About 200 cyclists finished the St Francis College MTB Race on Saturday, a sunny, breezy day enjoyed by all, with local ace Roland Peacock unsurprisingly winning the 60km MTB race (regular bike) quite easily.
My video shows the Ebike start (30km and 60km) and the regular bike’s 80km start. I couldn’t video the 30km regular bike start because I was in it!
I “enjoyed” the 30km MTB race, although .. enjoyed is probably not the correct word for so much sweating! … but it was quite social, with about 30 riders cycling at a similar speed in the middle of the field. In fact, most of the 30 stopped together to feast at the spread (cake, chocolates, chocolate milk, etc) at the “water” table after about 20km.
Thanks To All Who Helped
Well done to race director Dane Michael Shaw and Piero and Anne De Marco for arranging the route and getting permission from all the farmers. And Greg West for all his enthusiasm and hard work. And to all the marshalls (eg Charles Jonsson) and all the school parents who assisted.
The race was a fundraiser for St Francis College, with First Choice as the anchor sponsor. The event was endorsed by St Francis Cycling Club, Coimbra Cycle Centre and St Francis Sport.
St Francis College MTB Race Sponsors
The sponsors were Cape St Francis Resort, Client Care, Custom Construction and Pam Golding Properties – St Francis Bay.
There were also shorter races: 10km, 5km, and 3km (the last two only for kids). The prize money was a very substantial R14,400!
This is the first time in about ten years that St Francis has held an MTB Race outside the Christmas season.
We had three very successful St Francis MTB Challenges in 2009, 2010 and 2011, which started and finished at the Links.
Then it rained the following two years .. and sadly, the event faded away. And now, at last, it is revived!
Choosing how to invest our hard-earned money can be a minefield! There are so many options out there, and everyone we speak to seems to be an expert. Most people will follow the advice of their financial planner, which should make sense. However, this does not always lead to the best outcomes.
The truth is that how we invest should be driven by our personalised financial plan, which should be clear and simple to stick to once established. Here are 2 red flags that investors should look out for.
1. You don’t have a personal financial plan.
If your adviser has not built a personal financial plan with you that gets revisited annually and updated as your life changes, then beware. Who builds a house without plans? Further, who travels without a plan? Financial planning is a VERB, not something that gets done once. What’s more, it should also be about YOU and not be focused on your money.
2. The market expert.
Unfortunately, many financial advisers see themselves as investment experts despite not having the qualifications. Often, they erode more value than they add to a client’s investment portfolio by trying to show that they can pick funds and time the market.
The financial advice industry talks about the “behaviour gap”. This is the difference between the return that the market delivers and what the average investor actually gets. The difference is put down to investors chopping and changing their investment portfolios, and the implied solution is working with an adviser to close this gap.
I have always wondered about the accuracy of this assumption, so after a recent investment talk, I asked a fund manager about it. So, she shared that they were in the middle of a study on this, and her response to the interim results confirmed my suspicion. She shared that those clients who dealt directly with them lagged the market by 2% p.a. while clients who worked through advisers lagged 6%!
Scary!
Market-Related Returns
If meetings with your adviser consist of talking about the markets and if they advise to change your funds on a regular basis, then chances are you are not getting market-related returns.
Your investing philosophy should be quite simple: buy the great companies of the world (the stock market) and let them grow your wealth over time. Further, your adviser should be focused on you and your family, helping you control the things you can and living the best life you can with what you have.
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