It is the most common question in my inbox, and comment section on all social media platforms, by a distance.

☑️So, you’ve seen my infographic on 25 Money Terms you should know (this is the perfect starting place).

☑️You’ve seen my 12-step guide to building a basic financial plan (because a smart investor doesn’t just jump into ETFs)

☑️You’ve also read my piece on The Stock Market Explained!

☑️And you’ve also picked a broker, and understand why ETFs beat the expensive alternatives

Now you open the app, full of intention... and then stare at more than 300 listed funds and ask, slightly desperately:

“Okay, but what do I actually BUY?”

Fair. The industry is brilliant at explaining why you should invest and strangely quiet about the part where you click the button. So today I am going to do the exactly that: show you how I would construct a simple ETF portfolio at each stage of the journey, with real fund names, real weightings, and real rand examples.

One thing first, and I need you to genuinely absorb it rather than skim it:

⚠️ These are teaching models, not prescriptions. I am a financial blogger and content creator, not your financial adviser. The right portfolio depends on your goals, your timeline, your debts, and your stomach, none of which I know. Use these models to understand how a portfolio is constructed and why. Do not copy one blindly because a stranger on the internet holds something similar. And she does, as you will see.

Right. Let’s build.

The ground rules (every portfolio, every stage)

Before a single ticker, the four principles that govern everything below:

The building blocks

Almost every portfolio below is assembled from five types of brick. Learn these and you will have conquered the whole ETF universe:

💡 Use the free resources such as the Just One Lap ETF database to look up any of these: what it tracks, what it costs, how it performed in the past.

Stage 1: The First Rand (you are just starting)

Who this is for: you are new, contributing anything from R250 to R1,000 a month, and the single biggest risk to your wealth is not picking the “wrong” fund. It is getting overwhelmed and quitting.

The portfolio: one fund. That’s it.

One ETF that owns thousands of companies across developed and emerging markets, in one debit order, inside your TFSA. You now own Apple, Nestlé, Samsung, Naspers and a few thousand more, and you made exactly one decision.

People underestimate this portfolio because it looks too simple. Do not! A 100% world tracker is a genuinely complete portfolio, and the world’s greatest investors would tell you most people should never graduate beyond it. My own TFSA held huge chunks of exactly this fund for years, and still does.

R500 a month here, escalating as you earn more, left alone inside a TFSA for 20+ years, is quietly life-changing. On long-run equity averages (illustrative, never guaranteed), R1,500 a month for 20 years compounds to roughly R1,5 million, assuming a long-run 9-10% average annual return (a reasonable but not guaranteed history for global equities). The fund is not the magic. The two decades are.

📌 Graduate from Stage 1 only when the habit is bulletproof and the balance is meaningful. Adding funds sooner adds complexity, not returns.

Stage 2: The Core Builder (the habit is locked in)

Who this is for: you have been contributing for a while, the debit order survives every December, and you want deliberate control over your mix rather than one fund’s default.

The portfolio: the classic three-fund core.

On R2,000 a month, that is a R1,200 / R500 / R300 split.

Why these weights? The majority offshore, because South Africa is less than 1% of the world’s markets and your salary, house and future are already massively exposed to the local economy. A meaningful local slice, because the JSE is cheap to own and you spend rands. And a deliberate EM allocation, because you never know which region leads next: in the first half of this year, emerging Asia trackers gained over 26% while the Top 40 fell 4,5% - the same volatility that rewards you here is exactly what punishes performance-chasers, as December’s champions became June’s biggest losers within months. Owning both is the entire point.

💡 Can’t sleep through a 30% drawdown? A perfectly respectable variant carves 10 to 15% out of the equity for a bond ETF. You will likely end with somewhat less after decades, but the portfolio you can hold through a crash beats the “optimal” one you panic-sell.

Stage 3: The Conviction Portfolio (experienced, aggressive, long horizon)

Who this is for: a decade or more of runway, a proven stomach (you have held through at least one proper crash without selling), and a deliberate appetite for concentration.

This portfolio has crushed it over the past decade because its tech tilt rode the greatest bull run in history. That sentence should comfort you and frighten you. The Nasdaq 100 fell about 35% in 2022. It will do something like that again someday, and the whole design only works if you keep buying when it does. This is where I remind you that investing is 10% maths and 90% temperament.

🚩 Notice what the satellite slot is: 10%, named, and capped. That is how you scratch the itch for something spicier without letting it eat your core. If your “satellite” is 40% of your portfolio, you do not have a satellite. You have a gamble with a nice name.

Stage 4: Approaching the goal (the de-risking years)

One clarification worth internalising: the trigger here is time to goal, not birth year; a 30-year-old saving for a house deposit due in three years is in Stage 4 for that specific goal, while still investing aggressively as a Stage 3 investor for retirement money decades away. Age is a poor proxy for the risk you should be taking; the calendar on your actual goal is what matters. As the date you will actually need the money comes inside ten years, you progressively swap equity bricks for bond and income bricks a few percent a year, roughly as follows, so that a 2022-style crash three years before your goal cannot wreck two decades of work. By the time you are living off the portfolio, something in the neighbourhood of 60% growth assets and 40% stabilisers is the textbook zone. Some examples here are Satrix SA Bond ETF (STXGOV), or 1nvest SA Bond ETF (ETFBND).

Illustrative glide, not a formula, the right pace depends on how much of the goal is already funded and how flexible the date is.

Now the part everyone skips: WHERE you hold it changes WHAT you hold

Here is the level-up that separates tidy portfolios from tax-smart ones. The same money behaves completely differently depending on the account wrapping it, so the account should influence the contents:

📌Your TFSA gets your highest-growth assets. Inside a TFSA there is no dividends tax, no CGT, ever, and rebalancing is a non-event to SARS. So the assets with the biggest expected long-run growth (your world equity, your Nasdaq tilt) belong here first, where decades of compounding escape SARS entirely. Filling a TFSA with cash or low-growth funds wastes the most precious tax shelter you will ever own. (The full TFSA case is here.)

📌Your discretionary account holds the flexible and the taxable-anyway. Money for pre-retirement goals lives here, because you can access it. Remember from the filing season guide: selling or switching here triggers CGT, so this is the account where you tinker least and hold longest.

⚠️Your RA cannot copy the models above, by law. Regulation 28 caps offshore exposure at 45% and total equity at 75%, so a retirement annuity is structurally a balanced portfolio. You can assemble it yourself (roughly: 45% global equity, 30% SA equity, 25% SA bonds gets you close to the ceiling) or do what I did and hold a single balanced fund. My entire EasyEquities RA sits in one AMETF-based balanced fund and is the cheapest of my three retirement products. In exchange for the constraints, you get the mighty tax deduction, capped at 27.5% of taxable income or R430,000, whichever is lower.

📌 Same investor, three accounts, three different shapes, one coherent plan. That is how you putt each rand where the tax system treats it best.

The mechanics, quickly

Buying: on some broker platform you can buy fractional amounts of any of these from as little as R10, so your weights work whether you invest R300 or R30,000 a month. Set the debit order and the recurring purchases, then close the app.

Rebalancing: once a year (your birthday month or end of the year is a fine trigger), nudge the weights back to target, ideally by directing new money at whatever has lagged rather than selling winners. Inside a TFSA, rebalance freely. In a discretionary account, remember every sale is a CGT event.

Reviewing: resources such as the etfSA monthly survey and the Just One Lap database 2 or 3 times a year. That is the entire maintenance schedule.

The three mistakes that break good portfolios

ETF hoarding. Owning STXWDM and STX500 and STXNDQ and a tech AMETF is not diversification. It is buying Apple, Microsoft and Nvidia four times in four wrappers. Every fund you add should do a different job. If you cannot say what job, do not buy it.

Performance chasing. After the first half we just had, the temptation is to load up on emerging Asia (+38% in six months!) and dump the laggards. My entire Half-Year ETF Report Card was a warning about exactly this: December’s champions became June’s biggest losers within months. Pick your weights based on your plan, not on last quarter’s table.

Tinkering. The models above are boring by design, and their boringness is load bearing. Every “small adjustment” you make based on a headline is a chance to be wrong twice: once selling, once buying. The best portfolio maintenance, most years, is none.

The Bottom Line

You do not need the perfect portfolio. Nobody knows what that is until decades later anyway. You need a sensible one: ✅one to four low-cost ETFs matched to your stage, ✅placed in the right wrappers, ✅funded relentlessly, and ✅left alone.

1️⃣Stage 1 is one world fund.

2️⃣Stage 2 adds deliberate weights.

3️⃣Stage 3 adds conviction, carefully capped.

4️⃣Stage 4 slowly hands the baton to stability.

And at every single stage, the debit order matters more than the ticker. The gap between the people who build wealth and the people who mean to is almost never fund selection. It is that the first group actually clicked the button, and kept clicking it for twenty years.

So here is my question for the comments, and be honest: which stage are you in, and what does your current mix look like? If your answer is “eleven ETFs and I’m not sure why”, you are in good company, and now you know what to fix. 💚

SheKreatesWealth is a financial education platform. This article is for educational and informational purposes only and does not constitute financial advice or a recommendation to buy or sell any security. The model portfolios are illustrations of portfolio construction principles, not prescriptions; the funds named are examples among many credible alternatives, and I personally hold several of them, which you should treat as a bias to be aware of rather than an endorsement to copy. Fees, fund availability and regulations change, so verify current details before investing. Returns used in illustrations are based on historical averages, are not guaranteed, and markets can fall for years at a time. Please do your own research or consult a licensed financial adviser about your specific circumstances.

So it is only fair that I go first.

What follows is my actual assessment for the 2026 tax year (1 March 2025 to 28 February 2026), with the identifying details kept to myself, because anonymity is what lets me be this honest. And honestly? I could not have designed a better teaching document if I tried. Every lever from my tax crash course, the deductions, the exemptions, the rebates and credits, shows up on this one piece of paper, doing its job with real money.

Let’s decode it.

The headline: a R108,766.68 refund

Right at the top of my ITA34, in the “Balance of Account” block, sits the number everyone looks for first: Amount refundable to you by SARS: R108,766.68.

Six figures, coming back to me. Cue the confetti, right? 🎊🎊🎊
Hold that thought!

📝Lesson one: Not a Bonus

The first and most important lesson of this whole article: a big refund is not a bonus. It is a receipt for an interest-free loan you gave the government.

That R108,766 was my money all along. Through the year, my employer’s payroll deducted R785,959 in PAYE, but my actual final tax liability came to R677,192. The difference, roughly R9,000 every single month, sat with SARS instead of with me, earning nothing, buying nothing, compounding nowhere.

Why does this happen? Because PAYE is calculated on what your payroll knows: your salary, your bonus, your payroll-deducted retirement contributions. What payroll cannot see are the credits and deductions that only surface when you file: in my case, mainly medical tax credits (more on those in a moment) plus foreign tax credits. So payroll over-collects all year, and filing season is when you claim your own money back.

💡 If you get a large refund every single year for the same predictable reason, you do not have a windfall. You have a cash-flow leak. It is worth asking your payroll or a tax practitioner whether recurring credits can be factored into your monthly PAYE instead, so your money works for you all year rather than resting at SARS.

📝Lesson two: the retirement deduction, live and in colour

Now for my favorite line on the whole document. Under “Deductions allowed” sits retirement fund contributions: R205,677, made up of my provident fund contributions through work (R145,996) and my retirement annuity contributions (R59,681).

That entire amount came straight off my income before tax was calculated. And because my income sits in the top bracket, every rand of that deduction saved me 45 cents of tax this year. Do the maths: that single line knocked roughly R92,500 off my tax bill. It is, by an enormous margin, the most powerful tax lever available to an ordinary salaried person, exactly as I argued in TFSA vs Retirement Annuity.

And here is my honest confession for this edition, because you know I always bring one. The deduction is capped at 27,5% of income, up to R350,000 a year (for the 2025/2026 year). My R205,677 means I left about R144,000 of unused deductible room on the table, which at my marginal rate is roughly R65,000 of tax relief I did not claim. There are fair reasons to not max it (retirement money is locked away, and I also prioritize my flexible investments), but seeing the unused room printed on an official document definitely made me think about a top-up before next February.

📝Lesson three: the interest exemption doing exactly what I promised

My savings accounts earned R12,128 in local interest during the year. It appears on the assessment, and right below it, a beautiful line: Investment exemption: −R12,128. Taxable amount: R0,00.

That is the annual interest exemption (R23,800 if you are under 65) in action. My interest came in under the threshold, so not one cent of it was taxed, though it still had to be declared.

📌 This same line is also why my form says “Provisional taxpayer: N.” As I explained in the filing guide, you only tip into provisional territory once your taxable interest, foreign dividends and rental together cross R30,000. Mine, after the exemption, totaled about R1,500. If you hold a normal portfolio of ETFs and a modest cash buffer, this is what your assessment will look like too: firmly, boringly non-provisional.

📝Lesson four: my American dividends, and the credit most people forget

My EasyEquities USD account paid me R3,446 in foreign dividends this year. The assessment shows the partial exemption doing its work (R1,914 exempt), leaving R1,532 taxable, and then, further down, a line-item worth knowing about: Foreign Tax Credits: R515.07. That is the tax America already withheld on those dividends, credited back against my South African bill so the same rand is not taxed twice. My ITA34 even shows a small unused portion carrying over to next year. It is a tiny amount in my case, but the principle matters enormously if your offshore holdings are bigger: declare the foreign income, and claim the foreign credit. People remember the first half and forget the second, and the second is the half that saves you money.

📝Lesson five: SARS is tracking your TFSA, and you should still track it yourself

Here is something many people have never noticed on their ITA34. Near the end, in the Notes, SARS prints a running ledger of your lifetime tax-free investment contributions: what you have put in over the years, what you added this year, and the total carried forward. It is how they police the R500,000 lifetime limit and that brutal 40% penalty on over-contributions.

Mine shows R309,000 carried forward from previous years, R36,000 for this tax year (the old annual limit, correctly, since the new R46,000 only applies from March 2026), and R345,000 carried forward.

Except... my own records say my lifetime contributions through February 2026 total R375,000. SARS’s ledger is R30,000 short, and I am fairly sure I know why: my very first TFSA deposit, made back in January 2016 at a different provider before I later transferred the account, appears never to have made it into SARS’s running total. Good thing I still have all my Tax Certificates from way back.

🚩 Sit with the implication. The 40% over-contribution penalty is charged on what you actually contributed, not on what SARS’s ledger happens to show. If you trusted a too-low SARS figure and “topped up” the difference near the R500,000 lifetime cap, you could stroll straight into a penalty. The tracker on your ITA34 is useful, but it is not gospel, especially if you have old accounts or have ever transferred a TFSA. Keep your own contribution ledger, from your very first deposit, forever. I do, and this is exactly why.

📝Lesson six: even in the top bracket, nobody pays the sticker rate

One last number, for everyone who read my tax crash course and wondered how it scales. My taxable income put me in the top 45% bracket this year. My actual tax, after the slices, the primary rebate and the credits? About 31,8% of taxable income.

Top bracket. Nowhere near 45% overall. That is the progressive system doing precisely what I described: only the top slice pays the top rate, and every rebate and credit pulls the effective rate down from there. If the “45% tax!!” headlines have ever scared you, this is what the reality looks like on an actual assessment.

And for the curious: yes, the medical credits helped meaningfully. The monthly Medical Scheme Fees Tax Credit alone, at R728 a month for the two members on my medical aid, came to R8,736 for the year, with further medical-related credits (due to out-of-pocket expenses) on top of that. Every one of them is money payroll could not see, which loops us right back to why the refund exists at all.

The Bottom Line

One document. Six lessons. A deduction that saved me R92,500, an exemption that zeroed out my interest, a credit that stopped double taxation, a lifetime TFSA ledger that turned out to be wrong, a refund that is really a repayment, and living proof that marginal is not effective.

This is why I keep saying that your ITA34 is not admin. It is the annual scoreboard of every tax decision you made, and it will teach you more about your own money in twenty minutes than a month of finance content.

So here is your homework, and I mean it: open your own assessment this week and read every line. Check your IRP5 numbers, check your certificates, check the TFSA ledger against your own records, and look at what your deductions actually saved you. If something looks wrong, you have the tools, request a correction. If it all checks out, you will understand your money better than you did yesterday.

Then come tell me in the comments: refund, or bill? And did you find anything on yours that surprised you? And for those of you who haven’t maxed out your TFSA for the current year, don’t forget to send that refund straight to it!

SheKreatesWealth is a financial education platform. This article describes my own personal tax assessment and is shared for education and transparency only. It is not tax advice, and your circumstances will differ. Figures reflect the 2026 year of assessment. Please consult a registered tax practitioner for guidance on your own affairs.

This is what happened, in one sentence: Almost everything that was winning in December started losing, almost everything that was lagging started flying, and the investors who did absolutely nothing came out just fine.

If you have been reading me for a while, you know that sentence is basically my entire philosophy. But this time I do not have to preach it. I can just show you the numbers. So, let’s mark the half-year report card together, and along the way I will hand you the exact tools I use, so that by the end you can do this review yourself, every month, for free.

First, the two tools I use

I promised to teach you to fish, so before the numbers, my two favorite (free!) resources for tracking every ETF in South Africa:

1. The etfSA Monthly Performance Survey. Every month, etfSA.co.za publishes a survey covering the total returns of every single exchange traded product on the JSE, all 313 of them at last count, over periods from three months to ten years. It is the closest thing SA has to an official ETF scoreboard, and everything JSE-related in this article comes from the December 2025 and June 2026 editions. If those names sound familiar, they should: etfSA is run by Mike Brown, whose ETF seminars were my unofficial classroom back in 2015 (that whole story is in my very first article).

2. The Just One Lap ETF database. The Just One Lap ETF Database lets you filter and compare every JSE-listed ETF by what it tracks, what it costs, and how it has done. When someone asks, “which ETF gives me exposure to X”, this is where you should send them.

📌 Bookmark both. Fifteen minutes a month with these two tools will teach you more about the SA ETF landscape than a hundred hot takes on social media.

Right. Report card time.

The big story: December’s heroes became June’s zeroes

Cast your mind back to December. The 2025 tables were a commodity festival. Silver was the star of the year, up a scarcely believable 120% over twelve months. Platinum ETFs had more than doubled. And the Satrix RESI 10, which tracks SA’s resource giants, was the single best performing ETF on the JSE for 2025, up 142% in a year.

I promise you, in December there were people looking at those tables and moving their life savings into silver and resources. It is the most human instinct in investing: buy the thing that just went up.

Now here is the December 2025 vs June 2026 table:

Every single champion of 2025 is deep in the red for 2026 so far. The war shock in the Gulf sent oil flying (the Standard Bank Oil ETN gained over 40% this half) but knocked demand for metals, and the “safe haven” trade unwound violently. Anyone who performance-chased into commodities in January has spent six months learning an expensive lesson.

🚩 This is the single most important thing the tables can teach you, so read it twice: last year’s winner is not a prediction. It is a rear-view mirror. The top of a performance table tells you where the returns have already been, not where they are going. Chasing it is how ordinary investors reliably buy high and sell low.

Home turf: the JSE hangover

After 2025’s party (the Top 40 returned 47,7% last year, its best run in ages), our local market woke up with a headache. The FTSE/JSE Top 40 fell 4,5% in the first half, dragged down by those same resource shares, and the All Share lost 3,5%.

But look under the bonnet and the story is more interesting:

• Financials rose. The Satrix FINI 15 gained 7,4% this half. Banks quietly did their thing.

• Property rose. Satrix Property added 4,4%, continuing a genuinely strong multi-year recovery.

• Bonds rose. SA bond ETFs returned around 4,4% for the half, helped along by our high yields.

💡 So “the JSE fell” is true and misleading at the same time. Equities fell. Financials, property and bonds all climbed. This is what diversification across asset classes actually looks like in practice: something in the portfolio is almost always having a bad six months, and something else is quietly offsetting it. That is not a bug. That is the whole design.

And a comforting zoom-out for my fellow local investors: even after this rough half, the Top 40’s one-year return still stands at +18,6%. Six months is noise. Own it, do not trade it.

The world: the AI boom broadened

Globally, the half was a washing machine (war shock in February, violent recovery after), but the machines came out clean:

• MSCI World returned about 7% in rand for the half.

• Satrix S&P 500 feeder: +7,8%.

• Satrix Nasdaq 100: +17,5%, as the AI trade roared back.

• 10X Total World: +9,5%.

But the real surprise of the half was emerging markets, specifically East Asia. Korea and Taiwan sit at the heart of the global semiconductor and AI supply chain, and money flooded in. The 1nvest MSCI EM Asia feeder gained 26,5% this half. The Sygnia Itrix Emerging Markets 50 did a scarcely believable +38,8% in six months and is up 60% over a year. Meanwhile China trackers fell 17% and India trackers lost 11% over the same six months.

💡 Hands up if you predicted, in January, that emerging market ETFs would trounce the S&P 500 this half, that Japan would beat Europe, and that China and India would both fall while Korea flew. Nobody did. That is precisely the argument for owning a broad world tracker: you hold the winners before anyone knows they are winners. My 10X Total World does not need me to be clever. It just needs me to keep the debit order running.

The plot twist I did not expect to write: the AMETFs topped the class

Now for the part of the report card that made me smile, and also made me a little uncomfortable, which is usually a sign it is worth writing about.

The two best performing funds in the entire South African ETF market over the past year were not index trackers at all. They were actively managed ETFs: the EasyETFs AI World AMETF, up 79,0% over twelve months, and the EasyETFs Global Equity AMETF, up 71,9%, both riding precision bets on the AI and semiconductor names driving global earnings. If you read my mid-year portfolio update, you know I hold both, and they were among my best performers this half.

Even my sleepy retirement fund joined the party: the EasyETFs Balanced AMETF, where basically my whole EasyEquities RA sits, returned 35,7% over the past year. For a balanced, Regulation 28 fund, that is remarkable.

So does SheKreatesWealth, the index evangelist, now take it all back? No. And it is important to be precise about why. When I wrote about actively managed ETFs, my position was that low-cost index trackers remain the correct default, and that AMETFs are a legitimate satellite for a specific strategy you cannot get in an index. That is exactly how I hold them: my core is Total World, the Nasdaq 100 and the S&P 500, and the AMETFs are a deliberate, sized slice on top. One spectacular year does not change the maths that most active managers lag their benchmark over long periods. These funds are young, their track records are short, and the same concentration that made them fly this year can make them fall twice as hard in a rotation. Enjoy the year. Do not extrapolate it.

⚠️ If this half tempts you to swap your entire core into last year’s hottest AMETF, scroll back up to the silver table and read the red column again. Same lesson, shinier wrapper.

* JSE ETF returns so far in 2026 - Just One Lap All data is close 31 December 2025 to close 30 June 2026, excluding dividends

The American report card (for my USD account friends)

Plenty of you, like me, also invest directly into US-listed ETFs. Here is how the big names closed the half, per etf.com’s half-year review:

• Vanguard S&P 500 (VOO): +10,2%. It also made history this year as the first ETF ever to reach one trillion dollars in assets.

• Invesco QQQ (Nasdaq 100): +20,2%, double the S&P.

• Semiconductor ETFs were the runaway theme of the half. The Philadelphia Semiconductor Index posted its best quarter on record, and chip trackers like VanEck’s semiconductor ETF were among the strongest non-leveraged funds on the market.

• International (non-US) equity ETFs gained around 14%, beating the S&P, which almost never happens two halves in a row and did this time.

• Bond ETFs eked out only a fractional gain. Gold was down 7% and bitcoin down 33% in dollars. Shiny things had a rough half everywhere.

You might notice the S&P 500 returned about 10% in dollars but our Satrix feeder version returned 7,8% in rand. That gap is mostly the rand, which ended the half slightly firmer against the dollar. Some halves the currency adds to your offshore returns, some halves it subtracts. Over decades it has mostly added, which is one reason I keep a healthy offshore allocation, but do not let any single half fool you either way.

One more staggering number while we are in America: investors poured over one trillion dollars into US-listed ETFs in just the first six months of 2026, a record pace. The quiet revolution I have been writing about since 2015 is not slowing down. It is accelerating.

