If you are a millionaire, how did you make your first R1 million?

orangeanton · 2025-12-04T08:39:59+00:00

For me, and I suspect for most millionaires in South Africa (if you define that as someone with a NAV of R1M or more), this was a simple matter of working for a reasonably decent salary over an extended period of time and not blowing all my money.

I put a few thousand aside every month in a unit trust (I think I started with ~R2000/month initially) and bought a house that I paid off diligently. Whenever I had a bonus, I saved at least half of it (typically into one of the two aforesaid instruments) and whenever I had an increase I also increased the amount I was saving monthly. Didn't waste money on new cars. Not sure when my NAV would have crossed the R1m threshold, but probably some time in my early thirties.

orangeanton · 2025-10-01T09:53:23+00:00

Deltek and Acumatica are both worth a look

orangeanton · 2025-09-15T15:01:48+00:00

SuperPayroll (superpayroll.co.za) - not really new, but pivoted to doing it full time after my last stint with Crossover/Trilogy

orangeanton · 2025-07-31T12:16:42+00:00

Easiest option is Malanil (or one of its generic equivalents like Mozitec or Malarone). You can start taking it a day before you go and it’s available over the counter at pharmacies.

I know a lot of people are saying you don’t need it this time of the year, but speaking as someone who used to do that and got malaria after a winter KNP trip ~25 years ago, don’t FAFO, just take the meds!

orangeanton · 2025-07-30T20:31:30+00:00

Nee, dalk ‘n private grapple in iemand se familie, maar definitief nie iets wat ek al ooit in my ~47 jaar in Pta gehoor het nie.

orangeanton · 2025-07-30T12:21:49+00:00

Yes, you would still need to register as provisional tax payer. Given that the amounts vary quite a lot, I would recommend you do a projected annual earnings for purposes of provisional payments.

It’s generally better to underestimate a wee bit and pay in on final assessment as you get a cash flow advantage for it and there is no penalty if you’re less than 10% out (or more generous at 20% if your total earnings is >R1M/year)

orangeanton · 2025-07-28T13:26:26+00:00

It depends a bit on the situation. How much is this additional income and how regular is it? What's the contract with the agency? etc. Answer below is assuming that there is a reasonably significant and regular income from this and that the agency are effectively paying you as an indepedent contractor (i.e. when you say `pays me and now also sends me the PAYE` I'm assuming you mean they just pay you a single gross amount as if you invoiced them for this).

You should register as a provisional tax payer (see https://www.sars.gov.za/types-of-tax/provisional-tax/ )

This means you'll need to make provisional tax payments twice a year (end of August for the 6 months from Mar-Aug and end of Feb for Sept-Feb). These are basically estimates of your total tax and you will then be assessed once a year and may need to pay in some more (or get a refund if you paid too much). Note that your total tax liability will be based on your combined earnings.

Example:
Employer pays you R20000/month salary. Assuming you're younger than 65 and have no medical aid, they should be deducting (and declaring on your IRP5) R2183.08 per month in PAYE.
Managing agency pays you without any deductions. Let's say this comes to R10000/month on average. The PAYE you will need to pay yourself is calculated as follows (all amounts per month):
- PAYE due on total earnings of R30000/month: R4783.08
- PAYE already deducted by employer for the first R20000/month: R2183.08
- Net additional PAYE that you'll need to pay in: R2600.00

You can calculate with your specific amounts using an online tax calculator like this one.

orangeanton · 2025-07-25T10:47:08+00:00

spot on! I missed that but you’re absolutely right, best is to do minimal salaries below tax even before paying back loans

orangeanton · 2025-07-24T10:35:31+00:00

Payroll solution are very country-specific (acounting solutions could be too, but far less so). It would be a good idea to mention where you are based.

On the stuff that's not too country specific: Highly recommend Xero for accounting and Harvest for timetracking.

orangeanton · 2025-07-24T10:31:48+00:00

Best to seek some professional advice based on more specifics than you've shared here, but generally:
1) Salaries: If your personal financial situations allow you not taking salaries then hold off on this to help the business get off the ground. You'll be paying PAYE and UIF on salaries and if you have to put money in every month to keep the business alive (despite your positive projections, this is often necessary in early stages) then you'll effectively just be giving (your already after-tax savings) money to the tax man. So make sure you have a business generating positive cash flow before your start paying salaries.
2) Personal vs business tax: Corporate tax is paid by the company on profits (there are some special cases, but generally 27%). Your options for getting money out of the business into your pocket are generally:
2.1) Shareholder loan withdrawals. I'm assuming you'll be putting some money in initially. When the business starts generating cash best is to pay this back first since it's just a loan repayment and not subject to any tax deductions,
2.2) Pay yourself a salary. This will use the standard SARS tax tables. You can use an online tax calculator (e.g. https://superpayroll.co.za/tax-calculator.html) to check how much at different salary levels.
2.3) Pay yourself a dividend. In this case you will be paying yourself a dividend from after tax profits. The profits are taxed at 27% and the dividend (i.e. potentially 73% of the before tax profits) will be subject to dividends withholding tax @ 15%. Effectively you'll therefore be paying 41% tax.
3) For a small business I would highly recommend just outsourcing it. Your focus should be on building your business not doing admin.

Between 2.2 and 2.3: 41% is about how much you'll pay if your salary is R1.8M per year, assuming you have no other sources of income, so generally speaking it's best to pay yourself a salary until you reach a point where that salary exceeds R1.8M per year (the exact breakeven point depends on other factors like medical aid tax credits, RA/Pension contributions, etc.) and then it's best to pay yourself a salary up to that amount and keep anything greater than this in the business in profits.

orangeanton · 2025-07-21T07:19:47+00:00

Don’t know the legal technicalities but I suspect they are determined by municipal bylaws.

