‘Tax season’ elicits in most people the kind of shudder you’d imagine ‘open season’ to elicit in hunted animals. We all hate doing our taxes and, because of this, we often postpone the inevitable, sometimes with horrible consequences like penalties and waiting hours at SARS.

Here are a few tips to make submitting tax returns a little less painful, not to mention less confusing.

Basics first
The first thing to deal with is how to best go about it. Our advice: book several hours for sorting out your taxes and put it in your diary along with business meetings and other non-negotiables. Just get it done. There’s a lot to be said for using a professional consultant to complete your tax return for you – they will sort everything out, giving you peace of mind, and work with a savvy eye on new regulations you may not know about and exactly how to get you the lightest tax bill possible.

Be systematic
If you do decide to file your tax return yourself, it helps to be organised. This is one time you really don’t want to overlook the details. Do one type of tax at a time (if doing more than personal income) and go logically through everything from mileage receipts to various tax exemptions, one by one. It will offset any feeling of a never-ending task – a sure way to quit early.

And, pay the price when the taxman comes around. Remember to account for medical aid schemes – you as the main member can get R310 back from SARS, plus another R310 for a dependent and R209 each for any other dependents after that. Every bit helps…

Don’t forget the expat factor
Again, if you’re doing your returns yourself, it pays to keep abreast of recent changes. A few months ago, the Reserve Bank changed the laws around taxes to be paid if you are out of the country a certain amount of time in the year. If you are working more than 183 days in a 12-month period, including a continuous period of more than 60 days, you won’t currently be taxed for it in SA – but that changes soon. For those who’ve been overseas extensively, it may be worth checking in with a professional whether or not you’ll be back-taxed for that, and how the new law could benefit you.

Self-employment schemes
If you are a contractor, freelancer or any other type of self-employed individual (bar the owner or founder of a business that is not a sole proprietor), then you technically have a non-salary income and can claim expenses on that. This includes things like the bill for a cellphone used for work, office supplies or stationary and even the rent and overheads of an office if you’re renting one. Just remember to be thorough – if you’ve invoiced more than one different company or person in the tax year, you have to declare each and every client.

Commission enquiry
If you’re a real estate agent, sales rep or anyone else that gets commission in addition to a salary, you can claim on any commission-related expenses, like airtime used for work and petrol. Many people know this, but did you know that you can also claim travel-related expenses that aren’t only limited to fuel? Even things like flights for work are deductible, which can be a real boon for jobs that are usually very heavy on travel.

Finally, reward yourself
There is no end to what people can do when they’re motivated – and it’s a powerful tool you can use come tax season. Reward is a great incentiviser, so motivate yourself by deciding what a tax rebate will go towards, should you get one. Then keep your eye on the prize.

It’s all the little things that make it less taxing, so go easy on yourself and take it one little thing at a time, and start early.

Coco Chanel, a woman who overcame her fair share of financial difficulties to become one of the most successful women of all time, said: ‘there are people who have money and people who are rich.’

‘Richness’ is defined by Google as “the state of existing in or containing plentiful quantities of something desirable”. Dictionary.com calls it “having an abundance of something that is valuable and interesting.”

Most of us can agree that money is valuable only in that it can acquire for us the things we truly want. But interestingly… how many of us pursue wealth creation that specifically leads us into what will stimulate and grow us?

The very wise Benjamin Franklin said “money has never made man happy, nor will it, there is nothing in its nature to produce happiness.” It’s true – if you long for a sweet, nourishing, fulfilling life, your answer is not cash. Money is kind of like the soil to plant the tree in that will eventually bear that sweet, satisfying fruit for you to enjoy.

So, what do some of us do? We load a whole bunch of soil into our lives, if we can, and then wait next to our pile of soil, waiting to be happy.

The question really is; what are we planting?

Of course, to plant a ‘tree’ of richness in the wealth you’re creating, you have to first decide what true richness looks like for you; what choices do you want to grow in your soil? The immediate images that come into your mind may be a certain holiday or a certain item like a home or car. The more you think about it, and have helpful conversations with those you trust, this may change. It’s not about having the money, but what we do with that money.

