How much money it takes to be happy in South Africa

[Cius]

Yup, a bar is nothing these days. If you're a single person you can't even buy the standard "Toyota corolla and 3 bedroom suburb home" with that.

Yep. I am north of 1M by a little and over the last 5 years I have steadily cut back on stuff. I have noticed that published CPI is often well bellow what middle class people experience as inflation. SA's inflationary basket seems to be heavily skewed towards the poor and can differ vastly to middle class inflation. As an example medical costs are generally a big part of middle class people's budget and medical aid inflation is way higher than CPI. More than double. If you also look at stuff like electricity, municipal charges, water, etc its all gone up so much since a few years back. We drive very basic cars, simple home, and I am not sure how I am going to pay for high school next year when my cost per month for that triples from 1.3K to somewhere around 4.5K I think. Not sure what to cut next.

 

[Felixbf1980]

I see a lot of cost breakdowns.

People still living life wrong on higher salaries apparently. Which makes sense, as C-19 pulled the rug under a lot of them.


Your first monthly payments should ALWAYS be to you, aka Investments accounts and then too your 6 Month Emergency cash fund.

Then your EXPENSES.

People in general also buy the biggest house they can "afford".
Then fill it with unnecessary crap.

If you are married and one of you loose your job, can you still maintain that lifestyle.?

 

[JustRandomChatter]

Interesting thread. And it's funny how people are speaking of R1mill salaries... Unless you're in IT or relatively senior financial industry gigs, you're not getting that. Yet every second car in Sandton or Waterfall is Benz or Beamer 2022...how? Are people really living in debt and drowning for appearances or is there something fishy going on? I don't know...

 

[SauRoNZA]

Someone earning a R1m a year will take home R700 063 after tax. That is R58 338 per month.

Lets say a family of 5, two adults and 3 kids, plus they support mum's parents with medical aid.

Medical aid isn't a luxury, but a necessity. So lets say they get the best plan available to the general public. That would be something like Discovery executive. That is 7,688 per adult and 1,468 per kid.

So just medical aid alone would be R35 156. So that leaves a family of 5 with R23182 for eveything else. Home loan for a decent sized house would be maybe R15k? That leaves R8000, which would not be enough for school fees, electricity, water, insurance, fuel, and food.

If earning a million a year cannot even buy a family the best health insurance in the country with plenty to spare, then you really are not in the "rich" category.

Why on earth would anyone sign up for a Discovery Executive package they don’t need?

It makes no sense.

Medical Aid isn’t a luxury I agree, but that entire family can be sorted for 5k.

 

[SauRoNZA]

It an example to show why 1m doesn't go that far. Someone earning that salary would still have to make careful financial choices.

I would recon that you would need to earn something like R100k after tax in order to really not care about financial expenses for the most part.

Even if I earned 3bar a year you’d be an idiot with money to decide that Discovery’s Executive plan is a reasonable proposition.

This is why people stay poor.

 

[SauRoNZA]

The price to live what used to be considered a middle class lifestyle is sky high.

In SA that would be:

-Roof over your head: 3 bed house, somewhere not particularly fancy. bond/rent + rates,taxes,water,electricity : 20k/month

-2 kids in a mid-tier private school. 10k/month

-Medical aid for the family. 6k

-Armed response. R500

-Fiber internet. R900

-Cellphones for all. R1200

-2 cheap reliable cars. R7000/m

-Pension savings 5k?

-Insurance for house/cars. R3000

-Petrol 3k?

-Household/Garden maintenance R1500

You're up to 60k pm take home pay now, which is what? 85k/month salary?

And now you still have to buy clothes/food and beer and maybe a pencil or 2 for the kids.

Finally someone who lives in a reasonable reality.

 

[Sensorei]

Finally someone who lives in a reasonable reality.

Things are way more expensive in Cape Town close to the top schools. R4m+ for 3 bedroom, 2 garage homes all over Claremont, Rondebosch and these aren't fancy houses or upper Southern Suburbs.

2 kids in a mid-tier private school. 10k/month

2 kids in a mid tier private school in CPT for R10K/month? NO chance. Not even for 2 kids in primary school.

 

[W@P]

Interesting thread. And it's funny how people are speaking of R1mill salaries... Unless you're in IT or relatively senior financial industry gigs, you're not getting that. Yet every second car in Sandton or Waterfall is Benz or Beamer 2022...how? Are people really living in debt and drowning for appearances or is there something fishy going on? I don't know...

Balloon payments and shitty finance deals that gives the lowest monthly repayment possible. They still live in kak neighborhoods, fill their cars before each petrol price increase, swimming in debt.

I use to work with a ton of bank statements every day. It's amazing how you can tell what kind of a person he/she is just by looking at a bank statement. Salary comes in and 70-80% is transferred to another ACC ASAP. Leaving fsckall for the debit orders. It's a mindset/educational problem. Threats of being handed over to debt collectors are a non-issue. Like water of a duck's back.

How much per month is usually the first question. If that fits in his budget like a puzzle piece, almost completing the puzzle, the deal is go.

 

[RedViking]

The price to live what used to be considered a middle class lifestyle is sky high.