So what about the second half?

Deep breath. You know I do not do predictions, but I will share how I am thinking, which is different.

The honest answer is that the range of outcomes is wide.

• The AI trade is powerful but crowded and expensively priced and concentrated enough that the S&P 500’s fate now rests on a handful of companies.

• Emerging Asia has momentum but has already run hard.

• The battered metals could stay down, or could be exactly the value the contrarians say they are; even Mike Brown’s survey notes they “could offer value going forward.”

• Interest rates are easing globally while our own Reserve Bank sits at 7% nursing oil-driven inflation. A ceasefire holds until it does not.

I genuinely do not know which of those forces wins the next six months. Neither does anyone on your timeline, including the confident ones. Especially the confident ones.

What I do know is what the first half just demonstrated, in real time, with real money: the leadership rotated violently, twice, and the only investors who caught every rotation were the ones who owned everything all along.

So, my second-half strategy is thrillingly boring: the debit orders keep running, the TFSA stays maxed, the core stays in broad, low-cost trackers, the satellites stay small, and I will read the December tables with the same cup of something warm.

The Bottom Line

The first half of 2026 was a masterclass, and the tuition was paid by performance-chasers. The 2025 champions fell hard. The unloved corners flew. The local market dipped while its financials, property and bonds climbed. And through all of it, a boring global tracker with a debit order attached did precisely what it always does: it captured the winners nobody predicted, shrugged off the losers, and compounded.

You do not need to forecast rotations. You need to own broadly, pay little, contribute always, and let the tables entertain you rather than instruct you.

SheKreatesWealth is a financial education platform. This article is for educational and informational purposes only and does not constitute financial advice or a recommendation to buy or sell any ETF or other product. Performance figures are drawn from the etfSA.co.za Monthly Performance Surveys (December 2025 and June 2026) and etf.com’s half-year reviews, reflect total returns with dividends reinvested, and describe the past, which is no guide to the future. Do your own research or speak to a licensed financial adviser before investing.

A little about where I stand before we start. I have been investing for over 11 years now (the whole origin story is in my very first piece here, the radio interview that changed my money life), and over the last few years I have become, above all else, an ETF investor. Hold that thought, because this half hammered home exactly why.

And one promise. This is not a highlight reel. I am going to show you the wins, yes, but also the losses I would quietly rather you did not see, genuine mistakes I made, and a savings habit that is frankly a bit of a mess. If you have ever felt behind, or like everyone online is winning except you, I hope this does the opposite. Real portfolios are lumpy, imperfect things, and mine is no exception.

Let’s get into it.

The headline, and the immediate reality check

At the end of June, across every investment account and my cash savings combined, I crossed the R5 million mark for the first time (with ~70% of it on the EasyEquities platform). Six months ago, that number was about R4,7 million.

I am genuinely proud of it. But let me temper it in the same breath, because context is everything:

• My EasyEquities portfolio is down 2,54% over the past month, roughly R91,000. Completely normal, and exactly why I never celebrate (or cry over) a single month.

• More importantly, as you will see at the end, the market did less than half the work of getting me here (in contrast to past 6-month periods). Most of it was simply money I added.

A milestone is nice. What matters is the machine underneath it. Let me show you the whole thing.

The full picture

Let me zoom out first

Before I walk through the accounts, some real context, because telling a single six-month snapshot is not the full story. I have been doing these bi-annual portfolio reviews since December 2015, and the full picture is genuinely humbling. Back then the whole thing was worth about R353,000. Ten and a half years later it has crossed R5 million, roughly 14 times bigger, with no windfall, no inheritance and no lottery ticket. Just monthly contributions and time.

The shape of that journey matters more than the number. It went slow, then slow, then somehow steep, which is exactly how compounding feels when you are living inside it. My first R1 million took until the middle of 2019, more than three years of grind for that opening seven-figure rung. R2 million landed at the end of 2021, R3 million by mid-2024, R4 million sometime in 2025, and now R5 million. Each million has arrived faster than the last, and that acceleration is the whole magic.

And it was absolutely not a straight line. In the first half of 2022 this portfolio fell by nearly R293,000, down almost 13% in six months, and then went precisely nowhere for the rest of that year. A full twelve months of debit orders with nothing to show for it on paper. I did not panic-sell, I did not switch strategy, I did not try to pick the bottom. I just kept buying, every month. It has more than doubled since that low.

Which brings me back to this half. R5 million is a real milestone, but the roughly R300,000 of growth that got me here was comfortably the smallest gain of the last three half-years. My portfolio grew by nearly R500,000 in the first half of 2025, and over R730,000 in the second. This half managed barely a third of that. So no, it was not my imagination. This was a hard, choppy six months, and there is a very good reason why.

What on earth happened in the first six months of 2026?

2026 has so far been genuinely wild, defined by two enormous and opposing forces: a war shock, and an AI boom.

The year opened beautifully. Global equities hit fresh highs in January, chipmakers were flying on the back of the relentless AI infrastructure buildout, and gold went on a tear, spiking to a record above $5,500 dollars an ounce before collapsing 21% in two brutal days At home the mood matched it: the JSE All Share climbed, the rand traded near multi-year highs below R16 to the US dollar, and the Reserve Bank held rates steady at 6,75%, even as noise from a US/Venezuela standoff to fresh Greenland rhetoric kept everyone on edge.

Then late February happened. US and Israeli strikes on Iran effectively shut the Strait of Hormuz, and Brent crude lurched toward 120 USD a barrel. Suddenly the word on everyone’s lips was stagflation, and markets sold off hard: shares, bonds and emerging-market currencies all took a hit.

And then, almost as fast as it arrived, fear rotated into greed. As de-escalation hopes crept in, money poured into the AI trade like nothing I have seen. The Philadelphia Semiconductor Index had its best quarter on record, memory-chip names multiplied in value, and my own Micron position rode that exact wave to a frankly ridiculous +940%. But the rotation was brutally selective: while the chip names soared, old Big Tech favorites like Microsoft and Meta lagged. (Which, spoiler, matters for my portfolio in a moment.) It was, in many ways, the live version of the argument I made in The AI Boom: Your Boring Index ETF Is Already On It.

For South Africa it was a mixed bag. Moody’s upgraded our sovereign outlook to positive, making us a bit of a G20 standout, but the Reserve Bank, staring down oil-driven inflation, hiked the repo rate to 7%. By June, oil had drifted back toward 70 dollars, the S&P 500 had staged a roaring recovery with dozens of fresh record highs, gold had reversed sharply, a colossal SpaceX listing dominated headlines, and the rand had settled weaker but still structurally sound around R16,40.

The net effect? Headline indices ended the half surprisingly resilient, but underneath them was a washing machine of violent rotations. And a washing machine is a hard place to be holding individual shares, as the next few sections will show.

The confession: my leaky bucket

Look at that savings line. It went down from ~R232,000 to ~R174,000, even though I have a R9,600 monthly debit order feeding it. That is R57,600 that went in over the half, and yet the balance still fell by over R58,000.

Part of it is structural. About R116,000 flowed straight back out, mostly quarterly school fees, a birthday holiday, and a couple of those “life happens” moments like a burst car tyre and burst kitchen faucet, and because I run my emergency fund and my sinking fund as one messy bucket. So the account meant to be my untouchable emergency money keeps getting raided for costs I already knew were coming.

But if I am being truly honest, the deeper reason is not admin. It is an internal war between saving and investing, and investing keeps winning. Somewhere across these 11 years, investing became genuinely, almost dangerously addictive to me. Watching money compound is a thrill a savings account balance simply cannot match. So when spare cash appears, my instinct is to fire it into an investment account, not to top up savings. My bucket is not just leaking. I am also quietly under-filling it, on purpose, because the shiny investing account keeps calling.

🚩 I am calling this out on myself so you can watch for it in your own behavior. Your emergency fund is the foundation that lets you invest bravely. It is the thing that stops you having to sell your investments at the worst possible moment when life throws a curveball. Starving it to feed your portfolio feels productive, but it quietly makes your whole plan more fragile. Lumpy, predictable costs (school fees, holidays,) belong in a separate sinking fund you fill ahead of time. Your emergency fund is for genuine surprises, and it should be left alone to sit there and be boring.

I lead with this because if the person with the R5 million portfolio still fights this battle, please give yourself grace about yours.

The crown jewel: my TFSA

Now the good news, and my proudest account by a mile. My Tax-Free Savings Account grew from R785,000 to just under R925,000, and it is now within touching distance of R1 million.

Let me give you the history (if you follow me on X, you probably know the story). I opened my TFSA when the product launched during the 2015/2016 Financial Year, making my very first deposit, the full R30,000, in January 2016, just weeks before the end of that tax year. And I have maxed it out every single year since, all the way through to this year’s R46,000. In total I have contributed R421,000 over those ten-plus years. It is now worth around R924,700. That is a return of roughly 119,6% on what I put in. My money has more than doubled, entirely free of tax.

📌 Quick but important nerd note. The app shows my TFSA “profit” as ~60%, but that is not my real return, and this is worth understanding. Over 11 years I have done a lot of buying, selling, and even one transfer inside this account. Every time you sell or transfer, the platform’s profit percentage resets against a new cost base, so it stops reflecting your actual lifetime journey. The honest way to measure your true return is simple: money you have put in, versus what it is worth now. R421,000 in, about R924,700 out. That 119,6% is the number that actually matters.

I also did some housekeeping this half. I trimmed my 10X Total World holding, sold out of my Sygnia EuroStoxx50 position entirely, added a Satrix Top 40, grew my EasyETFs Global Equity actively managed ETF, and used the proceeds to pump up my Satrix Nasdaq 100, now my single biggest TFSA holding at nearly R480,000.

I am going to dedicate a full Substack Article of my TFSA journey the day I finally hit the R1 million mark. Watch this space!

💡 And here is why I love this wrapper so much: all of that buying and selling triggered zero tax. Rebalancing inside a TFSA creates no capital gains event at all. Do the exact same reshuffle in a normal taxable account and you would be declaring capital gains this filing season. (I broke that down in my recent filing-season piece.) Inside the TFSA, I just quietly rearrange and carry on.

The spicy account: wins, losses, and mistakes

This is my EasyEquities ZAR and USD accounts, where I hold individual shares. Individual shares are my satellite, not my core. The US listed individual shares are my high-conviction growth stocks I believe can meaningfully outperform the market over the next decade. It is the fun, higher-risk sliver of the portfolio, and I keep it deliberately much smaller than my ETFs for exactly the reasons that follow.

The wins are, I will admit, eye-watering. Nvidia is up 293%, Palantir up 396%, Micron up an absurd 940%, ASML up 173%, TSMC up 144%, Apple up 91%. My Purple Group holding (yes, the company that owns EasyEquities itself) is comfortably in the green too.

But here is what I promised you, the other side of the ledger:

• Sibanye Stillwater: down 26%. This one stings most, because six months ago it was up 28%. A total reversal, and no surprise given how violently precious metals whipped around this half.

• Microsoft: down 19%. More on this one in a second.

• Iris Energy: down 24%. Charles Schwab Large-Cap Growth: down 4%. Vanguard FTSE Emerging: down 1%. Satrix S&P 500: down 2%.

Now look closely at that list, because there is a lesson hiding in it. Almost all of my current losses are in my newest positions, the ones I only bought in the last few months: Iris Energy, the Schwab ETF, the FTSE Emerging ETF, the S&P 500. The two older exceptions are Sibanye and Microsoft.

💡 This is not a coincidence, and it is worth internalizing. New positions are almost always your reddest, because they have not had years to compound and ride out the dips. Compare Palantir, which I have held for years and is up 396%, with Iris Energy, which I bought recently and is down 24%. Same investor, same account. The difference is time. When you see a new buy in the red, that is usually not a mistake, it is just the beginning of the clock.

I did take profits this half, trimming winners like Nvidia, Micron, Palantir and TransMedics, and I cut four positions loose entirely (Clean Energy, MercadoLibre, Meta and Nu). Taking money off the table after a monster run, and letting go of things whose story has genuinely changed (or change in my own story), is fair.

⚠️ But let me own a real mistake while I am here, because it is a different thing entirely. I trimmed my Microsoft while it was in the red, and that was the wrong call. I still believe in the business completely. Selling a quality company you still believe in, simply because it is temporarily down, is just selling low, the exact opposite of the game. That is not discipline, it is a flinch. Microsoft did not need trimming. It needed time, and I should have given it more. Lesson relearned.

And here is the bigger truth this entire account has taught me, one it has taken a few painful lessons to fully accept. ETFs rule! My hand-picked shares gave me the biggest thrills and the biggest headaches, swung the most violently, demanded the most attention, and this half delivered the least. Meanwhile my ETFs and my one boring balanced retirement fund just quietly did the work.

So I am drawing a line. I am very unlikely to add any new individual shares from here. I will let the winners I already hold run, keep half an eye on the rest, but new money is going into ETFs. Diversified, low-cost, boring, brilliant ETFs. This satellite has served its purpose, mostly as a rather expensive teacher.

The boring engine: retirement

Three accounts here, and this is where the serious, long-term money quietly lives.

First, the story I love telling. My EasyEquities RA has not received a single new cent since August 2022. When I changed jobs that year, I transferred my old employer’s provident fund into it, and then I left it completely alone. No debit order, no top-ups, nothing. In these six months it grew by over R121,000 entirely on its own, and it is now up almost 80% since I opened it, more than R614,000 of growth from money I have not touched in nearly four years.

And here is the detail I love most: almost all of the EasyEquities RA (about 99%, with just a sliver in cash) sits in a single fund, the EasyETFs Balanced actively managed ETF. I wrote about AMETFs in this article, and how they are a welcome addition into the Regulation 28 space. It is not only my best-performing retirement fund by a distance, it is also the cheapest of the three. If you ever needed proof that low costs and a simple ETF approach beat complexity, this account is it.

My other two retirement funds tell a more sobering story, and I am showing it on purpose:

• My Momentum Provident Fund (through my employer) grew from R470,000 to R536,000, but R81,751 of that was new contributions. Strip those out and it actually went backwards by around R15,000 in market terms. Since this fund is through my employer, I don’t have much control over any of it.

• My Discovery RA barely moved, from R795,000 to R805,000, despite R31,391 in fresh contributions. In pure market terms, it too went backwards this half. This RA has been my most disappointing investment, it has done cumulative return of 49.7% since inception (10.5 years), with fees of ~2.16% p.a. I am currently caught inside the Discovery Ecosystem, so I need to do a detailed review of this product versus the actual benefits from all the bells and whistles in the ecosystem. Ideally I should be consolidating with the Easy Equities RA or looking for a cheaper option. *Would love you opinion on this*

⚠️ A little context so nobody panics. Six months is a laughably short window to judge any retirement fund. You do not performance-chase a 30-year vehicle over half a year. The real, reliable win with all of them is not this half’s return anyway. It is the tax deduction: retirement contributions are deductible up to 27,5% of your income, which quietly lowers my tax bill every single year. That is the part that always compounds. (I compare the TFSA and the RA in full here.)

Me versus the market

Right, this is the most important section in the whole update, so please do not skim it.

Across all my investment accounts, my money grew by about R357,000 this half. Feels great. But when I split that number apart, only about R133,000 came from the market. The other R224,000, nearly two thirds, was simply money I added.

Sit with that.

In a genuinely rough, choppy six months, my own boring consistency, the debit orders, the maxed TFSA, the monthly contributions, did almost twice as much for my portfolio as every clever stock pick, every violent rotation, and every headline combined.

📌 This is the thing nobody posts about, because “I added money and stayed invested” does not go viral. But it is the truth of wealth-building, especially in the early and middle years. The market’s returns are wildly unreliable in the short term, as this half proved. Your contributions are the one lever you fully control. Some halves the market carries you. This one, I carried me. Both are wins, but only one of them is in your hands.

📍Honesty means an action list, not just confessions:

The Bottom Line

I crossed a big number this half, but I hope what stays with you is not the R5 million. I hope it is the leaky bucket I am still fixing, the shares sitting in the red, the Microsoft trim I did wrong, the retirement funds that went nowhere for six months, and the quiet, unglamorous fact that showing up with my contributions did more than the entire chaotic market did this time. Not forgetting the entire 10-and-a-half-year dashboard – 10.5 years of Showing Up: R353k to R5 Million!

That is what real investing looks like. Not a straight line up. Not a highlight reel. Just consistent, imperfect, boring discipline, repeated for long enough that one day you look up and the number has a comma in a new place. And after 11 years and one very expensive education in individual shares, my conviction has never been simpler: keep costs low, stay diversified, max the tax-free wrapper, feed it every month, and let boring ETFs do the heavy lifting.

We are exactly halfway through the year. So here is my challenge to you: do your own mid-year check-in this week. Open your accounts, add them up, and just look. Not to compare yourself to me or anyone else, but to see your own machine clearly. What is working? What is leaking? What is one thing you will fix in the second half?

Tell me in the comments. And if this honest version was more useful to you than a highlight reel would have been, share it with someone who needs to see that real money is messy too.

SheKreatesWealth is a financial education platform. This article describes my own personal portfolio and is shared purely for transparency and education. It is not financial advice, and nothing in it is a recommendation to buy or sell any share, ETF, fund or product. The holdings I mention are mine. They suit my goals, my timeline and my risk appetite, and they may be entirely wrong for you. Past performance is not a guide to future returns, and everything shown here can fall as easily as it can rise. Please do your own research and speak to a licensed financial adviser before making any investment decision.

So let’s take the confusion out of it. This is your calm, practical guide to filing season as an investor: what is taxed, what isn’t, and the handful of things worth five minutes of your attention.

First: The dates

Let’s get the diary sorted, because the deadlines depend on what kind of taxpayer you are:

• Auto-assessments: 1 July to 12 July 2026

• Non-provisional individuals: 13 July to 23 October 2026

• Provisional taxpayers and trusts: 13 July 2026 to 22 January 2027

Wait, which one are you?

Most people are non-provisional taxpayers. If you earn a salary and your employer deducts PAYE every month, that is you. SARS collects your tax as you go, so you simply file once a year (or get auto assessed) and you are done.

You become a provisional taxpayer when you earn meaningful income that nobody has taxed at source: freelance or business income, rental from a property, or investment income above the limit. As a rough rule, if you do not run a business, you stay non-provisional as long as your taxable interest, dividends and rental together stay under R30,000 for the year. Tip over that, and SARS expects you to estimate your income and pay your tax in advance, in two instalments (end of August and end of February), instead of in one lump at assessment.

The word doing the heavy lifting there is taxable, and it works in investors’ favour. Your local dividends are taxed at source through the 20% Dividend Withholding Tax (DWT) and are exempt from normal tax, so they barely count towards the R30,000 (foreign dividends do). The exempt slice of your interest and everything inside your TFSA do not count either. So, what actually tips you over is interest, and it takes a real pile to get there.

📌 At today’s money-market rates of around 8%, you would need roughly R670,000 sitting in cash, money market or bond funds before your taxable interest alone crosses R30,000. A normal equity-ETF portfolio (your STX40, STXWDM, STXNDQ) can run well into seven figures before this is even a question, because equity yields are low and local dividends are settled at source. So unless you hold a large cash or bond balance, earn meaningful foreign dividends, or have rental or a side income, you are very likely still non-provisional.

💡And the bit people forget: the return you are filing now covers the 2026 tax year, which ran from 1 March 2025 to 28 February 2026. Not the current year. The year that just ended.

A quick crash course: how your tax is actually worked out

Before we go further, let’s clear up how income tax in South Africa actually works; you’d be surprised at the number of people who don’t know this.

South Africa uses a progressive tax system. That mean that your whole income is NOT taxed at one rate; but it is sliced into bands, and each slice is taxed at its own rate, climbing as you earn more. The rate that applies to your top slice is your marginal rate. The rate you actually pay once you average it across everything you earned is your effective rate, and it is always lower.

Here is the table for the 2026 tax year (the return you are filing now):

*This is why the old fear that “a raise will bump me into a higher bracket, and I’ll take home less” is a myth. Only the rand above each threshold is taxed at the higher rate. Earning more always leaves you with more.

Deductions (amounts that reduce your taxable income): A deduction comes off your income before the brackets are applied, so it shrinks the figure your tax is worked out on. Because of that, a deduction saves you tax at your marginal rate rather than rand for rand. The main ones for individuals:

• Retirement fund contributions: money you put into a pension, provident fund or retirement annuity is deductible, up to 27.5% of your income, capped at R350,000 for this tax assessment (rising to R430,000 next year). This is the single biggest lever most salaried people have.

• Donations to registered charities: a donation to an approved Public Benefit Organisation, backed by a Section 18A receipt, is deductible up to 10% of your taxable income, and anything above that carries over to the next year.

After the deductions and tax brackets have done their work, next comes the Rebates: A rebate is a flat rand amount subtracted straight from your tax bill, after the brackets. It is not a deduction.

Age Rebates: Everyone gets the primary rebate. Then SARS adds further rebates as you age, on the logic that older taxpayers often live on fixed incomes:

They stack; you do not choose one. So, someone under 65 gets R17,235. Someone aged 65 to 74 gets R26,679 (primary plus secondary). Someone 75 or older gets R29,824 (all three).

This is exactly what creates the tax threshold, the income level below which you pay no income tax at all. Because the lowest bracket is 18%, your rebate cancels out the tax on the first chunk of your income: At 18%, the tax on the first R95,750 of income works out to exactly R17,235, and your primary rebate is also R17,235. The two cancel out, so you owe nothing until you earn more than that. If you are under 65 and earn R95,750 or less, the tax calculated on it is fully wiped out by your rebate, and you owe nothing. For the older brackets the threshold sits higher, at R148,217 (65 to 74) and R165,689 (75 and up).

Medical Scheme Fees Tax Credit (MTC) Rebate: a fixed monthly amount for being on a medical aid, R364 a month each for the first two members and R246 for each further dependent, taken straight off your tax. There is also an additional credit for very large out-of-pocket medical costs.

Now Exemptions: This is where investors quietly win

Exemptions (income removed before tax is even calculated). An exemption lifts a slice of a particular kind of income out of the sum entirely, so it never reaches the brackets. The big ones for investors:

• Interest exemption: the first R23,800 of local interest (R34,500 if you are 65 or older) is exempt. Earn R30,000 in interest and only R6,200 is added to your taxable income. The rest is free.

• SA dividends are exempt from normal income tax, you pay 20% Dividends Withholding Tax at source and that’s it, nothing more gets added to your taxable income

• Your TFSA: the ultimate exemption. Interest, dividends and capital gains inside it are all exempt, no ceiling, forever.

• CGT annual exclusion: the first R40,000 of capital gains in the year (for this return) is excluded before the rest is considered for tax.

📌 Three words people muddle, quickly sorted: an exemption removes income before tax is worked out (your interest exemption). A deduction reduces your taxable income (your retirement annuity contributions). A rebate comes off the tax itself (the primary rebate). All three shrink your bill, just at different points in the sum.

Putting it all together: Claire’s tax, step by step

Theory is one thing, so let’s run a real calculation using everything above. Meet Claire: 33 years old, earning R600,000 a year. She pays R7,000 a month towards medical aid covering herself, her husband and their two children, and she contributes R60,000 a year to her company provident fund. Here is how SARS works out her tax for the 2026 tax year. (We’ll assume the R600,000 is her gross salary, and that she has no other income or deductions to claim.)

And here is the punchline that ties the whole crash course together: Claire sits in the 36% bracket, but after the slices, the deduction, the rebate and the medical credit, her effective rate is about 18,4% of her taxable income. She never pays 36% on the whole lot.

Do you even need to file?

As a rule of thumb, if you earn a salary, have investments, changed jobs, or want to claim anything (like RA contributions or medical expenses), you should assume you do need to submit a return, even if you earn less than R500,000. SARS only lets you skip filing if your total income is under R500,000, it comes from one employer only for the full year, you have no other income at all (no investments, no rental, no side hustle), and you are not claiming any deductions beyond what your employer already built into your PAYE. The moment you have a modest investment portfolio, you fall outside that shortcut and filing becomes part of being an adult investor.

