Author name: anthonyb@timslatter.com

What you think you can do and what you can do are not the same thing. What would you try with your finances if you couldn’t fail?

When it comes to the things we want in life, most of them are inextricably linked with our finances.

It’s not for nothing that cyber crime and hacking was considered 2019’s number one “major risk” by the world’s largest insurer, Allianz, in their latest Risk Barometer Survey. These days, it’s not if the security of your electronic identity and assets will be tried by a criminal, it’s when.

Are you the type of person who puts in a little petrol here, a little petrol there, or enough to last you the week based on calculations you’ve done of what you need, or are you someone who fills your tank up every time you visit the garage?

‘Tax season’ elicits in most people the kind of shudder you’d imagine ‘open season’ to elicit in hunted animals. We all hate doing our taxes and, because of this, we often postpone the inevitable, sometimes with horrible consequences like penalties and waiting hours at SARS.

Last month we talked about interest rate risk – the risk of your investment devaluing and you losing money due to changes in interest rate. In a sense, this is about an investment’s possibility of flailing due to macroeconomic conditions. This month, we’re going to look at credit risk.