#124: Should we care about the bear‪?‬ The Fat Wallet Show from Just One Lap

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 in my portfolio and what I can possibly do about it.
Win of the week is Kay, for being a Fat Wallet Community superstar and for taking charge big time.
I'm stuck on tax. I don't understand it, I'm terrified of it. I'm a freelance artist in the film industry. I'm supposed to pay provisionally.
I've never managed to save for my tax contribution, but I am earning more each year and I'm trying to keep money aside for tax.
I'm mentally budgeting the amount to be about 25% of everything I earn (which seems an enormous amount to catch up to at this stage, but not impossible). 25% also might be too much or too little consideration depending on the earning category I fall into that year.
I heard Kris say that she puts 12% aside for provisional tax - how does that work? Why is there a tax category for 0-195 850 but I apparently don't pay anything if I earn under 350k? How the flip?
I don't mind saving too much since whatever I don't pay in tax will go to topping up other savings goals anyway, but I'd rather just know the workable percentage so it's not a big black hole of devil-math in my budget.
Can I actually reduce my tax liability by contributing to my TFSA? As in, does making that money tax-free potentially put me in a different income tax bracket, like contributing to an RA would?
Also Jonathan for sharing a great hack for emergency funds.
I've been a bit insecure with my investment strategy in my relatively short investment journey but the show has reassured me that I'm heading in the right direction. You can't imagine how encouraging that has been to me.  But I've also have much to learn, so I'm definitely gonna be listening on!
In episode 122 you discussed the balance between paying down debt and starting an emergency fund.  
A potential first step is to build up a mini emergency fund, perhaps R5,000 to R10,000 before contributing more than the minimum towards the debt
That gives you a buffer to cover small emergencies while you're paying down the debt. At some point you will have to grow the emergency fund to 3-6 months of living expenses as you rightly advocate, but it may be helpful to have a small emergency fund before you start to attack the debt. I'd like to hear your views on that.
Alec has saved up a nice nest egg and is getting ready to make a move from Durban to Jozi. He wants to know what he should be doing about his ETFs.
I’ve managed to accumulate just over R1m in investment savings through various actively-managed funds like Coronation and Sygnia in approximately 10 years.
I recently started investing in a passive strategy through ABSA stockbrokers, before they changed their platform fees.
NFENOM PTXTEN CSEW40 ASHGEQ ASHT40 I also have a tax-free savings with Satrix, and an RA with Liberty (which I am in the process of moving to a more cost effective fund).
Should I continue investing some of my money in my actively managed funds? Should I wait to see what the market returns are, or should I just continuously buy? For e.g. should I buy 100K of NFENOM ETFs and wait to see the returns before I continue investing in that fund, or should I trust the market value will be higher at a much later date? Are there any other investment strategies I should be spending my money on (rental property, gold coins, or starting a side business)? Subscribe to our RSS feed here. Subscribe or rate us in iTunes. Fried and his partner have R3m debt between them, including a buy-to-let property and some cars.
How do I go about moving my Sanlam stuff away from them? I'm considering moving our RAs and my wife's TFSA to EasyEquities to manage it myself (only platform I care to know). Life insurance and income protector - I'm