The auto-assessment “trap” (and why you must check)

Here is how it works. SARS pulls third-party data from your employer, your medical scheme, your bank, and your investment platforms, and uses it to build your return automatically. If you are auto-assessed and you agree with it, you do nothing. No need to even click “accept.” If a refund is due and your banking details are correct, it simply lands in your account.

Sounds great. But your investment life is often the messiest part of that data, and this is where things slip through:

• You invest on two platforms, and only one IT3 certificate made it onto the return.

• You earned foreign dividends or interest that the local pre-fill missed.

• You sold something and the capital gain was captured with the wrong base cost (or not at all).

🚩 That “free money” refund can quietly be an under-assessment. If SARS left out income you actually earned, accepting it doesn’t make the tax disappear. It just means you’ll owe it later, possibly with penalties and interest. You are legally responsible for the accuracy of your return, even when SARS filled it in for you.

So the rule for investors is simple: do not rubber-stamp your auto-assessment. Open it, compare it to your own records, and if something is missing or wrong, file a corrected return by 23 October.

Meet the Certificates: IRP5, IT3(b) and IT3(c)

Your employer will issue you an IRP5, and every platform and bank you invest with will issue you tax certificates (you should already have them by now). Every year, SARS builds your return from these third‑party certificates:

• IRP5 (employee tax certificate)
  This comes from your employer and is the backbone of your return. It shows your total salary, bonuses, allowances, fringe benefits, and all the deductions your employer made (retirement fund, medical aid, UIF), plus exactly how much PAYE was paid to SARS on your behalf. Most of what you see on the “Income” and “PAYE” sections of your return flows straight from this certificate.

• IT3(b) (investment income)
  Issued by your bank and investment platforms. It shows the interest and dividends you earned, and any tax already withheld (for example, the 20% dividends tax on local shares and ETFs).

• IT3(c) (capital gains and losses)
  Also from your investment platforms. It shows the profit or loss on anything you sold during the year – for example, when you rebalance your ETF portfolio or cash out a share.

On SARS eFiling, these three certificates feed into the Employment Income, Investment Income and Capital Gains sections of your return. SARS usually pre‑fills them, but you still want to double check your own IRP5 and IT3 certificates from your employer and platforms and check that every figure and every account is represented. Pre‑filled does not automatically mean correct. Five minutes now beats a query letter later.

How your investments are actually taxed

Tax on investments comes down to three buckets. Once you understand them, the whole thing stops being scary.

1. Interest

Interest is taxed as ordinary income at your marginal rate, but you get a generous annual exemption first. For the year you are filing, SARS exempts the first R23,800 of local interest if you are under 65, and R34,500 if you are 65 or older. This bucket includes interest from your cash, money market funds, bonds and RSA Retail Savings Bonds. Foreign interest is fully taxable with no exemption at all. Declare it either way, even if it falls under the threshold.

2. Dividends

When a South African company or ETF pays you a dividend, 20% Dividends Withholding Tax is taken off before it reaches you. The good news: that is final. You do not pay anything more, and the dividend is not added to your taxable income. It still shows up on your certificate, but there is nothing extra to settle.

Two anomalies worth knowing:

• Foreign dividends are taxable, with a partial exemption that caps the effective rate at around 20%.

• Property ETFs and REITs are the sneaky one. Their distributions are treated as property income, taxed at your full marginal rate, not at the friendly 20% dividend rate. Many investors are surprised by this, so if you hold property ETFs, take note.

3. Capital gains (CGT)

This is the bucket people misunderstand most. CGT is only triggered when you sell or switch, not while you hold. Buy an ETF and watch it grow for twenty years and you owe nothing. The tax event happens on disposal: selling, switching from one ETF to another, even certain transfers.

For individuals, only 40% of your net capital gain is included in your taxable income, and that portion is taxed at your marginal rate (so the maximum effective CGT rate is 18%). For the 2026 tax year, the first R40,000 of your combined gains is excluded entirely. Capital losses can be set off against gains, and unused losses carry forward.

📌 This is why rebalancing matters. If you sell down one ETF to top up another in a normal (taxable) account, you may have created a capital gain even though you reinvested every cent. Inside a tax-free account, you don’t. More on that in a second.

⚠️ Mind the year: don’t use the new Budget numbers on this return

You have probably seen the headlines: the TFSA annual limit jumped to R46,000 and the CGT annual exclusion rose to R50,000. They take effect from 1 March 2026, which means they belong to next year’s return. For the 2026 tax year you are filing right now, the figures that applied were:

• TFSA annual contribution limit: R36,000

• CGT annual exclusion: R40,000

• Interest exemption: R23,800 (under 65) / R34,500 (65+)

Use the old numbers on this return. Bank the new ones for next year. Getting this wrong is one of the easiest mistakes to make right now, precisely because the new figures are everywhere.

The best part: your TFSA

I probably will never shut up about the Tax-Free Savings Account. Inside a TFSA, interest, dividends and capital gains are all completely tax-free, forever. No 20% on dividends. No CGT when you sell. No tax on interest. It is the one corner of your financial life SARS simply cannot touch.

But two cautions, because this is where disciplined investors trip:

• Do not over-contribute. SARS charges a brutal 40% penalty tax on any contribution above your annual limit (R36,000 for the year you are filing, R46,000 going forward) or your R500,000 lifetime limit. And critically, the limit applies in aggregate across every TFSA you own. If you have one at a bank and one on an ETF platform, SARS adds them together. This is exactly how DIY investors with two accounts accidentally blow past the cap.

• Withdrawals do not restore your room. Take money out and you cannot put it back without it counting as a fresh contribution

A few more items that are easy to miss:

• Two-pot withdrawals. If you dipped into your two-pot savings component during the year, that withdrawal is taxed at your marginal rate, not the gentler retirement lump-sum tables. It counts as income, it can push you into owing SARS, and it might even be the reason you suddenly need to file. Do not be caught off guard.

• Offshore holdings. Foreign dividends and foreign interest must be declared (remember, no exemption on foreign interest), and as a South African tax resident your foreign capital gains fall inside the SA net too. If you hold a USD account or direct offshore shares, declare them.

Another quick example

Meet Zoey. She earns a salary (PAYE already deducted), invests on EasyEquities in a normal ZAR account, and has a maxed-out TFSA. During the 2026 tax year, her taxable (ZAR) account earned R6,000 in interest and R4,000 in SA dividends, and she sold some of her Top 40 ETF to rebalance, realizing a R60,000 capital gain.

Here is how SARS sees it:

Your filing-season checklist:

1. Update your details now. Log into eFiling or the MobiApp and make sure your banking and contact details are current, so any refund actually reaches you.

2. Gather your certificates. Get your IRP5 from your employer. Download your IT3(b), IT3(c), RA certificate (IT3(f) and medical certificate from each provider.

3. When your auto-assessment arrives (1 to 12 July), do not rubber-stamp it. Open it and compare it line by line against your certificates. Look for missing platforms, missing foreign income, and dodgy capital-gains figures.

4. If it is complete and correct: you are done. Sit back.

5. If something is missing or wrong: file a corrected return by 23 October.

6. Not auto-assessed at all? File yourself between 13 July and 23 October.

7. Keep your records for five years. SARS can ask.

8. Complex affairs? Lots of offshore holdings, big gains, or business income? Pay a registered tax practitioner. It is worth it.

The Bottom Line

For most disciplined salaried, retail investors with a modest portfolio, investing mainly in ETFs, and utilizing the TFSA; filing season is genuinely not complicated. Your TFSA is untouchable. Your dividends are settled at source. Your modest interest and gains slip under the annual exemptions. The taxman is far less interested in your boring index fund than the noise around tax season would have you believe.

The real danger is being too passive: blindly accepting an auto-assessment that left out income, quietly over-contributing to a TFSA across two platforms, or forgetting that offshore dividend. None of those are tax problems. They are attention problems, and five minutes of checking solves every one of them.

You already do the hard part. You invest consistently, you keep your costs low, you stay in your seat when markets wobble. Filing season is just the once-a-year admin that protects all of it. Knowledge really is the cheapest tax-saving tool you own.

SheKreatesWealth is a financial education platform. This content is for educational and informational purposes only and does not constitute financial or tax advice. Tax treatment depends on your individual circumstances and may change. For help specific to your situation, please consult a registered tax practitioner.

Fifty years ago today, school children in Soweto put on their uniforms, picked up handmade placards, and walked straight into history. They were protesting a decree forcing them to be taught in Afrikaans, the language of the people oppressing them, but really, they were protesting an entire system built to keep them small. By the end of 16 June 1976, the streets had turned to chaos and grief. A photograph of a dying boy named Hector Pieterson travelled around the world. Many of those children never came home.

They were teenagers. Some were younger. And they understood something it is easy to forget in 2026: your future is not handed to you. It is fought for.

Half a century later, the uniforms have changed and the battlefield has moved. Nobody is telling you which language to learn in. But make no mistake, your generation has inherited a struggle of its own. It is quieter, it doesn’t trend every day, and it is no less defining. It is economic.

The numbers nobody will put on a Youth Day poster

Let’s be honest about what you’re walking into.

Stats SA’s most recent figures (for the first quarter of 2026) put youth unemployment, at 45,8%. In real terms, that is around 4,7 million young people who want work and can’t find it. Young people make up nearly half of everyone of working age in this country, and yet they carry the heaviest part of the load.

If you are one of those numbers right now, I need you to hear this clearly: it is not your fault. This is not a story about your generation being lazy or entitled. As I wrote in The Top 1% in South Africa, the barriers in this economy are structural. Millions of people are kept out not by a lack of effort, but by unemployment, geography, and circumstances they did not choose. Naming that honestly is not pessimism. It is the starting point for doing something about the part you can control.

Where the economy is actually headed

So is the cavalry coming? Let’s look at the map.

There is genuinely good news. Load-shedding has eased. Inflation is low, sitting near the Reserve Bank’s new 3% target. Interest rates have been coming down. South Africa came off the global money-laundering grey list and even earned a credit-rating upgrade. The economy is growing again, six quarters in a row now. The hard part is that it is growing slowly. The Reserve Bank and Treasury expect growth of around 1,4% in 2026. That is movement in the right direction, but nowhere near fast enough to create jobs for the hundreds of thousands of young people entering the market every single year. At that pace, the maths simply does not work in your favour on the timeline you need it to.

Which leads to the uncomfortable truth at the heart of this article:

📌 The economy is not going to rescue you on a schedule that suits you. The old script, study hard then get a good job then you’ll be fine, is cracked. A salary is no longer a guarantee, and even when it comes, it is no longer enough on its own.

So you build your own defence

Here is where I stop being the bearer of bad news, because this is the part that actually matters.

If the system will not hand you security, you build it yourself. In a country like ours, taking ownership of your own finances is one of the most quietly radical things a young person can do. It is the modern version of refusing to stay small.

Think about what even modest wealth actually buys you. It is a buffer when a job disappears overnight. It is runway to start the business nobody will give you a loan for. It is the freedom to walk away from a bad employer, a bad relationship, a bad situation, because you are not financially trapped. Wealth, even a little of it, is a defence against almost everything life is going to throw at you. And the people who build it are rarely the highest earners. They are the ones who started.

Your unfair advantage is the one thing money can’t buy back

A 50-year-old with a fat salary would give almost anything to have what you have right now: time. Time is the engine of compounding, and compounding is the closest thing to magic that finance offers. Money invested in your twenties has thirty or forty years to grow on top of its own growth. Money invested in your forties, not so much. This is why starting small and early beats starting big and late, almost every time.

A simple illustration (and it is only that, not a promise, because markets rise and fall): if you can find even R500 a month from age 25, and you put it into a low-cost global ETF inside a Tax-Free Savings Account, it can quietly grow into well over a million rand by the time you reach 60, the overwhelming majority of it, growth you never worked a single extra day for. Start the same habit at 40 and you end up with a fraction of that. Same person, same discipline. The only difference is the years you gave it.

That gap, the gap between owning assets early and owning them late, is exactly the ownership gap that has kept wealth in the same hands in this country for generations. You are young enough to get on the right side of it.

What you can actually do, starting today!

This does not require a big salary. It requires a start.

• If you earn anything at all (a job, a hustle, piece work, freelance gigs), automate a small amount before you can spend it. R300, R500, R1000. The number matters far less than the habit.

• Open a TFSA and buy a simple, low-cost ETF, then leave it alone. If none of that means anything to you yet, start with The Stock Market, Explained Simply and Which Broker Should You Use. The full step-by-step is in my 2026 Playbook.

• Protect yourself from the things built to harvest your money. The betting apps, the buy-now-pay-later, the store cards, the “double your money” schemes. They are aimed squarely at the young and the broke, and I broke down just how dangerous the gambling surge has become in my Financial Literacy Month piece. Do not let them get the little you have.

• Invest in your own earning power. When you are young, the single biggest lever you have is growing what you earn. Skills, certificates, learning, anything that raises your income. Then funnel a slice of every increase into your future instead of your lifestyle.

• And if you are still searching for work, this season is not wasted. Build the knowledge now. Stay out of the debt traps now. So that the day income arrives, however small, you are ready to make every rand of it count.

The unfinished business of 1976

The children who marched fifty years ago could not own much, because the system was designed to forbid it. They could not freely build wealth, access credit, or buy into the assets that compound quietly across a lifetime. They marched anyway, so that you would have the choices they were denied.

That is the inheritance. The ownership gap is their unfinished business, and you are the generation positioned to start closing it.

You honour them not with a hashtag, but by claiming the one battlefield that is fully within your control, your own financial future, and by building the kind of wealth that was once made illegal for people who looked like you.

You have less money than you’d like and more time than you realise. That is not a disadvantage. For building wealth, it might just be the best starting position there is.

So start. Start small if you must. But start today.

Happy Youth Day.

SheKreatesWealth is a financial education platform. This content is for educational and informational purposes only and does not constitute financial advice.

I have spent article after article on this platform pleading with people to automate a debit order and leave it alone. To stop trying to time the market. To understand that investing is 10% maths and 90% temperament. And here is the quiet irony: the stokvel solved the temperament problem generations ago. The discipline I’m always preaching? Our grandmothers had it on lockdown.

So this article is not me coming to “teach” stokvels how money works. It’s the opposite. It’s me asking one uncomfortable question of a tradition I deeply respect:

⁉️We are so good at saving money. Why are we so bad at letting it grow?

First, the numbers (and why they should make us proud, and a little frustrated)

Let’s start with the scale, because most people genuinely don’t realize how big this is. According to industry-wide estimates, including estimates from NASASA (National Stokvel Association of South Africa), which itself registers a smaller subset of formally affiliated stokvels), there are roughly 800,000 stokvels in this country (both registered and unregistered groups), with around 11 million members between them. That’s about one in four South African adults. Together, they move an estimated R50 billion every single year. Read that again. Fifty billion rands. That is not a side hustle. That is one of the largest, most disciplined, most resilient savings ecosystems in the country, and it was built entirely by ordinary people, mostly without banks, mostly without the formal financial system paying it the slightest attention.

Now here’s the frustrating part. Surveys suggest that more than 60% of stokvels still don’t use formal financial services at all. The money largely moves in cash. It sits in a tin can, a drawer, a handbag, a safe at the treasurer’s house. And cash that just sits there does two things (both of them bad): it is vulnerable to theft, and it quietly loses value to inflation every single month it isn’t growing.

💡To put things in perspective, that R50 billion that moves through stokvels every year, next to none of it is buying a single share on the JSE. The most disciplined savings ecosystem in the country is almost completely disconnected from the ownership class.

FNB shared something that stuck with me. Among the stokvel clients who did move their money into formal, interest-bearing accounts, members collectively earned around R256 million in interest in 2025 alone, and avoided roughly R211 million in withdrawal fees by going digital instead of drawing cash. That is a quarter of a billion rand in interest that, for the unbanked majority, simply evaporated. Money that was earned, pooled, and protected with extraordinary discipline, and then left to do nothing.

📌 The hard work is already done. The discipline is already there. What’s missing is the structure that turns saving into wealth.

How we got here: the surprisingly deep roots of the stokvel

Before we talk about where stokvels are going, it’s worth understanding where they came from, because the history explains everything about why they matter so much.

The word “stokvel” comes from “stock fairs”, the rotating cattle auctions run by English settlers in the Eastern Cape in the early 1800s. Black farmers and labourers would gather at these fairs to trade, socialise, exchange news, and pool whatever resources they had to buy livestock together. That act, people meeting socially, with the shared possibility of financial gain, is still the beating heart of the stokvel today.

When gold was discovered on the Witwatersrand in 1886, a wave of migrant workers, many of them from the Cape, moved to Johannesburg. They brought the stokvel concept with them, and in the brutal, often deadly conditions of mine labour, the first widespread stokvels took the form of burial societies: groups making sure that when a member died far from home, there was money for a dignified funeral and to send them back to their rural homestead. In the 1920s and 30s, as more African women moved to the cities and were locked out of formal wage work, women’s savings clubs flourished. Then apartheid hardened the exclusion. Black, Coloured and Indians were systematically denied access to credit and formal banking. The stokvel stopped being just a tradition and became essential financial infrastructure, an entire parallel banking system built on trust because the official one was closed by law.

In 1988, Andrew Lukhele founded NASASA to give this enormous informal sector a formal voice and a measure of protection. Today NASASA is a self-regulatory organisation recognised by the Prudential Authority, and it’s part of the reason stokvels can operate within the law rather than outside it.

I keep coming back to one statistic from my Top 1% article: in South Africa, the wealthiest 10% own more than 99% of all the shares and bonds held in the economy. The wealth gap in this country is not mainly an income gap. It is an ownership gap. And when you understand the history above, the gap makes painful sense. For generations, the people pooling money in stokvels were legally barred from the very assets, equities, that build long-term wealth. The discipline was never the problem. Access was.

That’s what makes this moment so important. For the first time, that access is wide open. The barriers that kept stokvel money out of the markets are gone. The only thing left is the upgrade.

Not all stokvels are the same

Quick orientation, because “stokvel” is really an umbrella term for several different things:

💵Savings / contribution stokvels: The classic rotating model – everyone contributes a fixed amount, and each month a different member takes the whole pot. Brilliant for forcing discipline and getting access to a lump sum you couldn’t accumulate alone.

🛒Grocery stokvels: Members save together all year and split the money (or the actual groceries) in November or December. A good defence against the December debt trap.

⚰️Burial societies: The oldest form, pooling money to cover funeral costs for members and their families.

🏦Investment stokvels: The new frontier. Instead of consuming the pooled money, the group invests it, in fixed deposits, government bonds, property, or, increasingly, shares and ETFs, and lets it compound over years.

The first three are about managing money. The fourth is about growing it. And the upgrade I’m talking about is mostly a journey from the first three towards adding some of the fourth. You don’t have to abandon the grocery stokvel. You just stop letting all of the money stay asleep.

The uncomfortable math: what “keeping it safe” actually costs

Here’s the thing about cash in a tin. It feels safe. It is not.

Let’s say a stokvel of 10 members each puts in R500 a month. That’s R5,000 a month, R60,000 a year, into the pot. Watch what happens to that same R60,000 a year over 10 years under three different choices:

*Illustrative only. Assumes R5,000 invested monthly. Investment returns are nominal, not inflation-adjusted, and are based on historical averages that are not guaranteed. Markets fall as well as rise.

Same people. Same discipline. Same R500 a month. The only variable is the structure they pour it into, and over a decade that single decision is the difference between roughly R600,000 of slowly shrinking cash and over a million rand of growing assets.

🚩Inflation is the silent tax on a stokvel that doesn’t invest. Every year your money sits in cash, it buys a little less. Doing “nothing safe” is itself a decision, and usually an expensive one.

The upgrade path: three levels

You don’t have to leap from a cash tin to a global equity portfolio overnight. Think of it as three levels, and a stokvel can sit at whichever one suits its goals.

Level 1: Get it out of the hidden wardrobe drawer

The first upgrade has nothing to do with the stock market. It’s simply moving the pooled money into a formal account in the stokvel’s name.

Every major bank now offers a dedicated stokvel or investment-club account, Absa’s Investment Club Account, FNB’s Stokvel Account, Standard Bank and Nedbank all have versions. These accounts are typically built for exactly this: multiple members, little or no monthly management fee, interest paid on the balance, online tracking of contributions, and proper security so the treasurer isn’t lying awake guarding a tin can.

The benefits are immediate and unglamorous: your money is protected (FICA-compliant, not stealable from a handbag), it finally earns interest instead of nothing, and the admin burden on your treasurer drops dramatically. This single step is what earned those FNB stokvels R256 million in interest last year. If your stokvel does nothing else after reading this, do this.

Level 2: Match the money to the timeline

Before you invest a cent, separate your money by when you’ll need it. This is the most important discipline in the whole upgrade.

• Money you need within the next year or two (December groceries, a planned holiday etc.) should never go into shares. It stays in cash or a money-market-style account, where it’s stable and instantly available.

• Money the group can genuinely leave untouched for more than 3, 5, 10, 20 years is the money that belongs in growth assets.

🚩 The fastest way to turn members against investing is to put short-term money into the market and then watch it drop 20% right before payout. Keep the two buckets completely separate. Short-term money = safe and liquid. Long-term money = invested.

Level 3: Become an investment stokvel

This is where the magic happens. The group opens an account that lets it buy shares and ETFs as a legal entity and starts pooling money into ownership of real assets.

The good news: this is now genuinely accessible. EasyEquities opens accounts for legal entities, including stokvels, burial societies, churches and savings clubs, with a minimum of just two members (South African entities only). The authorized person completes an online application, submits the group’s documents, and the stokvel gets its own account, no longer twelve separate people, but one investing entity. ETFSA runs a dedicated offering helping stokvels invest in ETFs specifically. The infrastructure that the wealthy have used for decades is now a few forms away from your stokvel.

And once you’re there, everything I preach about ETFs applies, just with the stokvel’s collective firepower behind it. A 3-ETF core, a monthly contribution, low fees, and time

A worked example: meet the Masakhane Investment Stokvel

Let me put real numbers on it, the way I always do.

Ten friends form the Masakhane Investment Stokvel. They’re not wealthy. They each commit R500 a month, R5,000 pooled monthly, and they agree on one rule: this money is for growth, not for groceries. They open a legal-entity account, and they keep it simple with the kind of ETF split I personally favor:

• 45% Satrix MSCI World (STXWDM) – global developed markets

• 30% Satrix Top 40 (STX40) – the JSE’s biggest companies

• 25% Satrix Nasdaq 100 (STXNDQ) – global tech and growth tilt

They escalate their contributions modestly each year as their own incomes grow. They don’t panic-sell when markets wobble (and they will wobble). They just keep buying, every month, and they review the portfolio twice a year, not twice a day.

On historical averages for that blend (roughly 14% a year, nominal, and I cannot stress enough that this is not guaranteed and real returns will be lumpier), here’s the shape of it:

• After 10 years, the group’s pot is comfortably into seven figures.

• After 20 years, with escalating contributions and compounding doing the heavy lifting, you’re looking at a portfolio that has turned a modest R500-a-month habit into insane money, split ten ways.

Ten ordinary people. R500 each. No windfalls, no genius stock picks, no luck. Just the discipline they already had, finally pointed at assets that grow. That, in one paragraph, is how you start closing the ownership gap, not by waiting to get rich, but by owning equity earlier than you feel ready to, and holding it longer than feels comfortable.

📌 The stokvel already gives you the two things most solo investors lack: forced consistency and social accountability. Bolt that onto low-cost ETFs and you have a powerful wealth-building machine

But remember: SARS is paying attention

Here’s where I have to put on my serious face, because this is exactly the kind of thing that gets glossed over until it becomes a problem. A very common misconception is that stokvel money is “tax-free.” It is not. Let me untangle it.

Your monthly contributions are not taxed. That’s after-tax money you’re pooling, so SARS has no further claim on the contributions themselves. Good.

But the growth can be taxable, and this is the bit people miss:

• Interest earned by the stokvel is taxable income. Each member must declare their share of the interest on their own tax return. You do get the annual interest exemption, R23,800 for under-65s (R34,500 for over 65s).