The honest truth is we often focus on gaining money because it’s thought to be ‘the easy road’. How many times have you heard people say, ‘If I just had enough money, my problems would go away.’? It’s easy to just go after money and stuff imbued with externally recognised ‘status’ that will tell everyone else that you’re winning at life.

Retail therapy is a real thing – an alarming amount of us use money to buy things, which will make us feel better. There are times when a binge is helpful for the soul, but we cannot live a life of constant binging. We need to know that we’re doing something – not just in the future, but now – that is of value. That’s when we start to feel rich.

Allocate time to ponder what true richness looks like for you. What would you do if money wasn’t an issue?

It’s a cold world out there this June. As the thermometer temperature drops, the price of fuel and cost of living keep rising… but it’s not all doom and gloom.

Here are five ways to manage your finances a little more wisely and warmly:

Drop the bouquet

The average South African home is way too glued to the TV for their physical health – and financial health too. If you love your screen time, drop your exorbitant DSTV bouquet and look at Netflix or Showmax (or another provider) and honestly stack up the costs side by side. You’ll never go back to DSTV again. If you like to watch live sport, consider watching these matches at friends houses, or at your local pub.

Phone it in

Remember your old flip phone from years ago – the one that you (and everyone else) thought was impossibly cool? Well, that’s how all phones are going to look someday. As part of your winter finance warming, review your cellphone contract – but don’t upgrade. If there’s nothing badly wrong with your phone and it works okay, do not get a new one, no matter how shiny and awesome that new one is. One of the most powerful first steps of red-hot finances is to stop changing your phone every 18 months.

Get car smart

The ever-increasing fuel price is one of South Africans’ biggest bugbears – and expenses. Get smiles for miles when you become more creative with your commute or other transport needs, by setting up a carpool with, for example, work colleagues or parents in your area with children at the same school as yours.

Another thing to do is check with your bank at which fuel stations you can get banking points, such as eBucks or Discovery, when filling up. Then only go to those stations if you can help it, to get a marginal amount back a month. Hey, every bit helps…

Insure you get the best

One of the first things that go out of the window when budgets get tight is the so-called ‘grudge purchases’ – chief among those, insurance. But in this case, it really is penny wise and pound foolish to drop your short term insurance when the purse-strings are pulling tighter. Plenty of families have gone from wealthy, or even comfortable, to dire straits because they cancelled their insurance and then misfortune struck.

Most South Africans appreciate the value of car insurance, considering our road death statistics and the colourful manoeuvres taxi drivers pull on a daily basis, but don’t value other forms of short-term insurance.

Are you covered for household burglaries, technical problems with your phone, a handbag getting stolen, losing your motorbike keys? All these things are vital, so in reality, you cannot afford not to be insured.

However, that doesn’t mean all insurers are created equal, or the same price. Ascertain what your insurance needs are and which option best covers them and dig into the best deals you can get on insurance.

Just because you can’t afford not to have it doesn’t mean paying more than you should.

Whatever you do, don’t stop

If insurance is a grudge purchase, this next one isn’t a purchase at all – and often gets pushed to the back of the priority line until it’s much, much too late. Do not, we repeat, do not try to help out your budget by not saving for retirement. The thing with retirement is this: there will never be a better time. That’s because of compound interest – you’ll never get a better return on money invested at a later date, even far larger sums of money, than a small amount invested now. So, don’t skimp on modest sums for retirement now, and you won’t have to skimp on everything for up to twenty-five or more years of your life. Seriously.

To keep it simple, here’s a motto you can use: don’t stop saving unless you’re retired and, if you are already retired, don’t stop saving.

Keep these things in mind and you’ll have a financially toasty winter season. Enjoy!

It’s Father’s Day time, and we would like to honour the men, and the women too, who have been parents to us. Our dads.

… And by ‘Dad’ we don’t necessarily mean our fathers. Ever seen the Omo Father’s Day advert that went viral on YouTube? It showed a little boy reading a Father’s Day card, with all the important things dads do listed in it like providing financially and teaching right from wrong, to his grandmother. She was his ‘Dad’.