In SA that would be:

-Roof over your head: 3 bed house, somewhere not particularly fancy. bond/rent + rates,taxes,water,electricity : 20k/month

-2 kids in a mid-tier private school. 10k/month

-Medical aid for the family. 6k

-Armed response. R500

-Fiber internet. R900

-Cellphones for all. R1200

-2 cheap reliable cars. R7000/m

-Pension savings 5k?

-Insurance for house/cars. R3000

-Petrol 3k?

-Household/Garden maintenance R1500

You're up to 60k pm take home pay now, which is what? 85k/month salary?

And now you still have to buy clothes/food and beer and maybe a pencil or 2 for the kids.

Bliksem. That is middle class? Yo! That's luxury life style of the best.

 

[rvZA]

In South Africa, for a family of 5, to live an average middle-class lifestyle, as it was prior to 1994 before the ANC took over, you will need at least R140,000 a month to be happy.

 

[3WA]

Why are so many people using a family of five as an example in this discussion? Even if you really want kids, two is enough, we all know that third kid is just a vanity project.

 

[Mike Hoxbig]

Why are so many people using a family of five as an example in this discussion? Even if you really want kids, two is enough, we all know that third kid is just a vanity project.

The third kid is the broken condom...

 

[3WA]

The third kid is the broken condom...

When you delay the vasectomy because you thought it costs too much…

 

[Major Boredom]

Taken from another post I put it in :

2019/2020 Tax year

Only 3.7% of registered individuals (282 619) earned more than 1 million from a taxable bracket perspective . Ie after deductables who are above the R70k pa.
That is about 2% of all registered tax payers ....

Bit disingenuous to say that you can hardly survive on R1 million py

How many South Africans earn more than R1 million a year

National Treasury and the South African Revenue Service have published the 14th annual edition of the Tax Statistics, providing an overview of tax revenue collections and tax return information for the 2017 to 2021 tax years.

businesstech.co.za

 

[Major Boredom]

Also it depends a lot on where you live

Where I am I can get my child in a small homeschool env ( 5 kids in his class ) for under 3.5k pm.
Food and house expenses are a ton more expensive in some areas.

 

[SauRoNZA]

Things are way more expensive in Cape Town close to the top schools. R4m+ for 3 bedroom, 2 garage homes all over Claremont, Rondebosch and these aren't fancy houses or upper Southern Suburbs.

And those all suck and anyone wanting to live there is drinking the Koolaid.

Nothing in the south is really very fancy. It’s all a bit **** and people living under a delusion of grandeur in “lower” Bishops Court.

2 kids in a mid tier private school in CPT for R10K/month? NO chance. Not even for 2 kids in primary school.

Curro is 10k a month for two kids in primary school.

I’m guessing with your Southern Suburbs obsession and the “top” schools you meant Bishops and the like. That is not reasonable or reality.

There is life outside the South and finger stuck up your ass schools.

 

[notayoba]

Taken from another post I put it in :

2019/2020 Tax year

Only 3.7% of registered individuals (282 619) earned more than 1 million from a taxable bracket perspective . Ie after deductables who are above the R70k pa.
That is about 2% of all registered tax payers ....

Bit disingenuous to say that you can hardly survive on R1 million py

View attachment 1381855

How many South Africans earn more than R1 million a year

National Treasury and the South African Revenue Service have published the 14th annual edition of the Tax Statistics, providing an overview of tax revenue collections and tax return information for the 2017 to 2021 tax years.

businesstech.co.za

Something that skews this a bit is business owners where the wife, kid, dad, girlfriend, everyone drives a 'company' car, half the household expenses are channeled through the business and everyone in the family draws a small salary to drop the average tax paid by the family as a whole.

Where you would now have 1 person showing a R300/k month income, it becomes distorted to a few people pulling 40k each, and driving company cars on company insurance, using company cellphones, and eating almost exclusively at 'company catered functions'

Not that there's anything wrong with that. I reckon the less you pay to the parasites the better for the country and the economy.

 

[SykomantiS]

Look, I'm not saying more money makes me happy, I'm just saying I'd like the chance to prove that it doesn't.

 

[Sensorei]

And those all suck and anyone wanting to live there is drinking the Koolaid.

Nothing in the south is really very fancy. It’s all a bit **** and people living under a delusion of grandeur in “lower” Bishops Court.



Curro is 10k a month for two kids in primary school.

I’m guessing with your Southern Suburbs obsession and the “top” schools you meant Bishops and the like. That is not reasonable or reality.

There is life outside the South and finger stuck up your ass schools.

A lot of assumptions there. Cope harder. Must suck to have such resentment.

Curro is the cheapest of the good private schools and most of them are more than R10K a month for 2 kids in primary school. All of the Cape Town ones are more than that for high school.

The Southern Suburbs does have the best schools by academic record in one area. It's not just an opinion.

7 out of the top 10 schools in the Western Cape based on overall the last Matric results and provincial awards are in the Southern Suburbs within about 5km of each other. Most of them NOT private. Maybe I just want to give my kids the best education I can afford, and they deserve.

 

[Galactica]

What sort of businesses and investments can the middle class go into to supplement their income? Business you can start while working and hopefully in a decade or so is able to cover your expenses.