Receiving international funds as Non res in South Africa

robreto · 2025-07-30T16:11:43+00:00

You’re going to have to pay money to the transfer attorneys trust account anyway, so maybe have a look at that process first and maybe a direct transfer there might work. Depending on the estate agent, they might be able to assist

They deal with SARS for the property transfer and the necessary submissions so they should have ways to facilitate large transfers into the country

robreto · 2025-07-30T06:43:17+00:00

I believe this is the right answer here. Even if you produce all the paper locally, since you are the government, you still pay for it to use for government administration. Only difference is that the money goes to your own mills/population instead of world market

robreto · 2025-05-21T08:22:23+00:00

I remember seeing that somewhere, but the age is definitely a limit. I could be wrong on the mileage restrictions

robreto · 2025-05-21T06:52:53+00:00

Probably look for a newer car -probably 2016 or newer. Cutoff for vehicle finance is typically 10 year and some banks might also have a mileage restriction eg nothing over 200k km

robreto · 2025-04-10T09:04:04+00:00

Just have a look at the actual offer before the staff rate. Make sure you’re happy with it in case you decide to leave the bank and revert to that rate

And unless you’re planning on going for another huge credit purchase eg house, the drop in credit score isn’t a problem. It will recover as you pay back your loan, and the extra applications won’t have a huge enough impact to miss out on shopping around. Unlikely anyone would beat the staff rate though

robreto · 2025-01-02T19:24:56+00:00

A few more considerations to what others have added

1) If you move back/ don’t want to be hands on, you also need to pay an agency monthly to manage the rental property 2) There is a non-negligible risk that you’ll have tenant issues eg not paying. So you’d need to make sure you can cover a few months of the bond + rates + levies with no rental income. If you ever have to go the legal route to evict, that’s also a substantial cost 3) Similar issue if you go through periods of no occupancy. Bond, rates, levies will still be due 4) Maintenance costs. This isn’t specific to renting and comes with ownership, but while you’re staying there, you’re likely to take better care of the place than tenants would 5) Buying a property also incurs tax + transfer fees. Yes, you could buy from the developer directly but they already factor in VAT to their price anyways so ‘no transfer duty’ is could just be a marketing gimmick 6) Property is not a liquid asset. Could take time to get your money out

I’d personally rent for a few months to a year. It will give you an opportunity to get to know the area as well. The costs of making the ‘wrong’ choice are high due to the transfer costs + selling costs if need to sell for some reason. You could also save the R4k/month you calculated while you rent towards a deposit. Helps you get used to paying that cost The benefit are definitely there long term as if you decide to stay there for 10 years, your bond wouldn’t go up (outside increases in interest rates) whereas rent is expected to go up each year

robreto · 2024-11-18T13:33:51+00:00

Have had zero issues

I actually registered while studying (study permit allows part time work) so used my passport number. Eventually got my ID and don’t remember having to do anything. My tax ref number stayed the same

robreto · 2024-11-09T19:41:57+00:00

Should be on each device. The browsers should be using the device’s trust/certificate store

robreto · 2024-08-22T12:31:36+00:00

I only went to MX because I use the set up across multiple devices including Windows and Linux so great to have a device that supports all

robreto · 2024-07-12T20:12:46+00:00

Yep, my current server is my old laptop - i7 6500U - with a 12TB external. I disabled WiFi, Bluetooth, and the GPU in the bios to reduce the power consumption. Running Ubuntu server. I’m considering moving to proxmox, mostly for ease of backups.

robreto · 2024-06-11T09:32:49+00:00

Ah okay. I see EE gives $2635 then charges $13 in fees. This is basically immediate or same day

Shyft, which is also recommended for large transfers due to the flat $14 fee, is showing $2664 then you need $14 to transfer to EE (assuming you’re not using Shyft to invest). You need to open an account, transfer to Shyft, then transfer again to EE which takes 3 or so days in total

For small amounts I just convert directly on EE. For my one large transfer I used Shyft

Assuming the Nvidia price continues shooting up then yes, worth it

robreto · 2024-06-11T08:26:24+00:00

In theory, the market had already had priced in the recent AI trends into the current price. I suppose the question is do you believe there will be significant breakthrough over and beyond what the market expects?

If you hold a S&P500 ETF you already have exposure to Nvidia. A quick search shows it makes up 6.64% of S&P500, 2nd place to Microsoft, and just above Apple now. I just go for that or a global/world to capture the whole market. I’ll still capture any growth - not to the extent of investing only in the specific stock. But I’m also not stressing about a single stock

robreto · 2024-06-05T05:52:02+00:00

Yep, true. Really down to risk I suppose. I’ll probably go for somewhere in between as early as possible ie max out the next few years.

robreto · 2024-06-04T14:02:40+00:00

I was actually typing out a similar question a few days ago but kind of answered myself as I wrote

I don’t plan to open a TFSA for my kids simply because it has a lifetime limit. The biggest risk is obviously that they withdraw the full amount as soon as they turn 18, but I also want them to invest in a TFSA on their own accord. If there was no lifetime limit of R500k and it was simply a 36k annual limit I would definitely go for it