• Dividends from JSE shares and ETFs attract a 20% Dividends Withholding Tax, deducted at source before the money reaches the account.

• Capital Gains Tax applies when investments are sold at a profit. The annual exclusion is R50,000, and only 40% of the remaining gain is included in your taxable income.

There’s also an admin reality. Record-keeping matters. SARS is notorious for their increasing focus on informal financial activities, so meticulous records are important, including member contributions and withdrawals, interest earned, investment returns, the stokvel’s constitution, and minutes of meetings. Digital records make this enormously easier (another reason to leave the tin can behind).

This wouldn’t be my original writing if I didn’t mention the TFSA. A stokvel is not a TFSA, it cannot be converted into a TFSA. Unlike a TFSA, an investment stokvel gives you no tax shelter, the interest, dividends and gains are all potentially taxable. So, the smartest thing to do would be to prioritize your TFSA R46,000 per year allocation, then let the stokvel provide the discipline, the community, and the shared goals.

Red flags: when a “stokvel” is actually a scam

I would be failing you if I didn’t say this clearly, because the very trust that makes stokvels beautiful is exactly what scammers exploit.

In recent years, the FSCA has had to issue multiple public warnings about schemes exploiting the stokvel brand. One of the most widely documented cases was the “United African Stokvel”, which was ultimately confirmed as a Ponzi scheme. Funds were misappropriated rather than invested, and the scheme collapsed when recruitment slowed.

A real stokvel pools members’ own money toward a shared, transparent goal. A scam wears the costume of a stokvel but runs on recruitment. Here’s how to tell them apart:

• 🚩 It promises guaranteed, unusually high returns. Real investing has no guarantees. Anyone who promises them is lying.

• 🚩 The “returns” depend on signing up new people. That’s recruitment, not investment. Walk away.

• 🚩 There’s no real underlying activity. Ask exactly where the money goes and what it buys. If nobody can give you a straight, verifiable answer, that’s your answer.

• 🚩 There’s pressure and urgency. “Join today before it closes.” Legitimate groups don’t need to rush you.

• 🚩 No constitution, no records, no transparency. A real stokvel can show you its rules and its books.

📌 If it sounds too good to be true, it is a recruitment scheme wearing stokvel clothes. Protect your community by knowing the difference.

How to actually set up (or upgrade) your stokvel

Ready to move? Here’s the practical checklist.

The Bottom Line

For more than a hundred years, South Africans have been doing the single hardest thing in personal finance, saving consistently, supporting one another, and showing up month after month - through apartheid, through recessions, through every reason in the world to give up. The discipline was never in question. The community was never in question. What was missing was access to the assets that actually build wealth, and for generations, that access was deliberately withheld.

That door is now open. The same R500 a month that fills a grocery hamper in December can, in a different bucket, buy a slice of the biggest companies on earth and grow quietly for 10 to 20 years. The stokvel doesn’t need to change what makes it special. It just needs to point that century-old discipline at something that compounds.

💡We already mastered the saving. Now let’s master the growing!

SheKreatesWealth is a financial education platform. This content is for educational purposes only and does not constitute financial advice.

So let’s unpack everything AI: what is is, what it means for your investments, how broad-market ETFs are already loaded with AI exposure, what the new JSE-listed AI ETFs are, and the key risks you need to weigh before putting your money in.

Why AI is the investment story of the Decade

To be clear from the outset, the underlying technology story is genuinely remarkable. Generative AI tools like ChatGPT, Claude, and Gemini have moved artificial intelligence from a niche research field into mainstream daily life with a speed that has surprised even their own creators. Businesses are scrambling to integrate AI into everything from customer service to legal research to software development. Underneath that visible layer of apps and chatbots lies an enormous amount of physical and digital infrastructure being built at an alarming pace. Data Centers are expanding at rates not seen since the early internet era. Cloud computing platforms are being upgraded. Semiconductor demand has surged dramatically as the chips required to train and run AI models are extraordinarily powerful and expensive.

The numbers are staggering. Microsoft, Amazon, Alphabet, and Meta have collectively committed hundreds of billions of dollars to AI infrastructure spending in the coming years. Not just hype, actual capital expenditure, announced in earnings calls and visible in the financial statements. For context, it is worth comparing this moment to previous technological shifts. The internet in the mid-1990s, the smartphone era from 2007 onwards, the rise of cloud computing in the 2010s; each of these created enormous wealth for investors who understood what was happening early. AI looks increasingly like it belongs in that company. The difference, however, is that unlike the early internet, AI’s biggest beneficiaries are not scrappy startups. They are the largest companies in the world. Which brings us to the most important point.

The AI Value Chain: More than just Chatbots

One of the most common investor mistakes is equating AI with a handful of famous consumer-facing products. ChatGPT is the face of the revolution, but it is not where most of the money flows. Think about the AI economy as a series of layers:

The point here is that the AI economy is broad and deep. It is not four companies and a few apps.

The ETF Investor’s Real Question

Here is where things get genuinely interesting. If you hold a broad global equity ETF, the kind of sensible, low-cost index fund that most financial circles recommend (and what I preach on this platform), take a look at what is inside it.

You will almost certainly find that the top ten holdings include Microsoft, NVIDIA, Apple, Amazon, Alphabet, and Meta Platforms. These are among the largest companies in the world, and because most global indices are weighted by market capitalization, they dominate. Microsoft and Alphabet are building AI into every product they make. Amazon runs AWS, one of the primary platforms for AI deployment. Meta is investing billions in AI for its advertising platforms and developing its own large language models. NVIDIA, as discussed, makes the chips that power the entire industry. The Satrix MSCI World ETF, tracking the MSCI World Index, has approximately 1500 large and mid-cap companies across 23 developed markets. Its top 7 holdings are AI-linked names and account for roughly 21% of the fund; that is meaningful AI exposure. It is also the 3rd most bought ETF on EasyEquities, and its TER was recently reduced to 0.20%, making it one of the most cost-effective ways to get broad global exposure with a healthy but not overwhelming slice of AI baked in.

💡If you hold a broad global ETF, you already have significant AI exposure.

Not marginal exposure. Meaningful, substantial exposure to the companies building and benefiting most from artificial intelligence. This does not get talked about enough. The investment media, and the fund industry, have an interest in making you feel like you are missing out and need a new, specialized product. But the mechanics of market-cap-weighted indexing mean that the AI boom is already baked into the funds millions of people hold in their discretionary, tax free, or retirement accounts.

AI ETFs vs Broad Market ETFs: An Honest Comparison

That said, there are genuine differences between a dedicated AI ETF and a broad global fund. Let us lay them out.

AI ETFs typically hold a concentrated basket of companies deemed to be AI-related. If the AI thesis plays out exactly as the bulls hope, the upside could be meaningful relative to a broader fund. But if AI spending slows, if the regulatory environment tightens, or if the technology develops more slowly than expected, a concentrated AI fund will be hit harder than a diversified global portfolio.

The key question for any investor is not “should I own AI?” It is “do I want to take on additional concentration risk above and beyond what I already have in a broad fund?” For most investors with long-term horizons and diversified portfolios, the answer is probably no.

Beware of Theme-Washing

The investment industry has a long and distinguished history of launching products timed to capture investor enthusiasm rather than investor returns. When a theme becomes popular, the product factories start moving.

Cast your mind back:

• Blockchain ETFs launched at the peak of the 2017 cryptocurrency bubble

• Metaverse ETFs arrived just in time for Meta’s disastrous pivot and billions written off

• Robotics ETFs promised the automated factory future but delivered mediocre returns

• Cannabis ETFs captured imaginations and then destroyed capital when legalization moved slower than expected

• Cybersecurity ETFs have been more defensible, but many launched at stretched valuations

The pattern is consistent; a genuinely exciting technology emerges, the media covers it extensively, retail investor interest spikes, and fund managers rush to launch products with the relevant buzzword in the name. The timing of product launches tends to coincide with periods of peak enthusiasm, which is historically not a great time to be buying.

The question you should ask about any thematic ETF is: “Is this a genuine investment vehicle designed for my benefit, or is this a product designed to capture my enthusiasm and generate management fees?”

Often, it is the latter. That does not mean that themed funds are never worth holding, but skepticism is warranted, and the costs and holdings deserve scrutiny before any money changes hands.

Is AI Already a Bubble?

This is perhaps the most important question, and the most honest answer is: maybe in places, but the broader picture is complicated. History offers a cautionary tale here that is worth dwelling on.

During the dot-com bubble of the late 1990s and early 2000s, the underlying technology was real and important. The internet genuinely did transform commerce, communication, and society. The analysts who said it would change everything were correct. And yet, investors who bought the NASDAQ at its March 2000 peak waited until 2015 (15 years later) to break even, the index fell 78%

The lesson is not that transformative technologies make bad investments. The lesson is that great technologies can still be poor investments if purchased at excessive prices. Being right about the technology and being right about the stock are two different things.

A few specific concerns worth naming. AI companies are currently valued on the assumption of enormous, sustained earnings growth. If that growth arrives slower than expected, not absent, just slower, multiple compression can be severe. AI spending is concentrated among a small number of very large companies, and any meaningful slowdown in capital expenditure from Microsoft, Google, or Amazon would ripple through the entire ecosystem. None of this is a prediction of imminent collapse. It is a reminder that valuations matter, and that the time to exercise the most caution is when optimism is at its highest.

What's available to you: Your JSE-listed options

For investors who really want to go beyond indirect exposure and directly bet on AI, the JSE now has two dedicated AI AMETFs:

The EASYAI ETF has delivered a one-year return of 101.92% and has been among the top-performing ETFs in recent periods. To put that in context, the Satrix Nasdaq 100 returned approximately 26.07% over the same comparative period, and the 1nvest S&P 500 Info Tech ETF returned 32.79%.

These are impressive numbers, but there are very two important things to consider:

• Past performance doesn’t predict future returns

• Is this performance from genuine AI adoption earnings, or from investor hype inflating prices?

On that second point, analysts are divided. There is a legitimate concern that AI company valuations may be outpacing their fundamental performance. At the same time, the largest AI labs, Anthropic and OpenAI, are reportedly running adjusted gross margins in the 30-40% range, suggesting that AI services can be delivered profitably, which is a positive indicator of long-term demand.

It is also worth looking at the Sygnia Itrix 4th Industrial Revolution ETF (SYG4IR), which sits in the same broad “AI-and-disruption” space. SYG4IR was originally listed in 2017 as a thematic global equity ETF and later migrated into the new AMETF structure after the JSE opened the door to AMETFs in 2022. On paper it looks exciting: a global portfolio of AI, robotics, autonomous vehicles, cybersecurity, cleantech and more, with top holdings like Nvidia, Alphabet, Apple, Microsoft, Amazon and Broadcom. But its long-term numbers are a useful reality check. Over the past 5 years the fund has delivered only 3.56% per year, while the 7‑year return sits at 13.80% per year. In other words, even a future-focused, tech-heavy AMETF with all the right buzzwords can have long periods of very ordinary returns. That is a reminder that themes can be powerful in marketing, but time horizon, fees, and entry point still matter more than hype when you are investing for the long term.

Conclusion: The AI ETF Paradox

Here is the paradox at the heart of this conversation: Artificial intelligence is almost certainly one of the most important investment themes of the next decade. The technology is real, the capital commitment is enormous, and the companies leading the charge are among the most profitable and well-capitalized in history. And yet, for most investors, the best way to participate in that theme may be to do absolutely nothing, or more precisely, to continue holding the broad, diversified, low-cost global funds they probably already own.

The AI boom is already inside your index fund. Microsoft is already there. NVIDIA is already there. Amazon, Alphabet, and Meta are already there. You are already along for the ride.

A dedicated AI ETF will give you more of the same names, usually at higher cost, with greater concentration, and with the added irony that you are probably buying the product at the moment of peak enthusiasm, which is historically not ideal timing.

The investment industry profits from action. It profits from new products, from investor anxiety about missing out, and from the very human tendency to want to do something when exciting things are happening in the world. Sometimes the most sophisticated investor response to a great investment story is to recognize that you are already invested in it, resist the urge to pay extra for a repackaged version of what you own, and let compounding do its work over time.

📌The best AI ETF might just be the one you already have.

SheKreatesWealth is a financial education platform. This content is for educational purposes only and does not constitute financial advice.

“Wait. Isn’t this just a unit trust in ETF clothing?”

Honestly? Kind of.

Both AMETFs and unit trusts pool investor money, employ a human fund manager to make active decisions, and charge fees that reflect that management. The philosophical DNA is the same. Where they differ is in the wrapper, and that wrapper changes quite a few things.

Unit trusts are priced once daily after market close. You buy and sell at Net Asset Value (NAV), calculated end-of-day. Active fund managers generally prefer not to reveal their holdings frequently, monthly or quarterly is the norm.
AMETFs trade on the JSE throughout the day, just like a regular ETF or any listed share. You can buy them through any JSE-linked platform. ETFs disclose their holdings on a daily basis.
The fee picture is also interesting. Higher fees come with active management, though AMETF fees are still generally lower than those of comparable unit trusts because the ETF structure eliminates platform distribution fees and reduces administrative overhead. But they remain more expensive than passive index ETFs, and some carry performance fees that can push total costs dramatically higher.

So yes, an AMETF and a unit trust are cousins. But the AMETF lives in the listed, transparent, intraday world of the ETF.

A Brief History: How We Got Here

In my previous article, we spoke about the history of ETFs, and how the first ETF, the now-legendary SPDR S&P 500 (SPY) listed on the American Stock Exchange on January 22, 1993; and how South Africa followed suit with the Satrix 40 ETF listing on the JSE in November 2000. For two decades, the Index ETF was the only kind of ETF that existed.

The first actively managed ETF arrived much later, on 25 March 2008, when Bear Stearns listed its Current Yield Fund (ticker: YYY) on the American Stock Exchange. It was a short-term fixed income fund designed to beat money market returns by investing in diversified, high-quality debt securities. The timing was, to put it gently, awkward. Soon after that, Bear Stearns was acquired by JPMorgan Chase, that same month, the global financial crisis unfolded. The product survived (under new branding), but the company didn’t. The AMETF concept spent years in the background, overlooked while passive investing swept the world.

💡Two things changed everything;

First, Cathie Wood happened. When ARK Invest, Cathie Wood’s innovation-focused firm launched its flagship ARK Innovation ETF (ARKK) in 2014, giving a generation of retail investors their first taste of actively managed ETF excitement (and, eventually, actively managed ETF heartburn). The pandemic bull run made ARKK a household name, soaring 152% in 2020; then dropping more than 75% from its peak over the following two years - which we will get to.)
Second, was a key regulatory shift, the real breakthrough. This came in 2019 when the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) approved a new rule that allowed certain “semi-transparent” active ETFs to withhold daily disclosure of holdings, removing a key barrier that had long prevented active managers from embracing the ETF wrapper. Once the flood gates opened, adoption exploded. By the first half of 2025, active ETFs accounted for 51% of all new global ETF launches. Global active ETF assets under management reached $1.4 trillion by mid-2025, up from under $400 billion in 2018. BlackRock projects that figure to triple to $4.2 trillion by 2030.

The SPIVA Reality Check

No honest discussion of active management is complete without SPIVA – the S&P Indices Versus Active scorecard, which has been the definitive scorekeeper of this debate since 2002. The findings are not kind to active managers.

The SPIVA South Africa Mid-Year 2025 report found that approximately 75% of actively managed South African funds underperformed their benchmark index over the preceding 10 years. The first half of 2025 was described as “highly challenging” for domestic equity and bond managers, not because markets were quiet, but because they underperformed even in volatile conditions where active managers typically claim their edge.

Globally, the picture is similar. Just 14% of actively managed US large-cap funds beat the S&P 500 over the past decade. Even in turbulent periods with elections, executive orders, tariffs, and geopolitics providing “ample volatility”, only 33% of active funds beat their index counterparts from mid-2024 to mid-2025.

The deeper problem is persistence. Even when active managers outperform in one period, they rarely sustain it. S&P’s Persistence Scorecard has consistently shown that past outperformance is a poor predictor of future outperformance: “Skill is likely to persist, but luck is ephemeral.” The uncomfortable implication is that you cannot reliably identify in advance the managers who will outperform.

So When Do AMETFs Make Sense?

The case for AMETFs is not zero. It’s just narrower than the marketing suggests. Here’s where the honest arguments land:

1. Retirement Annuities and Pension Funds
This is perhaps the most significant practical development, and one that has not received nearly enough attention.
With the launch of balanced AMETFs that comply with Regulation 28, investors can now purchase a Regulation 28-compliant balanced ETF on the JSE, just as they would any other share or ETF. This matters enormously because Regulation 28 of the Pension Funds Act governs what your RA, pension fund, and provident fund can hold. It limits include 75% in equities (local and foreign combined) and up to 45% in offshore assets. Until now, retirement savers who wanted active, multi-asset management had to do it through unit trusts, off-exchange, less transparent, and typically higher-cost. The Cartesian EasyETFs Balanced AMETF, for example, is Regulation 28 compliant, meaning it can be used in retirement annuities, pension and provident funds, tax-free savings accounts, and discretionary portfolios. This is a genuinely new capability for self-directed retirement investors. For anyone managing their own RA on platforms like EasyEquities or SatrixNOW, the arrival of Regulation 28-compliant AMETFs opens a door that was previously closed.

2. Multi-Asset and Balanced Portfolios

This is the sweet spot for South African AMETFs right now. A passive index works well for a single asset class, but building a balanced portfolio, one that dynamically allocates across equities, bonds, property, cash, and offshore assets requires ongoing judgment calls. There is no “optimal balanced index” the way there’s an S&P 500.

3. Niche markets & Hard-to-Index Strategies
Not every market has a clean, deep, efficient index. Thematic investing, Small-cap equities, AI-driven stock selection, commodity-linked instruments, strategies investing in private or illiquid markets, credit markets, or frontier markets. In these spaces, a skilled manager can add genuine alpha, not because the market is unintelligent, but because it is inefficient and information asymmetry still exists.

Let Me Be Clear! The Passive Hill Is Still Worth Dying On

If you are a beginner investor. If you are building your TFSA. If you are in the first decade of your wealth-building journey. Index ETFs are still your best friend. Full stop.
Many actively managed South African unit trusts have returns closely correlated with comparable ETFs, but the fees charged are significantly higher. Some active funds are effectively “closet index funds”, tracking the market in all but name, while charging you for expertise that isn’t being applied.
Passive index ETFs like the Satrix Top 40, CoreShares S&P 500, or 1nvest MSCI World have delivered the market’s return, which, over long time horizons, beats most active managers after fees. That is not an opinion. It is documented across almost every market, including South Africa.
📌AMETFs are not a replacement for the passive core. They are a tool for a specific job.

The Risks You Should Not Ignore

Active management can, and does, underperform. The ARKK story is instructive: extraordinary outperformance followed by extraordinary drawdown. Past performance in active funds is an especially unreliable guide to the future.
Fees compound against you. Even an extra 1% per year doesn’t sound like much. Over 30 years on R100,000, it is a meaningful difference in your final balance. Always do the maths.
Liquidity can be thin. Many JSE AMETFs are new and have small AUM. In illiquid markets, the bid-ask spread can quietly eat into returns in a way that doesn’t show up in the TER.
Track records are very short. The JSE’s first AMETF only listed in May 2023. We are comparing months of returns, not decades. Be skeptical of compelling short-term numbers.

The Bottom Line

AMETFs are not a revolution. They are an evolution, and a welcome one.

• They are capable of closing a real gap: the ability to access skilled, discretionary fund management through the same platforms, accounts, and interfaces you already use for index ETFs.

• The arrival of Regulation 28-compliant balanced AMETFs is particularly significant – for the first time, self-directed retirement investors can build actively managed, multi-asset pension portfolios on the JSE.

But none of this changes the fundamentals:

• Start simple, & passively

• Build your core portfolio with 2-3 index ETFs

• Understand fees deeply.

• Only introduce active strategies when you have a clear reason, a specific gap in your portfolio that an index cannot fill, a manager with a genuinely differentiated mandate, or a Regulation 28-compliant solution for your retirement account that fits your investment goals.

💡For most investors, index ETFs remain the evidence-based, lowest-stress, highest-probability approach to long-term wealth building.

The trend towards AMETFs doesn’t signal the demise of passive ETFs. Instead, it paints a picture of a more diverse investment landscape.
More tools. Same discipline.
That is always a good thing.

SheKreatesWealth is a financial education platform. This content is for educational purposes only and does not constitute financial advice.

But maybe R1,000 is doable. Not comfortable, just doable. So, let’s talk about what that actually builds, and why the structure matters as much as the amount.

The strategy: two phases, two accounts.

Phase one (birth to age 10): that R1,000 goes into a discretionary account, split 45% STXWDM / 30% STX40 / 25% STXNDQ. You escalate contributions 5% each year to keep pace with life. At age 10, you stop contributing to this account entirely. By age 21, it’s sitting at ~R1.3 million.

Why a discretionary account first? Because your adult child is going to need money before retirement - tertiary education, a deposit on their first apartment, capital for their first business. These are real, near-term milestones that deserve their own bucket, one you can actually access without guilt or penalty, or raiding their TFSA. But here’s the thing: withdrawing at 21 is just one option. If your child doesn’t need it then, if they’re fine, employed, figuring life out - leave it alone. Let it keep compounding. Use it at 30, at 40, or never. The point is that it exists, it’s accessible, and it’s entirely separate from their long-term tax-free wealth building. Having the option is the whole point.

Phase two (age 10 to 30): that same R1,000 (now escalated for 10 years, so closer to R1,600/month) pivots into your child’s TFSA. Same ETF split. Same 5% annual escalation. Contributions stop at 30 (you’ll probably be in your own retirement by then). Then you leave it alone. By age 60, the TFSA is worth ~R151 million. Tax-free. The TFSA is not for school fees, it’s not for a car, it should be left untouched, it should serve as a retirement foundation your child builds their entire financial life on top of. That’s the account you protect at all costs.

The total cash invested across both phases? Just over R796 000, spread across 30 years of contributions.

✅Two accounts. ✅Two purposes. 📌One very long game.

Key assumptions used historical average returns achieved for:

• STXWDM (45%): ~14% p.a. (global developed markets)

• STX40 (30%): ~12% p.a. (JSE Top 40)

• STXNDQ (25%): ~18% p.a. (Nasdaq 100)

  therefore, blended return: (0.45×14%) + (0.30×12%) + (0.25×18%) = 6.3% + 3.6% + 4.5% = 14.4% p.a.

*Returns assume a blended 14.4% p.a. - historical averages for this ETF mix. Nominal, not inflation adjusted. Not financial advice.

You’re sitting across from a financial advisor. They’ve got a brochure. It has words like “multi-asset dynamic allocation vehicle”, “qualified investor hedge fund”, and “blended endowment structure.” You nod like you understand. You sign something. You leave confused.

Sound familiar?

Here’s the truth: the investment world loves complicated names for simple concepts, often because complexity hides fees. Today, we’re going to cut through all of that. We’re going to talk about the main investment funds available to ordinary South Africans, what they actually are, what they cost, and why, for most of us (spoiler alert), ETFs remain the cleanest, cheapest, most transparent starting point.

Let’s go.

First, What Are We Even Comparing?

Before we throw around fund names, let’s agree on what a fund is. A fund is simply a pool of money collected from many investors and invested on their behalf. The differences between fund types come down to three things:

1. How they are managed (actively or passively)

2. Where they are traded (on a stock exchange or directly through a company)

3. What they cost you (and how easy those costs are to find)

Keep those three things in mind throughout this article.

Okay, maybe let’s take a step back and figure out how we got here

Before you could buy an ETF with a few taps on your phone, the road to accessible investing was long, and surprisingly full of rejected ideas. To understand the difference between ETFs and unit trusts, it helps to understand where both came from.

The concept of pooled investing, where every day people combine their money into a single fund managed on their behalf, is far older than most people realize. The first modern mutual fund was launched in the United States in 1924, known as the Massachusetts Investors Trust​. The idea spread globally over the following decades. In South Africa, pooled investing was formalized with the Unit Trusts Control Act of 1947, and the country’s first unit trust fund was launched in 1965. A single advertisement in the Financial Mail proclaimed the arrival of what was then called a “mutual fund” - the American name for the same concept. Sanlam followed shortly after, launching Sanlam Trust in 1967​. For South African retail investors, unit trusts became the wealth-building vehicle, you pooled your money with others, a professional fund manager made all the investment decisions, and you received units in return proportional to your contribution.