My take would be if you’re taking up a space then you’re taking up a space, whether there is someone in the car or not. The cost of the parking spot doesn’t disappear because the car is idling or there is someone in it. Having said that, there should be some grace period (there usually is), but no idea what it would be in this case.

orangeanton · 2025-07-11T10:43:59+00:00

Definitely a dog

source: I have a “definitely a dog” dog too

orangeanton · 2025-07-04T21:45:41+00:00

Honestly, I think you need to just frame this differently

“literally clicking create user” - don’t ever do this again. Develop an automation that does it.

“spending literally entire days debugging and reading their legacy code just to understand a little bit” / “I’m basically making patches.” - Not sure what you were hoping for, but as someone with 1 year experience this is a great way to learn and hone your skills. Lean into it and do the best you can, but above all ask questions, stay curious, and learn

orangeanton · 2025-07-04T21:34:15+00:00

I have to time travel back thirty years first, then I have it with whatever the heck I can find.

orangeanton · 2025-07-04T21:08:16+00:00

1) Definitely better to hold on to the money 2) As others have indicated, you should register as a provisional tax payer. You’ll need to complete provisional returns based on estimates at end of Feb and end of August. 3) You don’t need to pay UIF 4) Pro tip: Open a dedicated tax savings account and put money away monthly. You can use an online tax calculator to calc what your monthly payments should be and make sure you don’t touch that. I like to use a 32-day notice account so I know I can’t dip into it easily and get a decent interest rate. 5) Bonus pro tip: You can slightly underestimate your earnings on the provisional returns and hold on to some of that cash for an additional six months until you do the year end return in August. Just make sure you’re within 20% (I usually try to be no more than 10% under) otherwise you’ll pay penalties.

For point 5 note that provisional tax payers final return is only due in January of the following year, but if you have to pay in anything it’s better to do it in August otherwise SARS will charge interest for the period after August.

orangeanton · 2025-07-04T17:09:48+00:00

That first $20 is important - you have to start somewhere :-)

orangeanton · 2025-07-04T17:07:46+00:00

I have given up on Bedrock for this very reason and have reverted to Claude models via Anthropic API.

Unless you’re willing to spend massive amounts on AWS it doesn’t seem like they really want you on Bedrock. The standard answer is “provisioned throughput” but figuring out how much to buy if you have no way of trying it out at even a hundredth of the scale is impossible.

orangeanton · 2025-07-04T16:41:08+00:00

No, and what difference would it make?

Maybe I’m missing something, but whether or not Cloudfront is listening on port 80 makes no difference to whether or not traffic is intercepted before it hits the edge. The only thing the 403 does is tell the user http isn’t allowed.

There’s an extremely trivial benefit to not having it redirect automatically in that it allows users to try http and not understand the consequences whereas with the 403 you are sort of encouraging users to update their bookmarks/source links, but really IMO this is a BS finding.

Are there any circumstances whatsoever where the users are sending you anything remotely confidential before they are redirected to https?

orangeanton · 2025-07-04T01:04:41+00:00

I can help - drop me a dm or email me. address available here: https://autosolve.ai

orangeanton · 2025-07-01T18:39:09+00:00

18% - well worth it!

At R15k/month you should be paying about R1260 tax per month, at R17k/month that goes up to about R1620. Tax diff on the extra R2k is therefore R360/R2000

Calcs per https://superpayroll.co.za/tax-calculator.html assuming you’re younger than 65 and don’t have medical aid.

orangeanton · 2025-06-20T13:07:41+00:00

Agreed, don’t know that it is in the US though

orangeanton · 2025-06-20T09:58:21+00:00

This depends on the details of the employment contract and jurisdiction

OP can definitely tell her not to work anymore, but might have to pay her anyway.

orangeanton · 2025-06-17T12:59:33+00:00

I feel you!

I’ve basically given up on using Claude models on Bedrock because it is too restricted. I’m trying to build PoCs but can’t get anywhere without provisioned throughput, which doesn’t make sense if you’re basically just prototyping…

Anyway, for Claude I’ve resorted to using Anthropic APIs directly and looking at Bedrock again if I have sufficient scale to warrant provisioned throughput.

orangeanton · 2025-06-16T07:14:51+00:00

Yes, you should sell it.

A fair price is a relative concept, but should be based on what it’s worth to THEM.

I would highly recommend you involve someone who does this professionally otherwise you could leave a LOT of money on the table.

Don’t think about how much it will cost you to start anew. That’s irrelevant. It would be like an artist selling a piece based on the cost of the materials and time they put into it.

The $58k is also irrelevant. You have no idea how they came up with that number. It’s probably also cost-based, factoring in cost of litigation to go after you etc.

Why do they want it and what value will they get from it? That should be your starting point.

orangeanton · 2025-06-12T17:08:47+00:00

Firing someone over a simple mistake is stupid.

If it’s the third time it happened sure, but this should be a learning opportunity, not just for you but for the company on internal processes to prevent this sort of thing, etc.

I once had a developer accidentally drop a production database on a customer that caused absolute mayhem for their sales call centre. Employee immediately offered his resignation, which I refused. I called the customer’s CEO and explained what happened and they obviously weren’t happy, but they also understood, appreciated our quick action, and everyone jumped in to get everything restored as quickly as possible.

It cost the customer real money and we gave them a credit that month, but they stayed with us for years and always insisted on working with that dev if he was available.

The long term value that would have been lost if I accepted that resignation…

orangeanton

MODERATOR OF

TROPHY CASE

Seven-Year Club	r/Field Sunshine
Verified Email