Maya on Money

If you are confused about how advance payments to your home loan and car finance works, you are not alone. In this podcast Maya and Mapalo unpack exactly how access bonds work and when advance payments on your car can be used to settle the balloon payment.

Maya and Mapalo speak to independent financial adviser Markus Bauriedl on what to look out for when selecting life insurance to make sure it pays out as promised. Not all cover is equal, and some products work better for some than others. Markus shares his own experience of navigating the claims experience when he faced his own medical crisis. 

Is there such a thing as good credit? What forms of credit should you avoid at all cost? In this podcast Maya and Mapalo discuss the good and dark side of credit and whether the concept of lay-by’s will come back into fashion as technology changes.

Whether you are saving for your child’s education or investing for their future, Maya and Mapalo discuss where and when to invest. When is a tax-free investment appropriate? Should you invest in your child’s name and where do you save for those school fees? All these questions are answered in this week’s podcast.  

“As much as we like to believe it is all about hard-nosed number crunching, the stories investors tell themselves and others are key”. What are the stories we are currently telling ourselves about the economy and markets that we may need to revise? In this podcast Maya and Mapalo speak to Izak Odendaal Investment Strategist at Old Mutual Wealth About the danger of getting caught in a negative mind...

Is money really gender-neutral? Maya and Mapalo discuss why women face more financial challenges and how important it is for women to take control of their financial destiny.

In the final episode of our Money Makeover Challenge Maya and Mapalo chat to the two winners Catherien and Nono about their journey and how they turned their finances around in just six months.   In just six months these women paid off debt, created savings and have got their entire family on board. If they could achieve all this in the midst of the financial uncertainty of COVID – imagine what yo...

In previous podcasts we have discussed the concept of Net Worth and how to use it to assess your financial progress https://mayaonmoney.co.za/2020/01/listen-2020-grow-your-net-worth/ , https://mayaonmoney.co.za/2019/11/listen-do-you-know-your-net-worth/   In this podcast Maya and Mapalo discuss other Personal Financial Ratios to help you evaluate your current financial strength and position. Doing...

In this podcast Maya and Mapalo each discuss an event in their week that made them reflect on the way we engage with money:  A negative experience with the way financial products are sold questions whether people can make the right decisions when their advisers have different motivations. And then reflecting on finding that balance between planning for the future but also living and connecting tod...

In this, our fifth Money Makeover podcast, we chat to Elton Govender, senior enterprise development specialist at Absa, to provide some tips to those of us who are self-employed or running our own businesses.   Elton shares the guidance and tools he developed to help our entrepreneur contestant Bellah turn her business around. When Bellah joined the Money Makeover Challenge, her business was sitti...

Payment holidays are a lot like real holidays – they end up costing more than you realise. In this podcast Maya and Mapalo look at the costs of debt holidays and how to get back on track after taking 

Have you ever thought about how much you will earn over the next 5 years? If you have just started working and taking home R15 000 a month, over the next five years you will earn nearly R1 million – without any promotions or salary increases. What will you have to show for it? In this podcast Maya and Mapalo discuss what they did with their first pay cheques, what they wish they had done as well a...

Have you fallen into property investing by accident? Whether you are an existing property investor looking to consolidate or planning on buying your first property, in this podcast @mayaonmoney chats to Miguel Martins of Absa Home Loans, a property investor himself, on the do’s and don’ts of property investing  

In line with our theme on alternative asset classes, this week’s podcast Maya and Mapalo discuss investing in gold. Is gold a good investment? What role should it play in your portfolio and how do you go about investing in gold- because there are many different ways to gain exposure to this precious metal. The podcast has three parts – from traditional gold investments through to new-age ones. We...

Increasingly investors are looking to non-financial assets to provide further diversification. In this podcast we have previously discussed Fedgroup Impact Farming where investors can buy into farming of beehives, blueberries and even solar energy. We have also written about investing in cattle through Livestock Wealth. Cattle is especially relevant to the African market where it represents a tang...

With the economic fallout expected from COVID-19 investors have either seen their portfolios seriously hurt or are too afraid to enter the equity market now. Sitting in cash is an option, but what if markets recover and investors lose out on potentially higher returns? Maya and Mapalo discuss how structured products can provide a guarantee with market upside. In the second part of the podcast they...

Most parents make supreme sacrifices to provide for their children and research shows that mothers in particular will put their children’s needs before their own. We want to offer our children the perfect world where they want for nothing, where they never feel shunned or feel they are not “good” enough. But is this the best way to teach them about money? Maya and Mapalo discuss their experiences...

It doesn’t matter how motivated you are to improve your finances, you will struggle to make progress unless your partner is on board. In our third Money makeover podcast Maya and Mapalo talk Marriage and Money and share the story of Catherien’s Money Makeover journey with her husband Jan.

With the unexpected 100bps cut in interest rates we received many questions about how interest rates work and the impact it has on both borrowers and savers. Maya and Mapalo unpack how interest rates work and do some jargon busting

Whilst you are sitting in lock down, now may be the time to turn that WhatsApp group into an investment club. Maya and Mapalo chat to Palesa Lengolo financial educator and author of  Stokvels: How they can make your money work for you, on the various investment product and opportunities available to stokvels. She also provides tips on what to do, or not do, when setting up your own investment stok...

Over the last few weeks our discussions have focused on keeping our heads above water during the coronavirus meltdown. We now turn our attention to investing - with markets down significantly is this the time to start testing the waters? In this podcast Craig Pheiffer, chief investment strategist at Absa Stockbrokers joins Maya and Mapalo to provide investment guidelines and maybe even some share...

The topic for this City Press/ABSA Money Makeover podcast could not be more relevant given the financial stress so many households are feeling with the COVID-19 crisis. Falling into a debt trap is often due to a change in personal circumstances rather than living a flashy lifestyle. But it is how you respond to the crisis that will determine how quickly you can recover. Maya and Mapalo chat to Mon...

The lock down will affect people in different ways. There are those who will be fortunate enough to still be receiving a salary, others will see a cut in pay and for many business owners or self-employed, they will be fighting to keep their heads above water. In this podcast Maya and Mapalo provide tips and information on how prepare your COVID-19 budget and what you can expect from your financial...

In this time of unprecedented events Maya and Mapalo have put together a comprehensive strategy on how to manage your money in light of COVID-19. What to do with your investments, what to do if you are close to retirement and your options are if you have lost work or experiencing a drop in income.

In the first of our monthly City Press/Absa Money Makeover podcasts we chat to Absa financial adviser Steven Williamson about how he guided last year’s winner Samke to turn her finances around in just six months. We also hear from his candidate this year, newly-wed Nono about how her credit card is nearly paid off in just two months. Once again the Money Makeover challenge shows that if you take c...