End of year money reflections (#177‪)‬ The Fat Wallet Show from Just One Lap

The end of the year is a good time to take stock of how things went financially. At the beginning of 2018, Simon and I discussed our money resolutions for the year. At the end of last year, we revisited some of our financial assumptions. 
To wrap up our 2019 Fat Wallet year, we once again discuss our personal finances and which assumptions we’ve come to challenge throughout the year. For me, learning to relax is always a challenge. I spent a lot of money on a holiday and it took me a while to realise that my financial journey is only for me. I don’t need to justify my choices to anyone and if I want to spend a fortune on a holiday, I damn well will. 
I’m also starting to be a bit more sceptical of smart beta ETF strategies. After three years of writing the ETF blog, I’ve looked under many hoods and heard many explanations of why a particular investment strategy is simply perfect—on paper. With a market trending sideways for an absurd number of years, these strategies should have come into their own, so why haven’t they? Colour me weary. 
We will record a few, short episodes to ensure that you get your Fat Wallet fix throughout the holidays, but this is the last full one for the year. With that, we’d like to thank you so much for your support and participation for another full year. This show is community-driven in every way and wouldn’t exist without you. We appreciate every single download, email, tweet and visit.
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Win of the week: Anna
I finally decided to start investing after listening to your show. 
I am starting by maxing out my R33 000 tax free for this year. 
While researching tax free accounts I came across an article on Stealthy Wealth "what these 9 experts hold on their TFSAs"
Simon holds Satrix prop 31.8%, Ashburton Global 1200 36.6% and sygnia itrix MSCI world ETF 29.5%.
I then decided to research the fund fact sheets of each one and noticed that the Ashburton 1200 and Sygnia itrix MSCI basically invest in the same companies just at different percentages. 
I'm totally new to this so what am I missing? Isn't that then just investing in basically the same product if their holdings are basically the same? What would the reasons be in investing in both these options?
Colin
My parents are reaching retirement age. They mostly worked government jobs and have decent government pensions. 
They have a portfolio of properties which is supposed to be their retirement income along with the pensions.
They’ve kept the bonds maxed and used the allowable tax deductions through the years really well.
Getting closer to retirement age, larger chunks of the bonds are getting paid up, as they are going to need to start drawing an income from it within the next five years. They are finding it more and more difficult to find enough deductions on the property alone to cover the profit.
Should they take the money out of the access bonds and put it into a fixed savings? At Tyme bank they’ll get 9.75% for 100k and the remainder with African bank where you get 9.2% on a two-year fixed deposit. (5 year fixed at 10.75%, but wouldn’t want their money tied up for that long this close to retirement). 
By doing this they’ll minimising the profit made on the properties as the interest paid will be much higher with the bonds still being maxed. 
To wipe out the remaining profit made, calculate what’s needed in RA contributions to have enough deductions to get as close to making a loss as possible annually.
If they're moving R2m out of the bonds/mortgages they're going to be paying tax on the interest earned in any case. So they could then just take 200k odd out each into fixed savings, 30k each into TFSA, they left with R1.5m sitting in bonds/mortgages. Come retirement they could just take the money out of the TFSA and fixed accounts to pay off the bond. Should they put a lump sum into a RA to offset