there I will keep a list in the OP with all the good deals and participating stores. Please post what items you are looking for then we can all look around for deals on the day. Personally I would like to buy a 55" to 65" TV and whatever MTN deal is good this year. Companies participating in Black Friday 2019: Takealot: URL to be confirmed OneDayOnly: URL to be confirmed Makro: URL to be confirmed MTN: URL to be confirmed CellC: URL to be confirmed Pick n Pay: https://www.pnp.co.za/blackfriday HiFi Corporation: URL to be confirmed Checkers: URL to be confirmed BidorBuy: @Bandit you'll post the link here first right? Cybercellar: URL to be confirmed Game: URL to be confirmed Dion Wired: URL to be confirmed

Happy dividend day! It's not a lot, but there's something magical about money just appearing in your account

I don't think I'd sell my CTOP50 or STXDIV if I were you. Property is a different asset class and its behaviour is (theoretically) uncorrelated to equities, and ideally you should have both equities and property. If I were you, I'd keep what you have and buy PTXTEN from scratch. Also, like Bandit suggested, you should throw some offshore equities into the mix as well.

Hey guys, This thread also got me looking at my tfsa. Would it be advisable to get rid of either my coreshares top50 or satrix divi plus, and use that to invest in ptxten ? I currently have 11K in each. Top50 is currently 3.9% down (- R470) Divi plus is currently 1.2% down (-149) Or would it be better to start from scratch with ptxten ? Thanks.

I love my PTXTEN ETF! The dividends are fantastic at 9.4% per annum (currently), and with the new changes, I'm hoping for excellent growth as well. I wouldn't be surprised in this one gives the best total return of all over the next few years. Plus, it has never been this cheap to invest in property! On top of that, the massive dividends are completely tax free, making this particular ETF one of the best ETFs on the market in terms of tax savings. GLODIV is a really nice ETF too, but i think it is better outside of a TFIA as the foreign dividends are not tax exempt. If it were up to me me, I'd stick with STXWDM.

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