Compulsory savings, or pension funding, is savings in your pension, preservation or retirement annuity funds. All South Africans must save for retirement because our state doesn’t look after you into old age. To make this viable you need to look at your needs and capital available and make sure enough is being saved and grown now to take care of retirement.

All other savings, known as discretionary savings, are your after-tax savings which may be for a goal like a holiday, a home or education or maybe longer term or for a contingency. This also includes off¬shore investing.

Risk covers life insurance, dread disease cover, disability, income protection, medical aid, short term insurance etc. Basically, your insurance to guard against unforeseen events.

A valid and well thought out Will allows you to make sure that the people whom you’d like to inherit from you actually do and that you don’t pass on intestate.

Estate Planning - as soon as your estate exceeds R3,5m you will become liable for Estate Duty at death. You need to structure your estate to pay as little estate duty as possible as well as making sure you have enough liquid cash in your estate to pay the tax due at death.