likeafuckinggrownup

(frantically googles stuff about the Russian revolution...)

Congratulations! Being totally debt free at 33 is a great space to be. Even though you’re not carrying any debt around, it’s important to make sure that you have a good solid emergency fund stashed away that you can access in a hurry. When you’re in your 30s, you have actual real grownup responsibilities on your shoulders (yoh, life gets real) and serious emergencies are the things that really set people back over the long term. 

Otherwise, make sure you’re saving enough for retirement (using those sweet, sweet tax breaks you get from the government by using something like a Retirement Annuity) because you are not always going to be 33, and make sure that you’re investing your money smartly. You’re 33, so the “120 rule” says that you should aim for about 87% of your portfolio to be in equities (and I’m a big believer in global equities as much as possible, because home country bias isn’t a smart thing when you’re investing, especially if you live in an emerging economy). You’re at your earning prime, so make sure you’re keeping your spending ratio low and putting as much of that money aside for the important stuff you really want to do with your life.

Oh, and get income protection insurance if you don’t have any. That shit is important.

That's just how I talk ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ I get that it's not for everybody, and I'm okay with that.

Ah! Let me consult my trusty Money Dashboard!

• My largest single investment is in the Sygnia Skeleton 70 Retirement Annuity. Because of the sweet, sweet tax breaks. Plus it's low-fee and gives me a relatively high offshore equities allocation. And I really don't want to be poor when I'm old. Overall, about 45% of my assets are in here.
• Next biggest is in global equities, balanced between the Satrix S&P 500 and the Vanguard Total World Index, both bought through EasyEquities. This is my freedom fund. This is about 30% of my assets.
• I have an emergency fund that sits in a Money Market fund I bought from Allan Gray (it has pretty low fees).
• I actually don't have a lot of short or medium term savings. I did have a pot of savings in an FNB Money On Call account which was for an overseas holiday, but I used it up in March (Spain, baby!).
• I have two bank accounts: a Grownup Account and a Fuckaround Fund, both with FNB (too lazy to move them to Capitec, but I've downgraded both to the Gold Accounts).
• I own a couple of Nvidia shares for fun.

So far, so sensible, right? But the really DUMB situation I'm dealing with at the moment is that I started investing in cryptocurrencies about 5 years ago. I always promised myself I would never allow these investments to get up to more than 10% of my total portfolio value. But of course, when the prices flew up in December that threw my whole asset allocation out of whack. I'm currently selling down back to a reasonable level, but I'm doing it over time (this is called "rand-cost averaging"). But crypto is still around 20% of my whole portfolio, which is very uncomfortably high for me and makes everything feel much more volatile than I'd like.

Also, I own shares in my own businesses. But that's a whole other story!

I recently had to pull out almost all of the money from my emergency fund, because I had an actual capital-E emergency, so my major financial goal at the moment is to build it back up.

Hope that answers your question!

Thanks, random person on the internet, but no thanks :) My cat would get jealous.