There is a curious alchemy that brings someone into the role of ‘dad’ that is not necessarily linked to genes. Yours might be someone who isn’t your birth father, either. And they deserve a shout out too.

So, here, four things we’re thankful for from dad this Father’s Day, and the important financial lessons that go along with them.

1. Support is paramount

The biggest thing we love about our Dads is simply that they’re there. When last did you have a massive life event and your dad wasn’t interested, didn’t stand by your side? A great father or a dad will always support you and believe the best in you, even when things go south. Just like dads, your finances are supposed to be there for you when great things, good and bad, happen for you. It’s the value of having power over your finances, to provide yourself that safety net.

2. A dad who stands for good values teaches us to stand up for ourselves

A great dad will tell you that sometimes in life a man – or woman – needs to stand for something. If you’re lucky, the father you grew up with or the man you call dad has stood for integrity, hard work, honesty and dependability. He stands firm.

Likewise, with your finances it’s always a good thing for you to tell financial professionals what you believe in, and stand by that. Want Shariah financing options? Don’t want to invest in stocks of companies you believe are unethical, like perhaps Steinhoff? Tell your advisor, and stand firm when trends or others are singing a different tune.

3. There’s nothing panic does better than calm

A dad is by definition the still point of calm in a world of chaos – telling us to just relax. He’s got the life experience, he’s been around the block and he knows enough to tell you that the fact that that bond hasn’t come to maturity yet or that you can’t by your dream home for a first house is not the end of the world. He’s strong and constant, and there’s a valuable lesson in that financially: don’t panic. Don’t be swayed by every geopolitical uncertainty or every move of the market, rather stick by your financial decisions if they’re in line with your personal financial plan.

4. Honest advice is the gift of a true Dad

It’s not always easy being a dad – most of us have at one time had some hard truths to face because Dad was brave enough to tell it to you straight when you weren’t doing what was best for you. A great dad is like a lighthouse in a storm – when you can’t see clearly and don’t know up from down, he does. A good financial advisor is the ‘dad’ of your financial future, an immovable light of wisdom in hard times, so get the best one you can.

Happy Father’s Day to all the fathers and the dads out there!

One of the most important reasons to save throughout our working life remains retirement. It’s shocking how few people afford themselves the ability to live with dignity and independence, without sacrificing a huge drop in standard of living.

And yet… the world we are living in is one of constant disruption. One of the things being disrupted as we speak is the concept of retirement. And so, in a few years’ time, what we’ve understood as ‘retirement’ will no longer exist.

Here are four things that will affect your retirement by the time you get there:

Longevity – When Time magazine came out with a cover stating that ‘this baby could live to 120 years old’, the world cheered. But few people stopped to think what this could mean for their retirement. What if the average lifespan were up to 120 years old once you retired?

The age-old standard figure of ‘65 years old’ for retirement was invented in a time when the average person lived to 80, the goal was to plan for 15 years.

But 120 means that 65 is just over only half of your life, and savings calculated today for retiring at 65 will not be able to keep you comfortably alive and financially independent for a whopping 55 more years.

Our ideas of what retirement might look like, what age is considered ‘retirement age’ or even ‘old’, needs to change.

Medical advancements

This goes hand in hand with longevity. Longer lifespan without a healthier life is bad news: that could mean years of assisted living or frail care, and all the huge costs that go with it. But medicine is advancing to the point where what was once considered cutting edge is going mainstream, and we could well expect to see a cure for Parkinson’s or the smaller physical breakdowns of ageing in our (longer) lifetimes. This changes not only how much money you need to retire, but what physical state you’ll be in once you do. And, due to that, you may be able to retire even later, increasing your opportunities to plan for when you do.

Rising cost of living

If inflation is anything to go by, the prices of things are just going up. And by that we don’t only mean the price of eggs. Investments that were standard a generation ago, like buying at least one house in your lifetime, are now becoming less widespread as costs get more and more prohibitive. Even getting married is getting too expensive. And retirement, one of the largest financial undertakings in any one person’s life, costing at least hundreds of thousands of rands to do well, is definitely up there. This means that our urgency to have better conversations around our retirement is even greater.