But unit trusts had limitations. Pricing was calculated once a day at a fixed end-of-day price, set by the fund manager. You couldn’t trade them in real time, and actively managed funds came with high fees that quietly ate into your returns over time. Enter John C. Bogle. In 1976, Bogle launched the Vanguard 500 Index Fund – the world’s first index mutual fund available to retail investors. It is critical to note that Bogle did not invent mutual funds/unit trusts. What he invented was a new kind of mutual fund, one that passively tracked a market index rather than relying on an active fund manager to pick stocks. The financial press famously called it “Bogle’s Folly”​. They were wrong. By removing the active manager, Bogle slashed costs dramatically and proved that ordinary investors didn’t need expensive stock-pickers to build long-term wealth.

But there was still one gap: you still couldn’t trade these funds in real time on a stock exchange. That changed in 1993, when a former commodities trader named Nathan Most asked a deceptively simple question: “What if you could trade an index fund like a stock?” Working alongside Steven Bloom and legal architect Kathleen Moriarty, Most launched the SPDR S&P 500 ETF (ticker: SPY) on the American Stock Exchange on January 22, 1993​. It was the world’s first Exchange Traded Fund. The launch was so understated that it was announced with nothing more than a back-page advertisement in The Wall Street Journal​. Nobody predicted it would change investing forever.

South Africa did not sleep on this innovation. In November 2000, just seven years after SPY, Satrix launched the Satrix 40 on the JSE, tracking the FTSE/JSE Top 40 Index​. It was the first ETF on African soil, giving South African investors access to a low-cost, exchange-traded, index-tracking product decades before most people knew what an ETF was.

Today, both unit trusts and ETFs sit on the menu for South African investors, understanding where they came from helps you understand which one belongs in your portfolio.

Unit Trusts: The OG of Retail Investing

A unit trust is a Collective Investment Scheme (CIS). Your money is pooled with other investors, and a professional fund manager makes investment decisions on your behalf. You buy units in the fund, and those units are priced daily. You do not buy them on a stock exchange, you transact directly with the fund manager, or a platform called a LISP (Linked Investment Service Provider.

The Different Types of Unit Trusts

The Association for Savings and Investment South Africa (ASISA) classifies all unit trusts using a three-tier system.

This three-tier system means there are unit trusts covering almost every investor need, from a South African money market fund holding short-term cash instruments, to a global equity fund tracking the performance of companies across 80+ countries.

ETFs: The People’s Fund

An Exchange Traded Fund (ETF) is also a collective investment scheme, your money is pooled with others and invested in a basket of assets – like shares, bonds, or commodities. The key difference is that ETFs are listed and traded on a stock exchange (like the JSE), just like shares. Instead of buying one company’s stock, you are buying a small slice of many companies packaged together. Most ETFs in South Africa are passively managed, they track an existing index like the Satrix Top 40, the S&P 500, or the MSCI World. There are no fund managers making daily buy/sell decisions, which means lower costs.

As of February 2026, the JSE hosts around 131 ETFs, with a combined market capitalization of R259 billion. ETFs have evolved far beyond simple index trackers. On the JSE and global markets, they are generally categorized by what they own (the underlying asset) or how they are managed.

The Real Cost of a Unit Trust

Unit trusts charge what’s called a Total Expense Ratio (TER), a single percentage figure that captures the annual cost of running the fund, expressed relative to the total assets under management. It covers portfolio management, administration, compliance, custody, and auditing costs. TERs typically range from 1% to 3% per year, and some specialist or absolute-return funds push beyond that.

💡It is worth being clear about what this fee pays for. When you invest in an actively managed unit trust, you are employing a team of professional fund managers, analysts, and researchers whose job it is to study markets, analyses companies, and construct a portfolio designed to outperform a benchmark. That expertise is not free, and for some investors in specific situations, that active management has genuine value (more on that when we get to retirement funds and Regulation 28).​

However, the TER is just one layer. The total cost of ownership of a unit trust, what you actually pay in full, depends on how you access it:

• Fund management fee: the largest component of the TER, typically 0.8–1.8% p.a. for actively managed equity funds​

• Performance fee: charged by some managers when they outperform their benchmark, usually disclosed within the TER but worth checking separately​

• Platform/LISP fee: if you invest through a Linked Investment Service Provider (e.g. Allan Gray, Momentum, Glacier), expect an additional 0.3–1% p.a. administration fee​

• Financial advisor fee: if you use an FSP-registered advisor, their ongoing advice fee is typically 0.5–1% p.a.​

For an investor using all three layers – active fund + platform + advisor – total annual costs of 2.5 –4% are not unusual. For an investor who buys a unit trust directly from the manager’s own platform with no advisor, total costs can be as low as 1–1.5%. The cost structure is not fixed; it depends entirely on how you access the product.​

What Do ETFs Cost?

ETFs also charge a TER, the same type of annual fee that covers the fund’s operating costs. However, because most ETFs are passively managed (they simply track an index rather than employing active stock-picking), the cost of running them is substantially lower. The average TER for a South African ETF is approximately 0.2% - 0.5% per annum.​ For comparison, a Satrix MSCI World ETF tracking the global developed-market index carries a TER of approximately 0.35% per year. Its Unit Trust counterpart, the Satrix MSCI World Index Fund, carries a TER of 0.78% (more than double, before platform or advisor fees.

There are, however, real costs to ETF investing that are sometimes glossed over:

• Brokerage fee: every time you buy or sell an ETF on the JSE, you pay a transaction fee. On low-cost platforms this is usually 0.25–0.5% per trade

• Bid-offer spread: the small gap between the buying price and the selling price of an ETF on the exchange, which represents a real but usually tiny cost

• Platform fee: if you invest through a LISP or investing app, an annual administration fee may apply (typically 0.2% - 0.6% p.a.)​

The key difference is transparency. ETF costs are generally easier to find, easier to understand, and harder to obscure. For a long-term, buy-and-hold investor, the total cost of owning a passive ETF through a low-cost platform will almost always be lower than an equivalent actively managed unit trust accessed the same way.​

The 25-Year Practical Example: What the Numbers Actually Say

Numbers are just numbers until you put a real person behind them. Meet Lerato and Thandeka. Both are 30 years old, both have R5,000 per month to invest, and both want global equity exposure by tracking the MSCI World Index, widely considered the gold standard for developed-world equity exposure.

The difference? The specific vehicle they choose, using the SatrixNow platform. Rather than utilizing a generic hypothetical return, let’s compare apples for apples, and let’s use actual investment returns from the past seven years (up to April 2026) by comparing the Satrix MSCI World ETF (STXWDM) with the Satrix MSCI World Index Fund (unit trust). During that time, the ETF grew by 15.63% a year and the Unit Trust grew by 14.98% a year before fees (7yr annualized retuns). Using these real numbers makes it easy to see exactly how the different fees and setups affect your final savings.

• Lerato buys the Satrix MSCI World ETF (STXWDM) with a low Total Investment Charge (TIC) of 0.25%, but she pays a tiered platform fee (averaging ~0.33% over 25 years) and minor initial transaction entry costs (~0.1752%). This results in a net annual return of 15.30%.

• Thandeka opts for the Satrix MSCI World Index Fund. While she pays 0% in platform administration fees and zero transaction entry costs on the platform, her choice carries a much higher internal Total Investment Charge (TIC) of 0.82% and suffers from optimization tracking drag. This results in a net annual return of 14.98%.

After 25 years of disciplined investing, their financial trajectories diverge significantly:

Note: While actual future market returns will fluctuate, this simulation keeps tracking efficiencies and return premiums constant over the 25-year timeline to purely isolate how vehicle-specific costs influence capital appreciation.

The final result reveals a profound wealth gap: Lerato’s portfolio is worth approximately R1.28 million more than Thandeka’s. This significant gap in wealth happens because even tiny differences in how a fund is set up compounds drastically over 300 months of investing.

Thandeka’s “0% platform fee” advantage was entirely erased by the Unit Trust’s higher internal fund costs and optimization penalty. Furthermore, because the SatrixNow platform tiers its ETF fees, Lerato’s choice becomes highly scalable and progressively cheaper as her wealth grows, whereas Thandeka remains stuck with a fixed internal fund fee that fails to offer economies of scale. While Thandeka pays no financial advisor fees in this self-managed scenario, such advice fees would become applicable if she explicitly links a licensed professional to her SatrixNow account or if she chooses to invest in this unit trust through an external broker or an multi-manager LISP platform.

The ultimate lesson? Both investors displayed identical saving discipline, but by choosing the more efficient structural vessel for her global equity journey, Lerato reached her destination with a fortune nearly R1.3 million larger. It was not a matter of luck or market timing, but the inevitable outcome of minimizing the silent erosion of internal fees and maximizing tracking efficiency.

“But Don’t Active Managers Beat the Market?”

This is the most important question in investing, and the data has a very clear answer. SPIVA (S&P Indices Versus Active) is a global research project that has measured actively managed fund performance against passive index benchmarks for over two decades. The findings from South Africa are stark:​

It is true that active managers can shine in short windows, in 2024, South African equity fund managers actually had a strong year against the S&P South Africa 50. But the SPIVA research consistently shows that short-term outperformance is not persistent, and the managers who win in year one are rarely the same ones winning in year five.

And the core challenge is that even if an active manager beats the market before fees, they must outperform by more than their fee to benefit you. A manager charging 2% who beats the index by 1% has still cost you 1% relative to just owning the index fund.​

💡The famous Warren Buffett verdict: In his 2013 letter to Berkshire Hathaway shareholders, Buffett instructed the trustee of his estate to put 90% of the money into a “very low-cost S&P 500 index fund” after his death. The world’s most celebrated active investor told his family to invest passively. That says everything.

Now, The Other Funds They’ll Try to Sell You

Hedge Funds

A hedge fund is an alternative investment vehicle that uses strategies unavailable to traditional funds – things like short-selling (betting a share price will fall), leverage (borrowing to invest more), and derivatives (contracts that derive their value from an underlying asset).​ Unlike traditional unit trusts, hedge funds aim for absolute returns (positive returns in any market condition).

South Africa has a notably progressive hedge fund environment. In 2015, South Africa became the world’s first country to implement comprehensive hedge fund regulations; they are regulated like unit trusts under the Collective Investment Schemes Control Act (CISCA) and are deemed regulated collective investment schemes.

Two categories exist:

• Retail Hedge Funds (RHFs) are strictly regulated in terms of investment risk, open to all investors with a minimum lump sum of R50,000.

• Qualified Investor Hedge Funds (QIHFs) require a minimum investment of R1 million and target investors with a solid understanding of hedge fund strategies and risks.

In 2024 SA Hedge Funds saw record growth with assets under management growing by 34% to R185 billion over the 12 months to end of December 2024, invested across 221 hedge funds managed by 12 management companies. Pension funds got the green light in 2023 to allocate up to 10% of assets to hedge funds under Regulation 28 of the Pension Funds Act.

🚩The real headline for you with regards to hedge funds is MASSIVE FEES. They typically charge management fees of 1–2% per year plus a performance fee of 15–20% of profits above a benchmark, sometimes called “two and twenty”. Stack that with a fund-of-hedge-funds layer and you could be at 3%+ per annum in fees before the market has done anything for you.​

The honest truth for ordinary investors: Hedge funds may play a role in a large, sophisticated portfolio. But for someone building their first R50,000 or R500,000, the complexity, minimum investment requirements, and fee structures make hedge funds a distraction, not a foundation.​

Private Equity Funds

Private equity (PE) funds invest in unlisted companies – businesses not traded on a stock exchange. These are largely inaccessible to retail investors, typically requiring institutional minimums. PE funds also typically charge the “2 and 20” structure and are illiquid, your money is locked up for years. Unless offered through your retirement fund as a small Regulation 28 allocation, private equity is beyond the scope of what most ordinary investors need to engage with directly.​

Endowment Plans: How Many Names Can One Product Have?

The endowment is arguably the most rebranded product in the South African financial services industry. Here is something important to understand:

⚠️An endowment is not an investment. It is a wrapper,

It’s a legal structure underwritten by a life insurance company that holds underlying investments (usually unit trusts). Being “underwritten by a life insurance company” means that the insurer is the legal owner and guarantor of the policy. You are the policyholder, not the direct owner of the underlying assets. The insurer takes on the legal and regulatory responsibility for the product’s structure and obligations. This is fundamentally different from opening a unit trust or ETF account directly, where you own the units or shares outright.

This distinction has real, practical consequences. Because the endowment is a life insurance contract governed by the Long-term Insurance Act, it must run for at least five years, this restriction is not a feature of the investments inside, but of the legal wrapper itself. Similarly, your money buys units in the underlying unit trusts, but those units are held in the insurer’s name on your behalf, not yours directly.

The tax treatment is also determined by the wrapper, not the investments inside it. The life insurer pays tax on investment returns on your behalf at a flat rate, currently 30% for income and 0% for capital gains within the structure. For high-income earners whose personal marginal tax rate exceeds 30%, this has historically made the endowment wrapper tax-efficient.

One genuine benefit of the insurance structure is that you can nominate beneficiaries directly. Because it is a life insurance contract, proceeds can be paid out without passing through your estate, potentially avoiding executor’s fees and delays.

But financial services companies are exceptionally creative with their branding. You may encounter an endowment labelled as:

• Education Plan / Education Savings Plan: marketed to parents saving for school or university fees

• Future Plan / Future Invest: generic long-term saving product with an endowment structure underneath​

• Growth Plan / Investment Plan: a wealth accumulation product that is, at its core, an endowment

• Dream Plan / Goal-Based Plan: tied to a life milestone like buying a home

• Child’s Plan / Baby Bond: opened in a child’s name, targeting education or young adult wealth

• Wealth Builder / Capital Builder: premium-branded endowment for higher-income investors

The common thread: all of these products have a 5-year restricted access period, an insurance company administration fee layered on top of the underlying fund fees and are most tax-effective for high-income earners (top income tax bracket of 45%) because the endowment pays a flat 30% income tax rate and an effective 12% CGT rate.​

Education plans and future plans are not wrong, but they often charge you premium branding fees on top of a product you could access more cheaply elsewhere.

A brief mention of Retirement Funds and Regulation 28: The Exception That Matters

What Is Regulation 28?

Regulation 28 of the Pension Funds Act governs how money inside retirement funds (Retirement Annuities, Pension Funds, Provident Funds, and Preservation Funds) must be invested. Its purpose is investor protection, ensuring retirement savings are diversified and not concentrated in risky or volatile assets.

The key Regulation 28 limits are:

• Maximum 75% in equities

• Maximum 45% in offshore assets

• Maximum 25% in listed property

• Maximum 10% in hedge funds

• Maximum 15% in private equity

• Maximum 10% in commodities

  🚩Crypto assets are prohibited

How Much Flexibility Do You Actually Have Inside an RA?

When it comes to the ETF vs Unit Trust debate…. this is where Unit Trusts shine! In a TFSA or discretionary investment account, your freedom is almost unlimited. You can buy a 100% offshore equity ETF. You can go 100% into a single sector. You choose the exact instruments. The platform simply executes.​ Inside a Retirement Annuity, the picture is different. There are two types of RAs in South Africa:​

1. Old-Generation (Policy-Based) RAs – Offered by life insurers under old insurance structures. You sign a long-term contract. You are locked into a set contribution schedule. Changing your premium incurs penalties. The underlying investment choice is limited to the insurer’s own internally managed portfolios. Exiting early attracts significant surrender fees. These products were the norm before 2000 and are still sold today. Avoid them if you can.​

2. New-Generation (LISP-Based) Ras – Offered through platforms like EasyEquities RA, Sygnia RA, 10X RA, and Allan Gray RA. You contribute any amount, at any frequency, with no penalties for changing or stopping. You can switch between funds at any time at no cost. You choose from a curated menu of Regulation 28-compliant funds.

• Multi-asset balanced unit trusts (Allan Gray Balanced, Coronation Balanced Plus, M&G Balanced)

• Index-tracking balanced unit trusts (Satrix Balanced Index Fund)

• AMETFs designed for RAs (EasyETFs Balanced AMETF – EASYBF)

• Government bonds (R186, R2030, R2035, R2048)

• Actively managed income funds

The key constraint: every fund option on the menu has already been pre-screened for Regulation 28 compliance. You cannot simply select a 100% offshore equity ETF and put it in your RA, that would breach the 45% offshore cap. The platform protects you from this by only showing you qualifying funds.​

The significance here is enormous: AMETFs bring ETF-style transparency and lower fees into the retirement fund space for the first time. Previously, you had to choose between cheap-but-non-compliant (passive ETFs) or compliant-but-expensive (active unit trusts). AMETFs are beginning to close that gap.

The Simple Framework: Which Fund Goes Where?

The Bottom Line

The investment industry is brilliant at one thing: making simple concepts sound complicated. Fancy names sell products. Complexity creates dependency. High fees compound quietly, often costing investors more than they’ll ever receive in additional returns.

For most ordinary South Africans building wealth from scratch:

• Start with ETFs for your TFSA and discretionary investing. They are low-cost, transparent, accessible, and the data on active manager underperformance backs this choice emphatically.

• Use Regulation 28-compliant multi-asset funds, unit trusts or AMETFs inside your retirement accounts. Not because they are fancy, but because the law requires diversification in retirement products.

• Ask the right questions about endowments – what is the total cost, what is the underlying investment, and can you achieve the same goal more cheaply elsewhere?​

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SheKreatesWealth is a financial education platform. This content is for educational purposes only and does not constitute financial advice.

Let’s break it down.

First, you need to understand that there are two very different thresholds at play: income and wealth (net worth). They are not the same, and it’s important to know why.

The Income Threshold

According to the World Inequality database, to be counted among South Africa’s top 1% of income earners, you need to earn a gross salary of approximately R2 million or more per year (around R167,000 per month). That might sound like an enormous number, and for most South Africans, it is. But it’s R167,000 not millions of rands a month - not enough to afford a billionaire’s lifestyle. That’s roughly what a mid-career engineer, a senior chartered accountant, or an experienced specialist doctor earns. Because here’s the thing: the top 1% conversation is usually framed as aspiration porn – private jets, Sandton penthouses, and Lamborghini’s. For further context, the average formally employed South African earns around R25,000–R27,000 per month. That salary already places you in the top 12–13% of all earners nationally. In a country with an unemployment rate that has persistently hovered above 30%, having a formal job at all is itself a form of financial privilege.

Defining social classes in South Africa is famously complex due to the country’s high income inequality, and the massive gap between the “average” income and the “median” income. Because the distribution is so skewed, various institutions use different thresholds based on either individual earnings or total household income. According to recent data from the UCT Liberty Institute of Strategic Marketing (2024/2025) and Stats SA, the population is generally divided into these five primary income segments:

Some data points from the 2025/26 tax year put the bar slightly lower, closer to R750,000 per year (R62,500/month); but this depends on whether you are measuring by household or individual tax returns. For the purposes of this article, we are using the more commonly cited R2M+ figure for an elite top 1% earner.

The Net Worth Threshold

Now here is where things get genuinely interesting, and where most “top 1%” conversations fall apart. Earning top 1% income is not the same as holding top 1% wealth. To just enter the top 1% by net worth (assets minus liabilities), you need roughly R4.8 million (World Inequality database), with many in this group holding an average of R25 million.

A quick comparison with the rest of the world is useful here: Knight Frank’s Wealth Sizing Model puts South Africa’s top 1% wealth entry point at ~R4.2 million depending on the measurement methodology, but more rigorous analysis from retirement and wealth planning circles consistently points to the R25 million figure for true top 1% status. That gap between the floor and the average tells you something important: wealth accumulates unevenly even among the already wealthy. Getting in the door is one thing. The upper end of the 1% is a different conversation entirely. By contrast, entering the top 1% in the United States requires the equivalent of roughly R18.4 million in assets.

Note on the table above: This table was compiled using available data (NIDS household surveys, SARB accounts, tax records and surveys like Momentum‑Unisa) and propose seven wealth classes by net worth. The table shows a different entry-point figures for top 1% wealth (R25M vs ~R4.2M/R4.8M). This reflects different methodologies; the figure close to R4M, like in Knight Frank’s model-based floor for entry into the cohort, while R25M represents the average net worth within that group. Both numbers are correct in context: you can technically enter the top 1% with far less, but the average member of that group holds far more. The takeaway is that the distribution within the top 1% is itself highly unequal.

Income vs. Wealth: The Distinction That Matters

Critically, many people who earn top 1% income do not hold top 1% wealth, this is one of the most important financial literacy concepts that we shouldn’t ignore. These individuals earn well, they spend well, but they save modestly. Their income is high, yet their net worth is ordinary. This is not a moral judgement. It is a structural observation. Income flows. Wealth accumulates. The difference between the two is almost entirely determined by what you do between receiving your salary and spending it.

Consider this: you could earn R2 million a year and still have a net worth of zero, or even negative, if you are highly leveraged, spending aggressively on lifestyle, or failing to invest strategically. You are in the income top 1%, but nowhere near the wealth top 1%.

Why Some Top 1% Earners Don’t Build Top 1% Wealth

Several structural patterns explain this gap:

• Lifestyle inflation: High earners often upgrade their spending as fast as their income –premium vehicles, private schooling, large bond repayments, travel. Income rises; wealth stays flat.

• Tax drag: At R2 million in annual income, your marginal tax rate has already hit 45% (more on this below). A significant portion of gross income never reaches your wealth-building engine.

• Debt-funded assets: Many high earners hold assets like property on bond, which appear on a balance sheet but subtracts an equivalent or greater liability. Net worth remains low.

• Race and intergenerational wealth gaps: UCT research reveals that even South Africans who have broken into the same income bracket as their white counterparts still carry drastically different wealth positions. The median wealth of the highest-earning 20% of white South Africans is R1.9 million; the equivalent figure for Black South Africans in the same income bracket is R551,000. Same income bracket, completely different balance sheet.

• No investment discipline: Earning well without a structured investment plan means you are trading time for money, indefinitely. The top 1% by wealth predominantly earn from assets, not just salaries.

A practical rule of thumb: if your total debt repayments (bond, vehicle, personal loans, credit cards) exceed 40% of your net take-home pay, you are effectively wealth-building at a loss. Every rand above that threshold is a rand that cannot compound for you. High earners are particularly vulnerable to this trap because lenders extend larger facilities, making it easy to carry R30,000/month in debt obligations while earning R80,000/month and feeling financially comfortable, even as net worth stagnates. Under the 50/30/20 Rule, all fixed costs should fit within 50% of your budget. If your debt repayments alone hit 40%, you are in the “Wealth-Building Trap”.

The bottom line is this: income is a flow. Wealth is a stock. You build wealth by converting your income flow into a growing chunk of assets, faster than lifestyle, debt, and taxes can erode it.

What the Top 1% Actually Owns

Research from the SA-TIED Programme (a collaboration between Statistics South Africa and UNU-WIDER) found that South Africa’s top 10% of wealth holders own more than 99% of all bonds and equities held in the economy. Read that again – Ninety-nine percent of all shares and bonds held in this country sit with the top 10% of wealth holders. This is not about income. This is about asset ownership. And it is one of the most clarifying statistics I have come across in the South African financial context. It means that the wealth gap in South Africa is not primarily an income gap, it is an ownership gap. The vehicle through which generational wealth is built – equities, specifically, is almost entirely concentrated among a small portion of the population. This is also why I talk about ETFs constantly. Not because they are trendy, but because they are one of the few mechanisms through which an ordinary South African can start participating in equity ownership, from as little as R500 a month on most broker platforms.

