Know exactly where your money goes

Your payslip has three numbers worth knowing. What you earn, what SARS takes, and what lands in your account. Most people only ever see the first and the last, so the middle feels like a mystery.

On R25 000 a month, PAYE takes R3 381 and UIF takes R177. That is the whole of it. Everything else on that slip is your medical aid, your pension, or a choice you made.

South Africa taxes you in slices. The first R245 100 you earn in a year is taxed at 18 percent no matter how much you earn in total. Only the rand above that gets taxed higher.

So a raise never moves your whole salary up a bracket. Only the new part gets taxed at the higher rate. Worth knowing, because plenty of people turn down overtime for a reason that is not real.

Most people can tell you their rent to the cent. Very few can say what they spend on data, taxis and food without checking first.

That gap is where the money goes. Not on one big thing. On twelve small ones that nobody is counting.

Minimum payments are built to keep you paying. Most of the money goes to interest and barely any of it touches what you actually owe. That is not a personal failing, it is how the product is designed.

Putting a little extra on the same debt every month is the one move that works, because every extra rand goes straight at the balance.

Eight questions about the choices you already make. It takes under a minute and there is no score out of ten at the end, because a mark out of ten never helped anybody.