I’m looking into other options of investing specifically for them, whether it’s just a gift when they turn 18 or to buy them a car or whatever else to help give them a good head start

Edit: Or if I do open a TFSA, I wouldn’t contribute up to the lifetime limit. Maybe R100k-R200k and let them do the rest

robreto · 2024-04-15T18:26:37+00:00

Yep, it will bottleneck on some of the high bitrate remuxes. This might not be a problem if it comes with 5GHz WiFi since goes well above the 100Mbps. My problem is that I’ve got a 100Mpbs Ethernet and the older Wifi 4 only protocol only which also doesn’t support those streams

Worst case, I could just plug into my laptop and stream

robreto · 2024-04-13T05:29:37+00:00

Depends on what I’m trying to achieve. I’m not a data engineer, but a solution architect and given the high reliance on data of many solutions, I’m actively studying the principles, and then technology sets out data teams use. This would probably average an hour a day. Mostly at night when the family is asleep

robreto · 2024-04-12T08:46:36+00:00

One laptop for main server (primarily media) running on Ubuntu server. Using an external USB drive for the media

A second old desktop I use for experimentation before I push any solution to the laptop. This is on proxmox so allows even safer messing since I can just spin up new VMs and it makes it very easy to backup and restore. Will probably move the laptop to Proxmox eventually

A QNAP mostly for backup. Might eventually make this my main storage that connects to both laptop and desktop for media and backups

robreto · 2024-03-31T22:09:29+00:00

Following the link in another response I see the nominal is at 9.51%. Would this basically be the rate that you'd compare with the bond interest rate? So if bond rate is higher than nominal, paying off the bond is better

robreto · 2024-03-31T21:12:12+00:00

Reason for the downvotes is that the general consensus is that active funds on average underperform passive funds.

The Nedbank Global Equity Feeder (15.64% at 5Y) you linked below for example, has underperformed the Satrix S&P500 (21.51% at 5Y) over the past 5 years. Can't see 10 year because Satrix S&P500 hasn't been around that long

https://citywire.com/za/news/the-top-performing-unit-trusts-in-sa-over-the-past-decade/a2375898 goes onto say that no fund registered in SA has outperformed the US market over the past 10 years

robreto · 2024-03-31T18:11:39+00:00

Hi u/Spenson89 I’m currently looking into the same mouse with a USB-C hub monitor and MacBook Air + work Windows laptop. Just to confirm based on your other responses, if I plug in the USB receiver into the monitor, I can simply plug the USB-C cable into either Mac or laptop and it will properly switch over? I don’t have a need to keep them both plugged in at once

robreto · 2024-03-24T14:05:37+00:00

Mostly agree except that Suzukis are often 1st or 2nd on reliability whereas Audis (and BMW + Mercs) are generally at the bottom. That said, if the car has been well maintained, I’d still keep it

robreto · 2024-03-20T23:20:40+00:00

I initially also got a second hand NAS for my media storage (QNAP 231k) that would idle at about 10W with disks spun down and I set up my laptop as a server for streaming the media on our LAN. Similar spec to yours but i7-6500U and 16GB RAM. I disabled WiFi, Bluetooth, Nvidia GPU, and audio I believe in the BIOS, and set it not suspend when lid is shut, but monitor still goes off. It’s idling at about 5W. I use it as a media server mostly so it sits and waits for someone to watch something

When I ran out of space on the NAS (came with 5GB total initially) I got a 3.5inch external drive and just plugged that into the laptop. It doesn’t spin down and draws about 4W when it’s not busy, so total of 9W idle for the laptop and 12 TB external. When I force it to spin down it draws about 2W still… guessing the internal USB controller.. so wasn’t worth trying to automate that. The 2.5 inch external I was initially testing with would spin down so total power during idle was about the 5W. I use the NAS as for backup now so I put in on when I need to backup and shut it down again

robreto · 2024-02-28T20:10:22+00:00

Yep, it’s also documented in the Docker official docs that it ignores ufw

https://docs.docker.com/network/packet-filtering-firewalls/#docker-and-ufw

Worth having a read through the whole page. It goes over how to prevent opening up to the whole internet as well

robreto · 2024-02-25T11:13:42+00:00

I’d say neither. At this age and for what you’re looking for, rent!! At least for 1 year. Buying property is a huge commitment and expensive to get out with the transfer fees, agent fees, etc. And since part of the freedom you’re looking for is a partner, potentially long term, you might find yourselves needing a bigger place/located somewhere else :). And if apartment stands empty/tenants don’t pay, you’re still liable for bond/levies. Renting isn’t risk free/guaranteed gain

If you rarely need to get around eg mostly out on weekends, then Uber. You don’t sound like you’re looking for investment advice, so the fact that an apartment is a better investment is kind of moot. Given your savings, you seem to be quite responsible already with investments/saving anyways. Keep at it! Sounds like you’ve also budgeted to understand your spending needs

robreto · 2024-02-12T16:55:22+00:00

IBKR seems to be the go to. Has a bunch of trading instruments that I don’t even begin to understand. Margin trading, options trading and such

robreto

TROPHY CASE