The Tax Reality: Being in the Top 1% Costs You

Once your income crosses R1,817,001 per year, your marginal tax rate hits 45%, the highest bracket under SARS’s current schedule. This means for every additional rand you earn above that threshold; you take home just 55 cents. So, as a top-1% income of R2 million per year, your tax bill is substantial. Here is the harder number: 1% of South Africa’s population pays an estimated 51% of all personal income tax revenue, approximately R378 billion of the total R738.7 billion collected in 2024/25. The tax base in this country is extraordinarily narrow. A very small number of people carry the bulk of the fiscal load. This is not a political statement. It is a financial planning reality. If you are a high earner, or aspiring to be one, your tax strategy is not optional. It is fundamental. Which brings us to the tools that actually matter; the tax code is filled with powerful, legal tools for high earners, and most people are not using them to their full potential.

The Three Tools You Already Know

1. Tax-Free Savings Account (TFSA)
From 1 March 2026, the annual TFSA contribution limit increased from R36,000 to R46,000, the first increase in five years. The lifetime limit remains R500,000. Inside a TFSA, all growth – interest, dividends, capital gains, is completely tax-free, forever. At a 45% marginal rate, this is not a “nice to have.” It is a compounding machine. If you fill your TFSA annually with ETFs, you are shielding every rand of growth from SARS permanently.

To put that in perspective: if you contribute R46,000 per year into a TFSA invested in a broad global equity ETF, like the Satrix MSCI World ETF (STXWDM), which had delivered an annualized return of 15.19% since inception in July 2017 (as of today in May 2026), after 25 years you would have ~ R8 million, completely tax-free. That alone would give you a foot inside the door of the top 1% of wealthy individuals. At a 45% marginal rate, the tax saving alone is material. The TFSA is not a savings account, it is a compounding engine which should be used like one.

The Power of Compounding: While the total out-of-pocket contributions over 25 years total R500,000, the projected value grows to over R8 million. This means roughly 94% of your final balance comes from compound growth rather than your original capital. Past performance does not guarantee future performance. Real-world returns will fluctuate based on exchange rates (USD/ZAR) and the performance of the underlying global companies in the MSCI World Index.

2. Retirement Annuity (RA)
Budget 2026 increased the annual cap on tax-deductible retirement contributions from R350,000 to R430,000. The 27.5% taxable income rule still applies, but the ceiling is now higher. For a top 1% earner on R2 million per year, this creates significant room to reduce taxable income. Contributions reduce your tax bill in the year you make them, grow tax-deferred, and are only taxed at retirement, when your marginal rate is likely lower.

3. Offshore Allowance
From April 2026, the Single Discretionary Allowance (SDA) doubled from R1 million to R2 million per person per year. This means you can now move up to R2 million offshore annually, without needing prior SARS tax clearance. Add the Foreign Investment Allowance of R10 million (which requires a tax clearance certificate), and a compliant South African individual can move up to R12 million offshore per year. For couples, that is up to R24 million combined.

Why does this matter? Offshore investing is not about distrust in South Africa; it is about diversification and currency exposure. A rand-only portfolio carries concentration risk that no high earner can afford to ignore. If offshore investing feels distant from where you are right now, that’s fine, but understanding this mechanism matters as your wealth grows. The SDA doubling is one of the most significant personal finance policy changes in recent years, and it disproportionately benefits those who plan ahead. File it away. It becomes increasingly relevant the more you build.

Capital Gains Tax (The Often Forgotten One)

When you sell assets – shares, property (beyond primary residence), unit trusts, etc., capital gains tax (CGT) applies. For individuals, 40% of your capital gain is included in taxable income and taxed at your marginal rate. At 45%, this gives an effective CGT rate of 18%, the maximum for individuals. You receive an annual R50,000 exclusion from SARS, plus a R3 million primary residence exclusion when selling your home. Planning around when you realize capital gains, and structuring holdings inside TFSAs and RAs where possible, can meaningfully reduce your tax burden.

The Gini Reality: Why This Conversation Hits Differently in South Africa

South Africa is not just unequal. It is the most unequal country in the world by the Gini coefficient, the globally accepted measure of income distribution where 0 means perfect equality and 100 means one person owns everything.

South Africa’s Gini coefficient sits at 63, with no other country even close, Namibia is second at 59.1. Even countries often used as global inequality cautionary tales – Brazil (51.6), Colombia (53.9), the United States (41.8), are more equal than South Africa by this measure. In a more equal society, being in the top 1% by income might mean you are genuinely rare, once-in-a-generation earner. In South Africa, it means you have cleared a bar that millions of people are structurally prevented from reaching, not because of effort or education, but because of unemployment, geographic access, inherited circumstance, and historical exclusion. Knowing where you stand in a system allows you to make more intentional decisions within it.

The wealth concentration data is even starker than the income data:

• The top 1% of wealth holders own 55% of all household wealth

• The top 10% own 86% of all aggregate wealth

• The top 0.01%, just 3,500 people, own 15% of total household net worth, more than the entire bottom 90% combined

• In 2024, just 6 South African billionaires saw their combined wealth grow by US$4.1 billion, the equivalent of R11 million per day

• Nearly 70% of South Africa’s income is controlled by the richest 20% of the population, while the poorest 20% share less than 5%

South Africa’s wealth inequality is not just a post-apartheid hangover, it is a living, compounding reality. According to Oxford research, there has been no sign of decreasing wealth inequality since the end of apartheid. The system that concentrated wealth historically continues to compound it.

The Race Dimension Cannot Be Ignored

The UCT Liberty Institute’s most recent Social Class in South Africa report (drawing on data through 2024) reveals both progress and the depth of remaining structural gaps. Black households now represent 41% of the top income bracket (households earning R75,000+ per month), up from 29% in 2012. White households’ share of this bracket fell from 61% to 41% over the same period.

But income gains have not translated into equivalent wealth gains. The historical denial of access to land ownership, pension funds, financial assets, and compound interest for generations means that wealth, not income, remains deeply racially unequal. This is the hidden economic inequality: two professionals in the same income bracket, with vastly different balance sheets and intergenerational foundations.

So What Do You Actually Do With This?

Here is the practical takeaway: most people are aiming at the wrong target.

The primary goal should not be to earn your way into the top 1%. The primary goal is to build your way into it – through disciplined investing, tax efficiency, and compound time. Because the distance between the median income earner and a top 1% wealth holder is not just about how much you earn. It is about what you do with what you earn, and for how long. The data actually tells us that you don’t need to earn R162,500 a month to start building top-tier wealth. You need to start owning assets, specifically, equity, earlier than most people do, and hold them longer than feels comfortable. The top 1% by wealth in South Africa has an average net worth of around R25 million. That is not a salary. That is decades of compounding.

A young professional earning R35,000/month who maxes out a TFSA (R46,000/year), contributes consistently to an RA, and invests in a diversified ETF portfolio over 25 years is building significant wealth, even if their income never enters top 1% territory.

A professional earning R150,000/month who spends the increase, carries an exorbitant bond and vehicle debt, and invests nothing in tax-advantaged vehicles is losing the compound wealth game despite the headline income number.

💡Time and ownership. That is the actual formula.

If you are reading this and thinking “okay, but what do I actually do?” Here is where to start:

1️⃣Know your number: Before you chase any income milestone, know your current net worth. Assets minus liabilities. This is your real financial position, and it updates independently of salary increases.

2️⃣Prioritize your TFSA: R46,000 per year. Max it. Put it in a broad global equity ETF. Let it compound tax-free.

3️⃣If you are a higher earner, topping up your RA (tax deduction up to 27.5% or R430,000) is one of the most efficient financial tools available to you. It reduces your current tax bill while building your future wealth. That is a rare double win.

4️⃣Start owning equities, (outside of your TFSA & Retirement Funds) not just tracking them. The research is clear, the wealth gap in South Africa is primarily an ownership gap. ETFs are the most accessible, lowest-cost way for an ordinary investor to start closing that gap. The barrier to entry has never been lower.

5️⃣Think in decades, not months. The top 1% by wealth did not get there in a year. They got there through sustained ownership, reinvested returns, and the quiet, unglamorous discipline of not selling when markets get uncomfortable.

Protecting and Transferring What You Build

Building wealth is only half the equation. The other half is making sure it survives you, and this is where many high earners drop the ball completely. A valid, updated will is non-negotiable. Without one, your estate winds up in intestate succession, and the distribution may look nothing like your intentions. If you hold retirement annuities or life insurance policies, check that your beneficiary nominations are current, these assets do not form part of your estate and do not pass through a will, so a stale nomination from ten years ago could direct funds to the wrong person. For those with more complex situations (business interests, offshore assets, blended families, or significant property holdings), a testamentary trust or inter vivos trust is worth exploring with a qualified estate planner. The intergenerational wealth gap that this article describes is not closed in one generation through income alone, it is closed by building assets and then transferring them intact.

Final Thought

The top 1% in South Africa, both by income and by wealth, is an incredibly small club. But the tools available to everyone who is contributing, investing, and tax-optimizing are genuinely powerful. ETFs allow ordinary investors to participate in the same underlying wealth-generating assets that the wealthy hold, at very low cost, with full transparency. The income threshold might not be reachable for a lot of people, but the wealth threshold is far more reachable than the aspirational narrative suggests, it just takes longer. The difference between watching the top 1% and joining it is not a windfall. It is a decision, made consistently, over time.

📌And that is the kind of wealth-building that SheKreatesWealth was built to talk about.

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This article is for educational and informational purposes only and does not constitute financial advice. Please consult a certified financial planner for advice specific to your circumstances.

You’ve got some money to invest each month. You’ve heard you should be saving into a Tax-Free Savings Account (TFSA). You’ve also heard that a Retirement Annuity (RA) will save you money on tax. But nobody seems to explain both at the same time; or tell you which one to put your money into first.

Today, we fix that.

By the end of this article, you should:

• Understand exactly how each vehicle works

• Understand what the rules are for each (including the two-pot retirement system), and

• How to decide which one deserves your money right now

First: What Are These Two Things?

So, from these basic definitions you can see that both products offer tax incentives; the difference lies in the when, and how the tax benefits kick in. There is no minimum age to start, and you can make monthly contributions, do lump-sum contributions, or if needed, pause or even stop your contributions at any time without significant impact.

Your FI Number: Why This Matters for Choosing the Right Account

Before diving into rules and limits, it helps to know why you are investing in the first place. In the article “So What are you investing for”, I talk about the concept of a Financial Independence (FI) number – the specific amount of money you need invested so that you no longer have to work for a living. If you haven’t already, please read the article.

Why does your FI number matter here? Because the vehicle you use to reach it determines how much of it SARS will tax when you start drawing it down. This shapes not just how much you need to save, but where you save it. More on your FI number towards the end of the article.

The Tax Treatment: Where They Differ Most

This is where the magic, and the trade-off, lives.

With a TFSA, you put money in from your already-taxed salary. But from that point on, every rand of growth belongs entirely to you, no capital gains tax, no dividends tax, no income tax on withdrawal. Ever!

With an RA, you get an upfront tax deduction on your contributions, which reduces your taxable income today. The catch? When you eventually draw income from your RA in retirement, it is taxed as regular income. The tax is deferred, not eliminated.

💡The key insight: A TFSA is “tax-free forever.” An RA is “tax-later”, and with smart planning, the upfront deduction usually wins, especially for higher earners.

Contribution Limits: How Much Can You Put In?

TFSA Limits

A person is limited to an annual contribution limit of R46,000 (with effect from 1 March 2026) as well as a lifetime limit of R500,000. The annual limits for the 2016 and 2017 years of assessment amounted to R30,000. For the 2018 to 2020 years of assessment, it increased to R33,000. For the 2021 to 2026 year of assessment, the annual limit amounted to R36,000. The lifetime limit has always been capped at R500,000.

An important rule: for each new tax year, there is no “rollover” amount from the previous tax year. For example, if you only contributed R20,000 in the previous year, you won’t have an extra R16,000 to add in the new tax year as part of your annual limit.

If you exceed the TFSA contribution limits set by Treasury, a hefty 40% tax will be levied on the excess amount.

Because of these relatively low annual and lifetime limits, a TFSA is usually better suited as a powerful supporting investment rather than the only vehicle to rely on to fund retirement. In practice, most investors will need to combine a TFSA with retirement funds (RA, pension/provident fund) and/or discretionary investments to build a large enough nest egg to fully retire.

RA Limits

This is where most people get confused – there is NO CONTRIBUTION LIMIT to retirement funds, you can put in any amount you like. The limit that is often cited is the TAX DEDUCTION LIMIT (how much of your contribution you can deduct from your tax bill). The maximum tax-deductible retirement fund contribution is 27.5% of your taxable income or R430,000 (whichever amount is lower) per year. What this means is that SARS taxes you on your income, but the money you put into a retirement fund gets subtracted from your income before SARS does the calculation. So, you’re taxed on a smaller number. Any contributions you make above the annual deductible limit are not lost; they are carried forward and can be deducted in future tax years or at retirement

Note: The 27.5% limit applies to your total retirement fund contributions, including any pension or provident fund contributions your employer makes on your behalf. More on this in the Decision Framework below.

Access Rules: How You Get Your Money Out

This is the biggest practical difference between the two.

TFSA Access

You can withdraw money from your TFSA at any time, at any age, without penalties. The process is usually quick, most platforms process withdrawals within 24 - 48 hours. However, withdrawals do not create additional contribution room. This means that if you’ve already used your full annual contribution limit for the tax year, you won’t be able to top up again until the next tax year, even if you haven’t reached your lifetime contribution limit.

Once an amount is withdrawn, that amount is deducted from your lifetime contribution limit. For example, if you were to contribute R100 000 to your TFSA over a couple of years, and then later withdrew it, your total remaining lifetime contribution is still limited to R400 000.

RA Access (Before & After the Two-Pot System)

Before 1 September 2024, RAs were almost completely locked away until age 55. The only exceptions were permanent disability, death, or having emigrated from South Africa for three or more consecutive years.

From 1 September 2024, the government introduced the Two-Pot Retirement System, which changed the rules significantly.

The Two-Pot System: What You Need to Know: The two-pot system affects all RA members (and pension and provident fund members). Here is how it works:

🚩Withdrawals from the Savings Pot are taxed as normal income, they are added to your taxable income for that year. Accessing your savings pot early is not free money. SARS takes a cut. Use this pot only for genuine emergencies.

The RA in Retirement: When It Becomes a Living Annuity, and What SARS Takes

Too many RA investors overlook this section – what actually happens to your money after you retire from your RA. Understanding this part will paint an even clear picture of the RA vs TFSA debate.

How It Works

When you retire from your RA at age 55 or older, the rules are:

1. If the balance of your RA (excluding what’s in the savings pot) is R360,000 or less, you can take the full amount as a cash lump sum. This is known as the de minimis threshold. The de minimis threshold is assessed cumulatively across the full retirement component AND the two thirds portion of the vested pot.

100% of your Retirement Pot + Two-thirds of your Vested Pot = <R360,000 = cash lump sum

2. If your balance is above R360,000, you may take up to one-third of the Vested Pot as a lump sum, and the remaining two-thirds must be used to purchase an annuity (most commonly a Living Annuity) to give you income in your retirement. 100% of the Retirement Pot must also be used to purchase and annuity.

3. The Savings Pot at retirement is treated separately – you can take it entirely as a lump sum, use it to buy an annuity, or do a combination of both

But wait…. the taxation part starts here: Any cash taken from the Vested or Savings components at retirement is taxed according to the Retirement Fund Lump Sum Tax Table.

The first R550,000 of your retirement lump sum is tax-free. Above that, the retirement lump sum tax tables apply:

⚠️Important: This is a lifetime allowance, not a per-event allowance. Prior withdrawals during your working years, including two-pot withdrawals, resignation payouts, and retrenchment, all eat into your R550,000 tax-free threshold. SARS tracks this across your entire working life. SARS is the one government entity that you can’t outsmart.

A Practical Illustration: Nomsa retires at 60 with a RA of R2,100,000

The Living Annuity: Your RA Becomes Taxable Income

The two-thirds that must be annuitized is typically placed in a Living Annuity (LA), an investment product in your name where you draw an income during retirement.

The drawdown rules are:

• You must draw between 2.5% and 17.5% of your living annuity capital each year

• You choose how often to receive it (monthly, quarterly, twice yearly, or annually)

• You can adjust your drawdown rate once per year on your anniversary date

The critical tax reality: every rand you draw from your living annuity is taxed as ordinary income, at your personal income tax rate for that year, through PAYE. This is not a capital gain or a dividend, it is treated exactly like a salary. This means that if you draw R300,000 a year from your LA, that R300,000 is added to your taxable income.

The tax-free thresholds that help:

This means a retiree drawing a modest income from a living annuity may pay little or no tax, especially if their drawdown stays below the relevant threshold.

What This Means for Your FI Number

Your FI number is typically calculated using gross annual expenses multiplied by 25. But if a significant portion of your FI portfolio sits inside a Living Annuity (converted from your RA), you must account for the tax on every rand you draw.

Practical implication: if you need R20,000 per month after tax, and your LA drawdown will be taxed at 26%, you actually need to draw approximately R27,000 gross to net R20,000. That changes your FI number calculation significantly.

This is one of the most powerful arguments for building a meaningful TFSA balance alongside your RA. TFSA withdrawals do not count as taxable income. In retirement, drawing from your TFSA first (or blending TFSA and LA income) allows you to stay in a lower tax bracket and extend the life of your LA. This tax-efficient income blending is one of the most underused retirement strategies in South Africa.

But wait…. there’s more

Section 10C: The Hidden Benefit of Over-Contributing to an RA

If you contribute more than the 27.5% deductible limit in any year, those excess contributions are tracked under Section 10C of the Income Tax Act. When you eventually retire, those “disallowed” or “excess” contributions come back to you, as a larger tax-free lump sum or as tax-free income through your living annuity. This is a powerful but largely unknown benefit for high earners and disciplined investors.

A Practical Illustration:

Thabo earns R1,800,000 per year and contributes R600,000 annually to his RA, well above the deductible cap.

Each year’s position:

• 27.5% of R1,800,000 = R495,000 – but the annual rand deduction cap is R430,000 (from 2027)

• So only R430,000 is tax-deductible each year (i.e., the lesser of the 2 amounts)

• The remaining R170,000 (R600,000 – R430,000) is a “excess contribution”, SARS records it on his tax profile (ITA34), but gives him no immediate deduction

After 10 years of doing this consistently, Thabo has accumulated R1,700,000 in excess contributions sitting on his SARS profile.

At Retirement: Section 10C Kicks In

Thabo retires at 60 with an RA balance of R9,000,000. He elects to take one-third, (R3,000,000) as a lump sum:

• Vested Pot: R6,000,000 → He takes 1/3 = R2,000,000 as a lump sum

• Savings Pot: R1,000,000 → He takes the full R1,000,000 as a lump sum

• Retirement Pot: R2,000,000 → Goes entirely to a Living Annuity (no lump sum)

Without Section 10C, his tax would be:

With Section 10C, the R1,700,000 in excess contributions is applied against the lump sum first, before the tax table even comes into play.

Taxable lump sum = R3,000,000 − R1,700,000 = R1,300,000

Thabo saves R612,000 in tax thanks to his excess contributions being tracked and returned to him under Section 10C.

If his excess contributions had been, say, R3,500,000, exceeding the R3,000,000 lump sum, the extra R500,000 would roll forward and shield his living annuity drawdowns from income tax until that R500,000 is fully exhausted.

💡Important nuance: SARS applies a “first-come, first-served” rule; excess contributions are automatically offset against the lump sum first, then against annuity income. You cannot choose to skip the lump sum offset and save all the excess for tax-free annuity income. Thabo can, however, opt to take a lower lump sum of, say, R1,000,000 instead of the full R3,000,000, and let the remaining R700,000 of excess contributions sit on his tax record and be used to make his living annuity income tax-free until that R700,000 is fully used up.

A Side-by-Side Snapshot

The “Who Should Pick What” Decision Framework

There is no single right answer, the best choice depends on your personal situation. Here is a practical guide:

Practical guidance for employees with a work pension/provident fund:

1. Check your current fund contribution rate. If you contribute 7.5% and your employer contributes 7.5%, that is 15% of your salary already going into a retirement fund.

2. Calculate your remaining 27.5% headroom. Subtract your current total retirement fund contributions from 27.5% of your salary. Any remaining room is available for an RA tax deduction.

3. If you have already used most or all of your 27.5% deductible room, further contributions to an RA will not generate an additional tax deduction, they become non-deductible contributions (though they still benefit from Section 10C at retirement and from tax-free growth).

4. In this situation, the TFSA becomes your priority vehicle. Your work fund handles forced, tax-deductible retirement saving. Your TFSA handles flexible, fully tax-free investing that you can access on your terms.

So…Finally! The Ideal Answer: Use Both, In This Order

Common Mistakes to Avoid

The Bottom Line

Both the TFSA and the RA are exceptional tools, built by government to make your money work harder. They are not competitors, they are teammates, each doing a different job at a different stage of your financial life.

Use your RA for:

✅The upfront tax deduction,

✅The forced discipline of long-term saving, and

✅The creditor protection it provides.

Use your TFSA for:

✅Flexibility,

✅100% Tax-free income in retirement, and

✅Supplement savings beyond your RA deductible limit.

📌Use your tax returns to fund your TFSA📌

In retirement, blending your TFSA with your living annuity income is one of the most powerful tax strategies available to South Africans, and it starts with the choices you make today.

Disclaimer: This article is for educational purposes only and does not constitute financial advice. Please consult a qualified financial adviser for advice tailored to your personal circumstances.

Here is everything that changed, explained without jargon. Think of this as the financial education session the budget speech never gives you.

1. Your TFSA Just Got a Bigger Bucket

What changed:

The annual contribution limit to your Tax-Free Savings Account increased from R36,000 to R46,000 per year, effective 1 March 2026. The lifetime limit stays at R500,000.

This is the first time that the annual limit has increased by R10,000, previous increases have been R3000, and it has sat at R36,000 since 2020.

What this means for you:

Inside a TFSA, every rand of growth – dividends, interest, capital gains, is completely tax-free. The TFSA was designed specifically as a wealth-building tool for ordinary South Africans.

The catch that trips people up: Your TFSA is not a savings account you can dip into freely. Every withdrawal permanently uses up your contribution room. If you put in R46,000 and then withdraw R10,000, you have used R46,000 of your lifetime limit, not R36,000. You cannot “refill” what you take out.

Use your TFSA for long-term, buy-and-hold investing. ETFs are a perfect fit here.

2. Retirement Contributions: You Can Deduct More

What changed:

The maximum tax-deductible retirement fund contribution increases from R350,000 to R430,000 per year, from 1 March 2026. This applies to pension funds, provident funds, and retirement annuities (RAs). What this means is that SARS taxes you on your income, but the money you put into a retirement fund gets subtracted from your income before SARS does the calculation. So, you’re taxed on a smaller number. The deduction rule itself is unchanged: you can deduct the lower of 27.5% of your taxable income or the Rand cap. The new change is about the Rand cap, the maximum Rand amount you’re allowed to subtract.

So, in practice, the change only affects you if 27.5% of your income is more than R350,000, which means you’d need to earn above roughly R1.27 million a year before the old cap was your problem. Most South Africans never hit that ceiling, so for most people, nothing changes. You’re still limited by the 27.5% rule.

Thato earns R300,000 per year: His retirement contribution deduction is capped at 27.5% of income in both years, the rand ceiling never came into play.

Lerato earns R1,500,000 per year: Her retirement contribution deduction in 2025/26 was capped at R350,000. In 2026/27 she can deduct her full 27.5% of R412,500.

3. Capital Gains Tax: You Keep More When You Sell

What changed:

3.1 Annual exclusion (most relevant for investors):

The annual CGT exclusion rises from R40,000 to R50,000. This exclusion has not increased since 2012 – 14 years ago.

When you sell an ETF or shares for a profit, you subtract R50,000 from your capital gain before it gets included in your taxable income. Only 40% of the remaining gain is included in your income (the “inclusion rate,” which is unchanged). The maximum effective CGT rate for an individual stays at 18%.

Quick example: You buy R100,000 of a JSE-listed ETF. Ten years later you sell it for R250,000. Your capital gain is R150,000:

Without the new exclusion (using the old R40,000), that bill would have been R15,840. The extra R10,000 exclusion saves you R1,440, automatically, just by holding until the new tax year.