The actual concept of retirement itself

People within the retirement industry already know this. CEOs at world leaders in financial planning are speaking about ‘cyclical retirement’ and ‘the rise of the silver surfers’. This means a far less linear approach to retirement in the future.

Up until now, we have viewed the stages of our life in a kind of linear circuit system: you attend school, then tertiary education, then you work and get married, have children, then you retire and make way for the new generation. However, longer lifespans and the need to work more means repetitive cycles or seasons instead of the traditional linear journey.

So you may work for a decade, not work for a few years, work again, then completely shift gears into a different career – but still work – well after you hit age 65.

You might be retiring a lot later, and in a very different way, to what conventional wisdom would have you believe today. Plan for that now, let’s have that conversation, and you’ll be growing grey gracefully every day.

With tough economic times all around, a lot of us are trying to cut unnecessary expenses. Be that as it may, we still need to eat and feed our families. Yet who has the time to play chef and work a fulltime job? And who wants to eat mediocre meals just because the economy is in a slump?

Enter the power of three – how to ensure meals for a week with minimum effort. It’s all about selecting three dishes that are low maintenance to cook, able to be made in large quantities and also be to be frozen and reheated… yet are still big on taste. One great meaty supper that transforms into two days’ school sandwiches as well, one that can be reinvented into finger food tapas on the third day and one versatile enough to be reinvented into a whole other dish come day five.

And all with room enough for leftovers.

Sound cost-effective? We’ve collected four inexpensive meal ideas that meet all these standards, leaving your tummy satisfied and your wallet untraumatized upon your next grocery jaunt.

Meal 1: Roast chicken, veggies and rice

A classic family meal, the decent-sized roast chicken easily feeds four people. Make extra and use leftover white meat for chicken mayonnaise sandwiches for school and chicken salad for the adults. Use the leftover rice and bits with skin to make a fantastic, Asian-inspired twice-fried rice and sweet, sticky chicken with the help of simple fridge staples like chutney or balsamic vinegar and soy sauce. Rice, if sealed, is superb the next day – just like pasta or slap chips, so go wild. Save the carcass and you can even make soup from it, if you’re so inclined.

Meal 2: Brisket and boiled potatoes

If you want something a little more special during the week, look no further than the all-star cheap meat cut classic, the brisket. Have straight-up brisket with boiled potatoes on day one, reinvent the leftover on day two with a sticky glaze and turn leftover potatoes into creamy mash and then take any last bits and turn them into a stew. Delicious!

Meal 3: Pulled pork and veggies

Pork is still cheaper than other meats like steak or salmon, and a good pulled pork recipe will mean minimal handiwork – you just leave it in the oven for a few hours. With vegetables, it’s a decently healthy meal with one serious upside – pulled pork has got to be one of the most versatile meats on the planet. It can be reinvented into tacos, salads, sandwiches and even scrambled eggs. Unlike other practical bulk meals, it’s polished enough to serve to guests as well.

Meal 4: Lamb stew

Who doesn’t love a great lamb stew? Because it’s stew, you can buy a fairly cheap cut of lamb in generous quantities at a decent price and can make tons of stew easily. The ‘easy’ part is the best part, because lamb stew in a slow cooker means very little work. You fry up the meat and chop veggies and simply leave it for eight hours while you go to work. Freeze half for an instant dish that is hearty, healthy and super quick to reheat.

Well, what are you waiting for? Get cooking!

Love is always in the air… for someone you know, if not yourself. No matter how strong the bond, weddings can quickly become the bane of many flourishing romances.

If you’re planning your big day – and planning often kicks in now because of the amount of people who wed in December – you know how strongly money features in wedding prep. Don’t worry – with a few savvy tweaks, you’ll be able to smile all the way down the aisle.

Here are five things that’ll help you have a great wedding and still save cash for what truly matters – starting your new life, together, strong.