3.2 Primary residence exclusion:

Increases from R2 million to R3 million. If you sell your home (primary resident) for more than you paid, the first R3 million in profit is excluded from CGT. As property values have risen across South Africa, this relief is increasingly meaningful.

3.3 Year of death exclusion:

Increases from R300,000 to R440,000. This is for Estate Planning, relevant if you are building generational wealth and thinking about what you leave behind.

4. Income Tax Brackets: Finally, Some Relief

What changed:

Personal income tax brackets were adjusted by 3.4%, in line with expected inflation. This is the first adjustment since the 2023/24 tax year. For the past two years, bracket creep silently eroded take-home pay. What the bracket creep means is, if your salary goes up with inflation but the tax brackets do not move, you quietly end up in a higher bracket and pay more tax on the same real income. A 3.4% bracket adjustment partially reverses that.

Most employed South Africans earning between R200,000 and R500,000 sit in the 26%–31% brackets. That is where this adjustment has the most practical day-to-day impact, a small but real improvement in take-home pay.

New tax thresholds (where tax kicks in):

Tax rebates (the amounts subtracted directly from your tax bill):

But wait…..what do they mean the bracket for R0 – R245 100 is 18%, but the threshold at which tax kicks in is R99,000?? The brackets and the threshold seem to contradict each other. Let me clear it up for you.

Both are true, they just work at different stages of the calculation:

That’s exactly why the threshold sits at R99,000. It’s the point where the 18% bracket calculation and the rebate cancel each other out perfectly.

A common misconception that I want to clear up about tax brackets…

A common misconception is that your tax bracket determines what you pay on your entire income. It does not. The brackets work in layers; each slice of your income is taxed at the rate for that slice only, and no higher. Someone earning R2,000,000 does not pay 45% on everything they earn, they actually pay 35.2%:

The 45% figure is the marginal rate, meaning the rate on the last rand of income. The effective rate, what you actually pay as a percentage of everything you earned, is always lower.

5. What Did Not Change. And Why That Matters

A few things investors were watching:

Dividends tax is still 20%. Every JSE dividend you receive outside a TFSA or retirement fund incurs this. No change, and no indication it is coming down.

CGT inclusion rate is still 40% for individuals. There was no increase, which is good news, an increase had been rumored.

Maximum effective CGT rate: still 18%**

Interest exemption is still R23,800 per year (under 65), R34,500 (over 65). This has been frozen since 2015. This is worth flagging specifically. This exemption has not changed since 2015. With inflation, it shelters meaningfully less of your interest income every year. That is a quiet, ongoing cost to investors who hold cash or bonds outside a TFSA; another reason to keep as much as possible inside that tax shelter.

Estate duty rates are unchanged at 20% below R30 million, 25% above.

The consistent pattern across these unchanged items lies here: if you are not using your TFSA and retirement fund to their full capacity, you are paying tax you do not have to pay.

**This “maximum effective rate” has always confused me. So here is a basic explanation: 18% is not a rate you’ll ever see written on a SARS form, it’s the effective rate, meaning the real-world percentage of your profit that ends up going to tax after all 4 steps of the CGT calculation have been applied. When you sell an asset for a profit, SARS doesn’t tax the full gain. They only include 40% of it in your taxable income (after the 50k exclusion). So, if you made R150,000 profit, as in the above example, only R40,000 gets added to your income. That R40,000 then gets taxed at whatever your top income tax rate is. The highest rate in South Africa is 45%. Worst possible case – someone in the 45% bracket with a large gain: R150,000 capital gains = R18,000 tax. R18,000 on a R150,000 gain = 12% effective rate. That’s where 18% comes from. It’s the mathematical ceiling, the absolute most CGT anyone can pay as a percentage of their profit, assuming the highest possible tax bracket. In practice most people pay less than 18%, because they’re not in the 45% bracket.

What Should You Actually Do?

Financial Literacy Month is a good prompt to turn reading into action. Here is a simple sequence:

The consistent pattern in the 2026 Budget: Incentives for long-term, tax-efficient investing. TFSA. RA. CGT exclusions. These changes reward patience and consistency, which happen to be the exact things that build wealth over time.

Most people read the budget headlines and move on. You now know the five changes that benefit you directly. Apply them today!

April is Financial Literacy Month, an annual campaign that began in the United States in 2000 when the Jump$tart Coalition launched “Financial Literacy for Youth Month.” By 2004, the US Senate passed Resolution 316 making it official, and the movement has since spread globally, touching communities, schools, financial institutions, and, yes, Substack’s like this one.

But this isn’t just an American story. This is our story, too.

Where South Africa Stands

Let’s be honest about where we are as a country. The Financial Sector Conduct Authority (FSCA) and Human Sciences Research Council (HSRC) 2020 Financial Literacy Baseline Survey found that the average financial literacy score of South Africans stands at just 52 out of 100. According to a Discovery/HSRC study, South Africa’s broader financial literacy rate sits at around 51%, meaning roughly half the adult population lacks a sufficient understanding of money management.

The numbers behind that score are sobering:

• The average South African allocates about 62% of their take-home pay towards servicing debt

• Household debt-to-income ratios have hovered around 65%

• South Africa’s official unemployment rate sits at 32.1%, with youth (ages 15–34) disproportionately affected

• Research shows that young Black African adults score only 49.3% on financial literacy assessments, low by any measure

• Nearly half of respondents in the 2025 Sanlam Benchmark Survey said they need more financial education

There’s a gap between what people feel and what they actually know. South Africans’ financial confidence recently reached its highest level in three years, rising from 47 to 53 out of 100 in the 2025 Sanlam Financial Confidence Index. But as Sanlam’s own research notes, confidence does not automatically translate into action or capability.

The Silent Threat to our Financial Health: Gambling

We also need to talk honestly about gambling; we are in the middle of a gambling surge, especially online and sports betting. In the 2024/25 financial year, South Africans wagered around R1.5 trillion on gambling, up sharply from roughly R1.14 trillion the year before. That amount is in the same ballpark as our total outstanding consumer debt, which tells you how deeply betting has woven itself into our financial lives.

The problem is not just that more people are placing bets. It’s that more people are struggling to stop. Recent analyses suggest that about 65% of South African adults gamble at least once a year, and the share of those showing signs of “problem gambling” has jumped from around 6% in 2017 to roughly 31% by 2023, nearly one in three active gamblers. Calls to gambling helplines have spiked from about 140,000 to over 1.1 million in a single year, a sign of rising distress.

This has real household consequences. Studies and industry reports point to:

• Gambling‑related debt making up an estimated double‑digit share of household debt.

• Low‑income households diverting a significant portion of their income away from food, education, and healthcare into betting.

• Savings rates turning negative, as emergency funds and school‑fee money are raided to “win it back.”

Behind every number is a story: bond arrears, cars repossessed, school fees in arrears, relationships under strain. When you layer this on top of existing unemployment and inequality, gambling stops being “just entertainment” and becomes a quiet drain on generational wealth. Gambling is not a financial plan. It is not a debt‑repayment strategy. It is not a wealth‑building tool. The maths is against you. When we are already stretched, every rand that goes into chasing a win is a rand that could have been building an emergency fund, buying an ETF, or paying down debt.

Why Financial Literacy Matters

When financial knowledge is low, everything gets harder:

• It’s easier to fall for high‑fee products, predatory lenders, and financial scams.

• Debt spirals faster because interest isn’t fully understood.

• Retirement feels like a vague hope instead of a concrete, buildable plan.

The hopeful part? Financial literacy is learnable at any age. You need clear explanations, a little curiosity, and the willingness to take small, consistent action. When you understand how money works, you:

• Recognize the difference between an asset and a liability.

• See how compound interest works for you when you invest, and against you when you’re carrying expensive debt.

• Understand your rights when dealing with banks, insurers, and investment platforms.

• Make decisions from a place of clarity rather than fear, shame, or FOMO.

That’s why access to community‑based financial education isn’t a nice‑to‑have. It is essential infrastructure.

Learning the Language of Money is the 1st Step!

You can’t play a game if you don’t understand the rules, or the vocabulary. Money works the same way. Once you know a few core terms, everything becomes less intimidating and more actionable.

That’s why I created the 25 Money Terms You Should Know infographics to kick off Financial Literacy Month; to give you a quick, visual way to build your money vocabulary before we go deeper. Here’s a breakdown of the key ideas:

You don’t need to memorize all of this immediately. Choose five terms that were new to you and write them in your own words. That act alone begins the shift from “this feels foreign” to “I’m building my financial vocabulary.”

Practical Foundations to Work on This Month

Knowing the language is step one. Applying it is where transformation happens. Think of Financial Literacy Month as a four‑week experiment in bringing more intention to your money.

Here are five places to start:

1. Track your money: Know where your Rands Go

   If you’ve ever felt like your money disappears before month-end, you’re not alone. The fix starts with a simple rule: track every rand. Use the 50/30/20 framework - around 50% for needs (rent, food, transport), 30% for wants (entertainment, takeout), and 20% for savings or debt payments.

   You don’t need fancy software. Start with a Google Sheet or try local apps like 22seven or EasyBudget. The act of writing things down already builds awareness. Revisit your budget monthly; tweak as life evolves.

   💡 Tip: “Pay yourself first” by automating savings. Set up a debit order that moves money from your main account into a separate savings or money market account right after payday, even R250/week adds up fast.

   🎯 Challenge: Try a “no-spend week” each month. Skip the non-essentials, then channel that saved cash into your savings account. You’ll be surprised how much intentionality shifts your mindset. Awareness is always the first step.

2. Build or top up your emergency fund
   Aim for 3–6 months of essential expenses. If that feels far away, start with R1,000 and automate a small weekly or monthly transfer into a separate savings account. Consistency compounds faster than any single large deposit.

3. Tackle debt with a strategy
   List every debt: balance, interest rate, and minimum payment. Decide between the avalanche method (highest interest rate first - mathematically optimal) or the snowball method (smallest balance first - psychologically motivating). Make one extra payment this month, however small.

4. Build & Protect Your Credit Score

   Your credit score is part of your financial identity. Keep your utilization below 30% - if your card limit is R10,000, don’t spend more than R3,000. Pay bills on time, every time. That’s the biggest factor influencing your score.

   Avoid opening multiple new accounts in a short period; each query counts against your rating temporarily.

   💡Tip: Use the free tools offered by TransUnion or Experian to monitor how your actions affect your score month to month.

5. Automate one good habit
   A debit order into your TFSA. A recurring transfer into your emergency fund. An extra payment against your highest‑interest debt. Automation removes willpower from the equation, and willpower is finite.

You don’t need to overhaul your entire financial life in April. This month is your reset, a chance to lay the right foundations and let small, well‑structured systems do the quiet work in the background.

Behavioral Nudges That Actually Work

Sometimes, it’s not about willpower, it’s about tricking your environment to work for you:

• Use apps or bank features that round up your purchases and stash the spare change into savings.

• Wait 30 days before any splurge - impulse fades, intentionality stays.

• Pair financial tasks with existing habits (e.g., review your budget every Sunday night while sipping coffee).

These tiny shifts make good habits automatic and bad ones inconvenient, the ultimate combo for sustainable progress. It’s not about hustle culture or overnight transformations. It’s about steady, self-aware decisions that compound quietly, month after month. When you treat your finances like a long-term ally rather than a weekend project, you start seeing real freedom.

You’re building wealth every day, one automated transfer, one intentional choice, one small win at a time.

So, this Financial Literacy Month, I want to challenge you to do three things:

1. Learn at least one new concept.

2. Apply it - take one concrete action in your own finances.

3. Share one money conversation or resource with someone you care about.

Meet Thandi.

For the last 15 years, Thandi has been doing everything right. She’s a diligent saver, she has an emergency fund, she contributes to her employer’s Provident Fund, has a little RA on the side, and opened her TFSA a few years ago when they started to gain traction on social media. She has debit order set up for the first of every month. She watched ETF tutorials on YouTube. She shared her portfolio updates on Twitter. She never touches her investments, not when changing jobs, not during COVID, not even at the dawn of the 2-pot retirement system.

By any measure, Thandi is model investor. So, if I ask Thandi a simple question: “What are you investing for?” Brilliant, disciplined, consistent Thandi goes completely silent. She had never thought about it. She is investing because she is supposed to. Because that’s what financially responsible people do.

Because…..compounding.

Because…..ETFs.

Because…..TFSA

Because the internet told her to start early and stay consistent. But the destination? That has always been vague. A fuzzy, someday-feeling called “retirement” that she’d never actually bothered to define.

Thandi’s story is not unusual. It might even be your story.

The Content Nobody Publishes

The personal finance industry is drowning in HOW content: How to pick an ETF. How to open a TFSA. How to diversify. How to automate your investments.

All of that is useful. Genuinely. But there is a question that almost nobody asks; the one that should come before all of it: SO, WHAT ARE YOU INVESTING FOR?

Without that answer, you’re investing in the same way that someone might run a marathon without knowing the finish line. You’re burning energy, you’re going in the right general direction, but you have no idea when you’ve arrived. And you’ll never feel the satisfaction of crossing the tape.

The HOW without the WHY produces motion without meaning. And motion without meaning eventually produces exhaustion, or worse, impulsive decisions dressed up as “strategy.” Without an anchor, investing is just a performance. When you attach purpose to your money, your strategy shifts from “aimless investing” to Lifestyle Design

So, let’s start at the beginning.

What is your money for?

The Five Destinations Worth Naming

Not all investment goals are created equal. But here are the ones worth actually building a plan around.

1. Financial Freedom / Early Retirement (FIRE)

The FIRE movement is the idea that retirement is not an age. It’s a number. The goal is to accumulate enough invested assets that you can live off the returns indefinitely, without needing to work. FIRE followers typically aim to save 50 – 70% of their income, investing aggressively in index funds and other assets until their portfolio crosses their “freedom number”.

What his looks like maximizing your TFSA, layering in a retirement annuity for tax efficiency, and adding JSE-listed or offshore ETFs on top. It’s aggressive, it requires sacrifice, and not many people can do it. But it’s increasingly relevant, particularly for Millennials and Gen Z who’ve watched their parents work 40 years only to retire into uncertainty.

2. Traditional Retirement, But on Your Own Terms

Not everyone wants to retire at 40. Many of us simply want to retire well at a traditional retirement age without a pension fund dictating the terms, and without running out of money. This goal is quieter than FIRE but no less valid. It says: I want to work until 60 or 65 by choice, not by necessity, and if I get there, I want to live with dignity.

3. Generational Wealth

This is the goal that lives beyond your own lifetime. It says: I want my children (and their children) to inherit not just money, but options. A house that’s paid off. An investment account they can build on. A headstart instead of a headstart debt. In the South African context, this is also about breaking cycles, the cycle of “Black Tax,” the cycle of financial dependency, the cycle of gambling, the cycle of starting from zero with every generation. Generational wealth is, at its core, an act of love made tangible.

4. A Specific Life Goal

Sometimes the destination is more concrete:

· Your child’s university fees.

· A deposit for that investment property.

· Capital to start a business.

· A sabbatical at 45.

These goals have names, timelines, and price tags; and that specificity is incredibly powerful. Knowing that you need R300 000 in 8 years for school fees is more motivating than saving for a vague “future.”

5. Dignity and Optionality

This one doesn’t get talked about enough, but it might be the most honest goal of all. Some people aren’t chasing millions. They simply never want to be financially desperate again. They want the phone to ring and not send their heart racing. They want options, the option to say no to a toxic job, to help a parent in crisis, to take a month off without spiraling. This goal isn’t about wealth as status. It’s about peace.

None of these goals are more legitimate than the others. But you have to name yours, because unnamed goals don’t get funded. To move from a vague feeling to a concrete plan, you need a target

How Much is Enough? Finding Your Number

This is probably the most searched question in personal finance; this will have you on Google at 2am; and the answer is both simpler and more personal than most people expect.

The 25x Rule (The 4% Safe Withdrawal Rate)

The idea traces back to pioneering work by William Bengen in the 1990s, later reinforced by the Trinity Study. Both focused on one question: how much can you safely withdraw from a portfolio without running out of money? Their conclusion: a diversified mix of equities and bonds has historically supported withdrawals of about 4% per year over a 30-year retirement, with a high probability of success. The 25x rule simply works backwards: if 4% of your portfolio needs to equal your annual spending, then your target portfolio is 25 times that spending.

Mathematically, this means: Annual expenses ÷ 0.04 = Required portfolio
Which simplifies to: Annual expenses × 25

So this means that your Financial Independence (FI) number, i.e., the amount of money you need invested so that you no longer have to rely on a salary to cover your living expenses is: Annual Expenses x 25

💡A Note on the 25x Rule for SA investors

What Does Your Number Look Like?

The point of the table below isn’t to make you feel behind, it’s to show you that lifestyle is the most powerful variable in your FI equation. The person spending R50k per month needs more than three times the portfolio of the person spending R15k. That’s not a judgement, it’s a lever.

Your number is personal. Don’t borrow someone else’s retirement goal.

⏰The Variable You Can’t Buy Back: Time

Here’s the uncomfortable truth about compound growth: the most important investment decision you’ll ever make isn’t which ETF to buy. It’s when you start.

Consider two investors, Thembi and Sipho, both investing R2,000 a month into a diversified ETF portfolio (assuming a 10% average annual return):

Thembi only contributed R240,000 more than Sipho, but her ten-year head start bought her R4.2 million in extra wealth. This is why consistently investing in low-cost, diversified ETFs over a long period is the actual mechanism of wealth building; not clever trading, not timing the market, not finding the next hot stock. Time in the market, not timing the market.

If you’re reading this and thinking, “I’ve already missed a decade”, don’t let that become an excuse to miss the next one. The second-best time to start is always today.

Lifestyle Design: The Math Nobody Does

Here is a challenge for you, and be honest: Do you know what your ideal life actually costs per month?

Not your current life. Not a fantasy. Your genuinely ideal life, the one with the house you want with the mortgage settled, and the school fees paid up. The one with monthly budget that includes travel and your health and a meal at a restaurant without checking your bank app first. Map it. Price it. That number is your FI target.

Most people have never done this calculation. They’re investing for “retirement” the way someone packs for a trip with no destination in mind, throwing in everything and hoping for the best. What they discover when they do this exercise is one of two things. Either their ideal life costs less than they assumed, and they’ve been spending money on things that aren’t even in the design. This is liberating. Or their ideal life costs more than they’re currently investing for, and they need to get serious about closing that gap.

So basically, lifestyle design is the practice of starting with the life you want, then working backwards to the money required to fund it. It’s the opposite of the conventional approach, which says: “Accumulate as much as possible and figure out the rest later.”

The practical exercise is simple but surprisingly powerful:

The first time you do this, the number might seem impossibly large. That is not a reason to stop. It is a reason to start, today, specifically. Your investment portfolio now has clarity:

📌“I’m not just investing because I should, but I am investing R3 500 per month because my FI number is R7.5 million and I am currently 27 years old, which means I have 33 years for this to compound at an expected 10% return, and I am on track.”

A Self-Assessment You Can Do Right Now

This is not homework. This is the most valuable 20 minutes you’ll spend this week. Grab a pen, open a note on your phone, or fill this in a journal:

Name your destination, choose your number, and then let every debit order, ETF purchase, and investing decision quietly move you closer to the life you’ve already designed on purpose.

Let’s start with the word stock. A stock represents a small piece of ownership of a company. When a company wants to raise money, it can split itself up into millions (sometimes billions) of tiny little pieces. Those pieces are called shares. Stock is the concept of ownership; shares are the quantity you hold.

Here’s a simple way to think about it:

Microsoft (NASDAQ: MSFT): Microsoft is one of the most recognized technology companies in the world; the maker of Windows, Excel, Word, the Xbox, and the Azure cloud platform. Microsoft has split itself into approximately 7.4 billion shares. Each of those shares is currently worth around $389. If you own 10 shares of Microsoft, you own a tiny but real slice of the company behind most of the world’s office software.

Naspers (JSE: NPN): Naspers is one of South Africa’s biggest companies, listed right here on the Johannesburg Stock Exchange. If you hold Naspers shares, you are a part-owner of a tech and media giant with investments across the globe, including a major stake in Chinese internet company Tencent.

What Is Market Cap?

To understand how much a company is worth, we use something called market capitalization, or market cap for short. It gives you the total market value of a company. Think of it as the price tag the market has put on the entire business.

• Microsoft’s market cap currently sits above $2.8 trillion USD, making it one of the most valuable companies in the world.

• Naspers has a market cap in the hundreds of billions of rand, making it one of the largest companies on the JSE.

• Shoprite (JSE: SHP), South Africa’s leading retailer, also sits in the large-cap space on the JSE

📌Market cap is important because it tells you the scale of a company. A large-cap company is generally more established and stable; a small-cap company may be riskier but has more room to grow.

What Are Earnings?

Every few months, publicly listed companies release an earnings report

Microsoft reports earnings quarterly, showing revenue from its cloud division (Azure), the Office 365 subscription suite, LinkedIn, and gaming platforms like Xbox.

Shoprite reports results that show revenue from grocery sales across South Africa and the rest of Africa, which tells investors whether the business is growing or shrinking.

🚩Good earnings (better than expected) can push a share price up. Poor earnings or negative surprises can cause the share price to fall.

Going Public: What Is an IPO?

A company starts out as private – only the founders and early investors own it. But if the company wants to raise money from the general public, it can go public through a process called an Initial Public Offering (IPO). During an IPO, the company lists its shares on a stock exchange – a regulated marketplace where anyone can buy and sell those shares. Once a company is listed, anyone with a brokerage account can buy or sell its shares during trading hours.

• In the US, companies list on the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) or Nasdaq.

• In South Africa, companies list on the Johannesburg Stock Exchange (JSE), Africa’s largest stock exchange and one of the world’s top exchanges by market capitalization.

What Is a Stock Exchange?

A stock exchange is simply a highly regulated marketplace for buying and selling shares.

The JSE:

• Was founded in 1887 and is based in Johannesburg.

• Is regulated by the Financial Sector Conduct Authority (FSCA).

• Operates a fully electronic trading platform where all trades are matched.

• Think of the JSE like a giant, official marketplace; like a Woolworths for shares, except instead of buying groceries, you’re buying ownership in companies.

What Is a Stock Market Index?

You’ve probably heard people say, “the market is up” or “the market is down.” But how do we measure that?

We use something called an index (plural: indices). An index tracks the performance of a group of selected companies and gives us a single number to represent how those companies are doing overall.

The index doesn’t tell you the price of one company, it tells you how the market as a whole is moving.

What Are Sectors?

Not all companies do the same thing. The stock market groups companies into sectors based on the type of business they run. The JSE uses the Industry Classification Benchmark (ICB), which organizes listed companies into broad industries and sectors.

Understanding sectors helps you diversify your portfolio, i.e., spreading your money across different industries so that one sector’s bad performance doesn’t wipe you out.

Key Investing Terms You Should Know

Here are the essential words you’ll hear often. Bookmark this section, you’ll come back to it.

👇You’ll see these terms used a lot in financial news. History shows that bull markets last significantly longer than bear markets, which is why staying invested through downturns typically pays off.

💡Invest a fixed amount every month, no matter what. Let the math remove the emotion. Stop trying to time the market.

The Power of Time: What R10,000 Could Have Grown To

One of the most important lessons in investing is this:

💡Time in the market beats timing the market.

To illustrate just how powerful long-term investing can be, here is what a modest investment into two well-known companies, Apple in the US and Capitec Bank in SA would look like over 10 and 20 years. These calculations exclude dividends and brokerage fees to keep things simple, but they illustrate the compounding power of long-term equity investing.

Important note: Past performance does not guarantee future results. These examples are purely illustrative. Individual share prices can also fall significantly. This is why diversification through ETFs is so important.

From the Gatekeepers to the People: Access to Investing in South Africa

The story of investing access in South Africa is ultimately a story of inclusion. Technology has been the great equalizer. If you have a smartphone and R50 to spare, you can be a shareholder in some of the world’s greatest companies, something that simply wasn’t possible for most South Africans two decades ago

• Investing R300 per month into an ETF

• Investing a R100 000 lump sum into the Satrix Top 40 ETF and holding for 5 years

By the end, you should know exactly which platform fits you and why.

The Six ETF Brokers Covered

The platforms in this guide are:

1. EasyEquities

2. Capitec + the EasyEquities widget

3. SatrixNOW

4. FNB Shares Zero

5. Standard Bank AutoShare Invest

6. etfSA Investor Hub

All of them let you:

• Buy JSE‑listed ETFs

• Invest small amounts (with varying minimums)

• Where they differ is in fee structure, minimum amounts, product range, and user experience.

⚠️Disclaimer: I have no affiliation with, or financial interest in, any of the brokers or platforms reviewed in this article. While I personally invest through EasyEquities, this reflects my individual situation and should not be taken as a recommendation that you do the same.

The Main Fees You’ll Face When Buying ETFs

When you buy ETFs through a broker, you typically face three broad types of costs:

1. Brokerage fee

   • A percentage of the trade value (e.g. 0.25%) the platform charges for executing your buy/sell orders. Paid each time you trade.

2. Platform / admin / custody fees

   • An annual percentage (e.g. 0.5% per year) charged on your whole portfolio value. These keeps being charged whether you trade or not and sometimes compounds over time.

   • For long‑term ETF investors, this is often the most important fee to manage.

3. Settlement / STRATE and statutory fees

   • Small amounts that pay for the back‑end plumbing on the JSE: moving securities, record‑keeping, and regulatory levies. These are usually tiny but still part of your all‑in trading cost; these have been left out of this analysis

💡In addition, every ETF has its own internal TER (Total Expense Ratio), which is taken inside the fund. That TER is the same regardless of which broker you use, so the broker’s job is to add as little extra drag as possible. This article does not discuss TER.

The Six Platforms explained!

Before we get to the numbers, here’s a quick orientation on each platform:

EasyEquities is South Africa’s most popular retail investing app, known for fractional shares (meaning you can buy a portion of an ETF with any amount). Their platform fee, also known as “Thrive Fee”, is R25. This fee is waived if you are <21years, >65years, your net deposits exceed withdrawals each month or, by reaching Thrive Level 3 via “Thrive activities”. For anyone investing regularly, it’s almost always waived. The platform allows investors to buy and sell a wide range of assets, including JSE-listed shares, ETFs & ETNs, unit trusts, US-listed shares and ETFs, certain cryptocurrencies, and shares in other markets such as Europe and Australia

EasyEquities + Capitec is the same platform, accessed through EasyEquities widget on the Capitec banking app. The only difference: you get a permanent 20% discount on all brokerage fees, dropping from 0.25% to 0.20%. If you’re a Capitec client, there’s no reason not to use this version.

SatrixNOW is Satrix’s own investment platform, is limited to Satrix ETFs and unit trusts. It offers some of the lowest brokerage in the market (0.10%), and it supports fractional shares. The catch: a 0.50% annual platform fee applied to your total portfolio value, if < R500 000. The platform fee is tiered, so it becomes 0.40% if your portfolio is between R500 000 – R1 000 000, and 0.30% for a portfolio value > R1 000 000. This number is small when you start, but it compounds against you as your portfolio grows.

FNB Shares Zero is FNB’s zero-fee brokerage product for its banking clients. The platform allows you to buy JSE Top 40 shares, plus all JSE-listed ETFs & ETNs. If you’re buying FNB/Ashburton branded ETFs, brokerage is literally R0. For non-FNB ETFs (like Satrix or Sygnia), the rate jumps to 0.25%. Important caveat: FNB’s Tax-Free account (called the Tax-Free Shares Account) is a separate, restricted product that you can only invest in FNB/RMB’s own Top 40 and MidCap ETFs through it; so not a full do-as-you-please JSE ETF TFSA.

Standard Bank AutoShare Invest is Standard Bank’s brokerage product, integrated into their banking app. The platform allows you to buy a selection of ~ 250 JSE-listed shares and ETFs, rather than the full universe of JSE-listed securities. It charges 0.15% brokerage per transaction and a 0.12% annual safe custody fee on your portfolio. No fractional shares. The TFSA offering provides access to the full JSE ETF range.

📌Standard Bank has announced the platform AutoShare Invest will gradually be migrated to the Shyft investing app between 2025 and 2026 as part of consolidating their trading platforms.

ETFSA Investor Hub gives access to all 200+ JSE-listed ETPs (ETFs, ETNs, and AMETFs) across all providers. It’s run by ETFSA, a dedicated ETF specialist, and includes optional human advisor support. Brokerage is low at 0.10%, but it also charges a 0.50% annual management fee. They do not offer individual shares or direct offshore stocks

2026 Snapshot: How the Platforms Compare

Here is a simplified overview. Numbers are approximate and rounded for clarity.

*Monthly admin fee (aka Thrive fee) exempt if: <21yrs, >65yrs, Deposit more money than you withdraw monthly, Reach Thrive level 3 via “Thrive activities”

**TFSA is in a separate account: Tax-Free Shares Account - limited to FNB Top40 & MidCap ETFs

Scenario 1: ETF Investing with R300 per Month

Let’s say you’re starting small. You invest R300 every month and you buy 1 ETF (Satrix Top40 ETF) with that R300. The approximate total platform + trading cost per year for each platform:

*For the purpose of this illustration, the value of the portfolio after 12 months is R3600 (R300 X12), in a real-world scenario the portfolio would have grown to more than that after 12 months*

At R300/month, the absolute rand amounts are tiny across all brokers. From a pure cost point of view:

• The cheapest setups are FNB Shares Zero with FNB/Ashburton ETFs (effectively R0) but R9 if buying other products.

• EasyEquities, especially with the Capitec discount, is still very cheap and wins on usability, range of ETFs, and fractional shares.

· SatrixNOW and etfSA, at R21.60/year, due to their 0.50% p.a. platform/admin structure are the most expensive on this pattern

The key insight: at R3,600 per year in contributions, the actual rand amounts are small across all platforms. The more critical issues at this level are:

• Minimum investment and whether you can use fractional shares (EasyEquities wins here).

• Whether you’re paying the R25 Thrive fee each month. If you don’t qualify for an exemption, that R25/month is a much bigger drag than the trading/platform numbers in the table.

Scenario 2: ETF Investing with a R100 000 Lump Sum (5‑Year Hold)

Let’s focus on the 5-year lump sum scenario, because this is where ongoing (especially percentage) fees really matter

You invest R100 000 into the Satrix Top 40 ETF. It grows at 18.63% per annum (this is the actual historical 5-year annualized return of that fund). By the end of year 5, your money has grown to approximately R234 960.

Now look at what each platform costs you over those five years:

*R100 000 invested over 5yrs with an annualized 5-year return of18.63%. Value of portfolio at the end of year 1 = R118 630, year 2 = R140 731, year 3 = R166 947, year 4 = R198 045, year 5 = R234 960

On a once‑off R100 000 investment, the crucial difference is how each platform charges you over time. Platforms like SatrixNOW and etfSA Investor Hub that charge an annual platform fee as a percentage of your portfolio value become progressively more expensive as your investment grows. In this scenario where the Satrix Top 40 ETF delivers something like 18.63% per year over five years (like it has done in the last 5 years), your R100 000 is compounding upward, and so is the rand value of that 0.50% platform fee each year. If the value of your 100k remained the same, 0.50% on it is just R500. But by the end of year 1, your portfolio has grown to R118,630, so the fee is R593. By year five, you’re paying R1175 in fees for that single year alone, on a portfolio that’s grown to ~R234 960. The fee scales with your success.

By contrast, platforms that charge a rand‑based platform fee like EasyEquities take roughly the same rand amount out of your portfolio whether the ETF doubles or not. Over long periods, that structural difference is why percentage‑based platform fees can produce much higher total costs than rand‑based fees. FNB Shares Zero No ongoing platform fee has a massive advantage.

So Which Platform Should You Use?

If you’re a Capitec client: EasyEquities + Capitec: This is best for beginner investors who already bank with Capitec and want a simple way to start investing directly from their banking app with small amounts and discounted brokerage fees.” The Thrive fee is waived for anyone investing regularly. There’s no meaningful trade-off here, it’s the best deal on the market for regular retail investors.

If you’re not a Capitec client: EasyEquities: is best for DIY investors who want low-cost access to both JSE and international shares and ETFs, especially those building long-term portfolios or investing small amounts regularly.

ETFSA Investor hub: is ideal for hands‑off investors who prefer pre‑built ETF portfolios (e.g. Income, Balanced, Equity) using only ETFs and other exchange-traded products, rather than buying individual shares, and values some human support. Trade‑off: you pay for this convenience via a larger platform fee

If you’re already an FNB client buying FNB/Ashburton ETFs: FNB Shares Zero: is genuinely unbeatable for that specific use case. But if you want Satrix, Sygnia, or any non-FNB product, or if you want a proper open-architecture TFSA, you’ll need to look elsewhere.

SatrixNOW: Best suited for Satrix brand loyalist as the platform is limited to Satrix ETFs and unit trusts. But harder to recommend over the alternatives due to the 0.50% platform fee and a narrower product range

Standard Bank AutoShare: is best for Standard Bank clients who want a simple way to invest in major JSE shares and ETFs directly from their banking app with their low custody and brokerage fees.

The Bottom Line

Fees don’t feel painful in the moment. R500 disappearing from a R100 000 portfolio in year one is easy to ignore. But the data is clear: over five years, the difference between the cheapest and most expensive platform on this list is over R4000. Over 20 years? The compounding effect of a 0.50% annual platform fee on a growing portfolio runs into the tens of thousands of rands. The good news is that South Africa’s retail investment landscape has genuinely good low-cost options.

Choose the broker that best matches your needs, automate a sensible ETF plan, and then give it time; in the end, consistency and low costs will matter far more than chasing the perfect platform.

💡💡Disclaimer: This article is for informational purposes only and does not constitute financial advice. All fee figures were verified in March 2026. Please confirm current fees directly with each provider before investing. Past returns (including the 18.63% p.a. Satrix Top 40 historical figure) are not a guarantee of future performance. Statutory costs (STRATE, IPL, STT) and ETF TERs apply across all platforms and are not included in the cost comparisons above.

This isn’t about becoming obsessed with spreadsheets or depriving yourself of the things you love. It’s about building a solid foundation, so your money works for you, rather than the other way around. Whether you’re starting from scratch or doing a long-overdue reset, these 12 steps will get you there.

1. Build a Monthly Budget

I know, I know…. nobody’s favourite task. But here’s the thing: you really only need to do it properly once. The goal is simple: make sure your monthly expenses are less than what you bring in. After that, you only need to revisit it when your circumstances change - a new job, a new baby, a new car payment, or any other major life shift.

The good news is that budgeting has never been easier. There are excellent free apps that do most of the heavy lifting for you. 22seven (now known as Vault22) is a great option in SA, and also my personal favorite, and globally there are tools like YNAB, Mint alternatives, and various bank-integrated budgeting features. Find one that suits you and set it up once. If you prefer a good old spreadsheet, that will work too.

2. Have a Debt Repayment Plan

You don’t need to be completely debt-free before you start saving or investing, especially if you can comfortably manage your monthly repayments without accumulating more debt. That said, getting rid of unsecured debt (credit cards, store accounts, personal loans) should be a priority.

The Debt Snowball method, popularized by Dave Ramsey, is a solid strategy: pay off your smallest debts first to build momentum, then roll those payments into the next debt. It’s psychologically satisfying and financially effective. In 2026, with interest rates still a key factor in household budgets, tackling high-interest debt aggressively makes more sense than ever.

3. Make Sure You’re Adequately Insured

Insurance feels like dead money, until you need it. Medical cover, car insurance, household contents, life insurance, disability cover, income protection - these aren’t luxuries. Being underinsured can set you back years financially. A written-off car you’re still paying instalments on, a burst geyser and water damage bill, a hospital stay without medical cover... these stories are unfortunately very common.

Review your cover at least once a year. With the rise of digital insurance platforms, it’s now easier to compare quotes and ensure you’re getting the right cover at a competitive price. Don’t cancel policies in a moment of cash-flow stress, rather contact your insurer to discuss alternatives.

💡 Life tends to test your insurance coverage immediately after you cancel it. Don’t risk it!

4. Build an Emergency Fund

Most financial advisors recommend setting aside 3 to 6 months’ worth of living expenses as an emergency fund. The exact number depends on your lifestyle, your dependents, and your personal risk tolerance, choose a figure that genuinely helps you sleep at night. I don’t sleep well unless I have a minimum of R100 000 in emergency savings.

This money should live in an easily accessible account: a basic savings account, money market account, or an access bond if you have one. Speed of access matters here, this is not an investment account. If you’re supporting extended family members financially (as many of us are), factor their emergency needs into your buffer too, but set clear boundaries about what qualifies as an emergency.

If you don’t have the full amount yet, set up a monthly debit order and build it over time. Starting small is infinitely better than not starting at all.

5. Keep a Dedicated Savings Account

Beyond your emergency fund, you need a savings bucket for the planned bigger expenses in life, like a deposit on a property, an overseas trip, or simply the nice things (yes, le Creuset pots and Gucci bag count). A money market account typically offers a slightly better interest rate than a standard savings account and is still easily accessible.

One important note: don’t let this account grow excessively large. Cash sitting idle loses real value to inflation. If your savings balance starts to balloon beyond what you’ll need in the next two to three years, start moving the excess into a longer-term investment account.

6. Invest in Your Retirement

Nobody wants to think about retirement when there are more immediate pressures, but your future self will thank you for starting early. Whether through your employer’s provident or pension fund, or an external Retirement Annuity (RA), make sure a meaningful amount is going in every month.

The tax deductibility of retirement contributions is one of the best incentives available to ordinary investors, you will get some of that money back at tax time. And please, please don’t cash out your retirement fund when you change jobs. The tax hit is brutal, and the lost compounding time is irreplaceable. It’s one of the most common and most costly financial mistakes people make.

7. Open a Tax-Free Savings Account (TFSA)

If there’s one investment vehicle that should be non-negotiable, this is it. A TFSA allows your money to grow and be withdrawn completely free of tax. No income tax, no capital gains tax, no dividends tax. It’s one of the most powerful tools available to individual investors.

The lifetime contribution limit in South Africa currently sits at R500 000, with an annual limit of R46 000. At maximum contributions, it takes around 11 years to reach the lifetime cap. Start as early as you can, contribute consistently, and leave it alone. This account can help supplement your retirement. The strategy is simple: keep contributing, don’t touch it, and let time do the work. If you follow me on X, you’ll know that my TFSA is my pride and joy, I will never stop advocating for everyone to get a TFSA.

8. Build a Discretionary Investment Portfolio

Once your foundation is in place, it’s time to grow wealth more actively. Open a discretionary investment account and start investing in Exchange Traded Funds (ETFs); diversified, low-cost funds that track market indices. This is one of the most accessible and effective ways for ordinary investors to build wealth over time.

In South Africa, platforms like Easy Equities, ETFSA investor hub, Standard Bank Auto Shares, FNB Shares Zero, and others make it easy to start with small amounts. Set up a monthly debit order and invest consistently.

Once you’ve built some confidence and done your research, you can start adding individual shares to your portfolio. Follow reputable finance blogs, watch educational content, attend webinars, and listen to podcasts. The learning curve is real, but it’s worth it. The long-term goal is to build a portfolio large enough that dividends and capital growth provide financial freedom, but that requires patience, not perfection. It will be irresponsible of me to end this paragraph without saying “Please consult with a registered financial advisor/planner” 😊.

9. Do a Quarterly Financial Review

A quick quarterly check-in keeps everything on track. The goal is straightforward: your assets should be growing, and your liabilities should be shrinking. Check your investment performance, track your debt balances, and make sure your budget still reflects your actual life.

Once you’re comfortable and everything is running smoothly, you can move to a semi-annual review. A simple Excel spreadsheet works perfectly well, nothing fancy required. What matters is the habit of looking at the full picture regularly.

10. Draw Up a Will

This one is uncomfortable, but it’s non-negotiable if you’re serious about building wealth. Without a valid will, your assets may not end up where you intend them to, and the legal and emotional costs on your family can be significant. Estates without wills can take years to wind up, and minor children’s inheritances may be transferred to the state’s Guardians Fund, which is cumbersome and, like most government institutions - a nightmare to deal with.

If you have dependents, property, investments, or really any meaningful assets, you need a will. There are affordable and even free will services available, and many financial planners include this as part of their offering. Review it every few years, or whenever your circumstances change significantly.

💡 Building generational wealth means thinking beyond your own lifetime. A will is how you protect everything you’ve built.

11. Create an Additional Income Stream

I think we can all agree that in Cyril’s economy, a single income source is increasingly precarious. An additional income stream, whether it’s freelancing, a side business, rental income, or a passion project that generates revenue, can add resilience and accelerate your financial progress.

This doesn’t have to be a second job that consumes your evenings and weekends. Start small: monetize a skill, sell something, consult, teach. The compounding effect of additional income, when channeled into your investments rather than lifestyle inflation, is genuinely transformative over time.

12. Open Investment Accounts for Your Children

Once you’ve got the first eleven steps under control, start thinking about the next generation. Opening an investment account for your children, even if it’s just a few hundred rand a month can give them a meaningful head start in life.

Think about what a consistently invested portfolio could look like by the time they’re 18 or 21: university fees, a deposit on their first place, a reliable car, or simply a financial safety net as they start their adult lives. The earlier you start, the more dramatically compounding works in their favour.

💡If you are going to do a TFSA account for your kids, please don’t spend it on university fees etc., let that money grow to supplement their retirement.

One Last Thing

You don’t have to do all of this at once. The most important step is always the next one. Start with a budget. Build your emergency fund. Open that TFSA. Each step you take creates the foundation for the next one.

Financial security isn’t built in a single brilliant move, it’s built through consistent, boring, unglamorous decisions made over years. The people who get there aren’t necessarily the highest earners. They’re the ones who started, stayed disciplined, and kept going.

So: which step are you at?

In late 2014, I was driving home from work, half‑listening to my local radio station, when an interview with Ann Wilson came on. She was talking about her new book, The Wealth Chef. I don’t remember the technical details of that interview, but I remember one thing clearly: the title hooked me. Within days I had bought the book, and that seemingly small decision quietly changed the entire direction of my financial life.

Up to that point, I thought I was doing well. I was six years post‑varsity with a professional qualification, I had a paid‑off entry level German car and had bought my first property the previous year, a townhouse I was living in. On paper, I looked “rich & sorted”. But as I turned the pages of The Wealth Chef, I realized something uncomfortable: I was embarrassingly poor. Growing up, I was only exposed to one type of good financial behavior; saving money during the year to spend it in December (not all December purchases were foolish). While I was a disciplined “saver,” I was not an investor. In fact, I don’t think I even knew the difference. Looking at my finances, I had some money in savings, a very tiny retirement annuity, and I wouldn’t have survived missing two consecutive pay cheques. To make it worse, I had even opted out of my employer’s pension fund.

That book was my wake‑up call.

Meeting ETFs for the first time

The Wealth Chef introduced me to two phrases I’d never heard before: “exchange traded fund” and “index fund”. Suddenly, investing didn’t feel so inaccessible or daunting; it felt like a simple, structured way for an ordinary salaried person to grow money over the long term.

Being me, I did what I always do when something intrigues me: I opened my laptop. I typed “exchange traded funds” into Google; a lot of American pages came up from the google search. Locally I kept seeing the same two names: ETFSA and Satrix; remember, this was 2014, a lot of today’s favorite platforms and products simply didn’t exist yet.

I gravitated towards ETFSA. They hosted free in‑person seminars in Joburg, Cape Town and Durban every few months, complete with a light meal afterwards. For the next couple of years, I made sure I was at every seminar that came to my city. Those rooms became my unofficial classroom. Mike Brown and Nerina Visser walked us through ETFs, fees, tax, and the JSE menu of products in plain language. I wasn’t just reading about investing anymore; I was watching it come to life in real time.

By December 2014, not only was I reading more, I also start doing.

Placing my first real investment debit order

In December 2014, I opened my ETFSA account and set up my very first monthly debit order: R4000, scheduled for January 2015. I split it evenly across four ETFs – Satrix INDI, db x‑trackers MSCI World, PropTrax Ten, and RMB Top 40 (some of which have since changed names and issuers).

It felt both terrifying and exciting.

Terrifying, because R4 000 was a meaningful chunk of my salary and I was sending it into something I shouldn’t “touch” the way I could a savings account. Exciting, because for the first time I was actually investing my money and buying assets.

Around the same time, I started using a simple Excel balance sheet template from the book to track my own assets and liabilities. Every few months I updated my assets and liabilities, watching how the numbers moved. Over time, that simple spreadsheet showed me in black and white whether I was actually getting wealthier or just working hard and standing still. These days I update it twice a year, but the principle is the same: assets up, liabilities down.

Being there at the birth of the TFSA

Through those ETFSA seminars, I had a front‑row seat when Treasury introduced the tax‑free savings account (TFSA) in 2015. There was a lot of excitement and a fair bit of confusion, but one thing was clear: this was a once‑in‑a‑lifetime building block for ordinary South Africans.

My own TFSA journey started in January 2016, just a few weeks before the end of the 2015/2016 financial year. ETFSA had launched two TFSA model portfolios – ETF Tax Free Income portfolio and ETF Tax Free Equity portfolio. I chose the Equity Portfolio, which held six different ETFs. Looking back, that decision to treat my TFSA as a serious long‑term investment account rather than a glorified savings pocket is one of the most important money decisions I’ve ever made.

Evolving beyond my first platform

As the local investing landscape evolved, so did my portfolio. When Easy Equities started gaining traction around 2018, I decided to transfer my investments. I wanted two things:

• More flexibility to choose specific ETFs within my TFSA

• The ability to experiment with individual shares alongside my core index holdings

I moved my main portfolio first, and then, in 2019, I transferred my TFSA as well so that everything lived in one place. Along the way, I was also there for some big milestones in the ETF space – like the arrival of the S&P 500 ETF in SA in 2016, the launch of my favorite ETF in 2018, the Satrix Nasdaq 100 ETF, and the updates to the TFSA annual limits.

My TFSA has become my pride and joy: a living, breathing record of what consistency, compounding and low‑cost index investing can do quietly in the background while you get on with your life.

Milestones that changed how I see money

A few milestones stand out when I look back over this journey:

• Buying my 1st individual shares

• Crossing the R1 million mark in 2021 and realizing that most of that growth had come from boring, automated debit orders, not windfalls.

• Maxing out my TFSA for 11 consecutive years and watching it march towards, and then past the R800 000 mark in 2025.

• Investing in the NYSE & Nasdaq and turning my USD portfolio from a negative 56%, to a 100% gain in under two years, not through heroics, but by staying the course, reassessing the structure, and refusing to panic‑sell at the bottom.

• Experiencing my 1^st stock market crash. While I had read plenty about market crashes, experiencing the 2020 COVID-19 crash was different. Despite “knowing” better, fear took over, and I foolishly sold my Rhodium and Palladium ETFs at the wrong time. It was a humbling lesson: investing is 10% math and 90% temperament.

None of these happened overnight. They came from more than a decade of small, repeatable decisions that started with one radio interview, one book, one R4000 debit order, and one clumsy Excel balance sheet.

What I wish someone had told me at the start

If you’re somewhere near where I was in 2014; working hard, “doing fine”, but fragile under the surface, here are a few things I wish I’d heard sooner:

• You can look successful and still be one or two missed pay cheques away from crisis. Don’t confuse lifestyle with wealth.

• Stock market investments are not reserved for wealthy people or people who “understand the markets”. You can start with one diversified ETF and learn as you go.

• A simple spreadsheet tracking your net worth will teach you a lot about your behaviour

• The most powerful investing decisions often feel boring in the moment, setting up a debit order, increasing it once a year, and then leaving it alone.

My journey isn’t “finished”, it’s still unfolding with every debit order and every new financial decision. But if this is your year to move from “I should start investing” to actually doing it, consider this your nudge.

Where are you on your own investing journey right now?? Still in the “radio interview” phase, placing your first debit order, or already a few years in and needing to tweak the plan?