1. Have ‘the talk’ with your parents

… and your parents-in-law-to-be. It’s important to establish who is paying for what before doing anything else. It may seem scary, especially with your future parents-in-law, but it’s vital to voice expectations now and to set clear boundaries. It’s important to say things like: ‘I know it used to be tradition for the bride’s family to pay for the wedding and the groom’s to pay for the honeymoon. Can we talk about that? Who feels comfortable doing what?’

Don’t let people come to their own conclusions, that creates room for conflict.

Equally important? Telling your mom and whomever else you need to; ‘just because you’re putting money in, doesn’t mean it’s your day.’

Once the conversation has been had, set a budget, with clear definitions on who pays for what.

2. Do a ‘top ten’ exercise

Now that you have your budget, here’s something important to do with your spouse-to-be: sit down together and write out every element of a wedding you can think of. Start with generics like ‘dress’ and ‘venue’ but drill down to specifics like the chairs at the reception, the menu and what pastor or master-of-ceremonies you want. Take that exhaustive list and separately write down ten items that are most important to you about the wedding, in descending order.

Come together and look at your lists, taking common ones from both lists and coming up with a final list of just five non-negotiable priorities. Splash out on only those top five and spend as little as possible on everything else.

3. Grill your guest list

Another thing that will save you the most money is the amount of people coming. Your ‘per head’ count in terms of alcohol, venue hire and food all adds up to the biggest expense in most weddings. Discuss with your significant other and determine who is most important to you and get the list down to as small a number of people coming as possible… And don’t choose based on: ‘Who will be offended if they don’t get invited?’ Rather, think: ‘Who will I look back on in ten years’ time and feel happy they were there?’ The less people you have, the more you will get to appreciate each guest on the day.

4. Remember to be flexible

You now have more than enough to battle the wedding budget bulge, but before you go off planning, remember one last thing: it pays to be flexible at times. Whatever your budget is, make sure there is at least an extra 15 percent of the total amount extra for unforeseen expenses. You don’t want any nasty surprises on one of the best days of your life.

And, thanks to some savvy money-saving, you may now have enough money left over to plan a few more ‘best days of your life’ in years that are still to come…

It seems fitting that May hosts both Workers’ Day and Mother’s Day… because who works harder than Mom? A mother is always there when needed, always willing to see the best in you and is a constant source of comfort and wisdom.

And quite often, she knows a thing or two about money too.

Mom would say: ‘You can be anything you want to be…’

Mothers hear every aspiration, from astronaut to movie-star all the way to wanting to settle down or get an MBA. And she believes you can do all of it. Why not follow her advice, financially, and set some audaciously big goals for the next ten years?

Complacency kills passion, which kills productivity. So dream big and chase some wild horses!

Mom would say: ‘Hold your horses!’

Your mind may be running wild with new dreams now, thanks to Mom, but remember that these things take time. In the meantime, balance your head and heart to make rational yet passionate decisions; don’t let those wild horses run away, keep them in check! Mom will often advise you to follow your heart, but what moms do is rather a masterstroke of loving fully and at the same time not throwing away responsibility, patience or the mindset of others’ dreams being important too.

Mom would say: ‘There there… does it hurt?’

Sometimes when you risk in life, you fall down. The more worthy a goal is, usually, the more attempts it takes to succeed. When we fell and hurt ourselves as children, we knew we could run to Mom and she’d know what to do. Often, she knew that ‘time heals all wounds’ and would simply comfort you until the pain was gone. Now that you’re older, the pain of more complex things like a failed business or money troubles can seem like it’ll never heal. Take a moment, allow yourself to feel what you’re feeling and try to learn the lessons that came with the fall. And yes, it’s still okay to talk to your Mom about it.

Mom would say: ‘Always look on the bright side.’

It’s true – in life the only thing you truly have control over is your attitude. Just one thing, but that one thing makes all the difference in the world. This is often said by the same mom who would say things like ‘don’t cry over spilled milk’ and, too, is true. There is good and bad in every circumstance, but those who pay more attention to the good and learn from the bad while not over analysing it tend to enjoy life more.

As Mom would say, life is short…