Mandy Freeman Digital Media
Published in Today magazine, Issue 1, 2021
Published in Nine Yards magazine, Issue 1, 2020
Published in Nine Yards magazine, Issue 1, 2020
Published on Sanlam Reality, 27 November 2023
When the two-pot retirement system comes into effect, here’s what you should know.
Reading time: 3 minutes
The idea behind the two-pot retirement system is to help South Africans preserve their retirement savings when changing or leaving a job. But it’s also being put in place so that people have access to a savings fund should they face financial difficulty and need an extra boost of money.
The two-pot retirement system has two separate portions.
1. 1/3 = your savings pot
When it comes into effect, your savings pot will receive a once-off boost from the vested component of your retirement fund – this is the money you’ve already saved towards your pension fund. The vested amount will be a minimum of 10% but capped at R30 000. That means – if your retirement fund has R30 000 in it, only R3 000 will be transferred to your savings pot. After that, one-third of all new contributions will go into this pot. You’ll have access to this pot if you need the money in case of an emergency. You can withdraw:
2. 2/3 = your retirement pot
Your retirement pot is made up of the other two-thirds of your contributions, which you won’t be able to touch until you’ve reached retirement age (from the age of 55). So, what does this mean in rands and cents? If, for example, you put R3 000 towards your pension, R2 000 will go to the retirement pot, and R1 000 to the savings pot. However, you won’t be able to access this R1 000 in your savings pot until the balance reaches a minimum of R2 000. Keep in mind, though, that the money you can draw from your savings pot excludes all contributions you’ve previously made, when it comes into effect.
Any withdrawals you make from your savings component are taxable – this means it’s added to your income tax, and you’ll be taxed at whatever your tax rate is for the year.
For instance, if you earn R300 000 a year, pay 26% income tax and withdraw R10 000 from your savings pot, R2 600 will be deducted and paid to SARS.
The good news, though, is if you wait until retirement before tapping into your savings pot, the first R500 000 will be tax-free.
While it might be tempting to dip into your savings, especially during tough financial times, remember that compound interest needs time to work. It’s often called the eighth wonder of the world because earning interest on the interest you have already earned is pretty much money for jam.
“Compound interest is a magical thing, but we can only see its true potential if we start now, rather than later,” explains Farzana Botha, Segment Marketing Manager at Sanlam Risk and Savings. “Starting to save now means you will have the opportunity to leverage time and compound interest to grow your money.”
You should only access your retirement savings as a carefully considered last resort. If you find yourself facing financial difficulties, speak to your financial planner, who can help you make the right decision for the long term.
Speak to your financial planner to understand how the two-pot retirement system will affect you. Together, you can work towards your retirement goals.
*Information correct as of 23 November 2023.
Published on Health24, 4 June 2018
In 2017, a mental health story went viral.
Madalyn Parker, a web developer in the USA, emailed her boss to say she would not be coming into the office – she was taking a mental health day.
The world applauded her courage and gave her boss a standing ovation when he told her to take the day. “You are an example to us all, and help cut through the stigma, so we can all bring our whole selves to work,” he said.
News24’s Facebook audience was less forgiving, however, and comments ranged from “Let her take a day, i don’t want to be a working with a psycho [sic]” to “Would tell her to go work at a mental institution [sic]” and “Request admittance letter to asylum”.
But in a world where more than 300 million people suffer from depression and close to 800 000 people die by suicide every year, should we be able to take a mental health day as opposed to a sick day?
The answer might surprise you – it’s a resounding no from experts. And with good reason.
Although Dr Renata Schoeman, a Cape Town psychiatrist, believes that the idea of taking a mental health day is a good move because it creates more awareness around mental health, she (and other psychiatrists) strongly believes that mental disorders should not be treated any differently from other illnesses.
“If you have to take sick leave for a mental health condition, it should be sick leave. It is still a medical disorder like any other disorder and it should not be treated separately,” says Dr Schoeman. She adds that trying to say that you must take mental health leave adds to the discrimination.
“Why should we distinguish between anxiety or depression or hypertension or diabetes?” she says. “We are concerned about calling it a mental health day because that’s almost stigmatising it more.”
The other issue is where one draws the line. “Is it just someone waking up blue in the morning?” Dr Schoeman asks. “Or is it someone who is actually depressed?
“As psychiatrists we are objecting to the idea of a mental health day. We believe there should be more compassion towards leave for any type of compassionate needs.” She says there needs to be an increased awareness of employees’ need to take care of their mental health.
But, she adds, “Part of the stigma of mental illness is that people treat it differently – it’s a biological condition.”
Dr Schoeman says we should focus on prevention and manage our mental health before we reach the point of needing sick leave for a mental illness.
People are often booked off for longer periods of time because there is no work accommodation. “Take for example if you’re going through a depressive episode – during that acute, depressive episode, your concentration may be impaired, the medication you are taking may make you feel unwell and you may not be fully functioning for the first week.”
Dr Schoeman believes that you do not necessarily have to be booked off and spend three weeks in a hospital.
She also points to alarming research that shows if you’re away from work for three to four weeks, your chances of returning to full capacity at work is only 50%.
“So the longer we book people off, the less likely they are to become fully functional [at work] again. While you’re away from the office recovering, your work just piles up and you will probably return to stressors that make the problem bigger.”
Published on Health24, 6 August 2018
Suicide is often labelled a cowardly and selfish act – for those who are left behind to pick up the pieces. But it’s not. I know this because I’ve found myself having those dark thoughts, and coming close to calling it a day on life.
To someone on the outside, it may have seemed like “the easy way out” when I contemplated suicide, but you have to understand that it was an incredibly difficult decision I was faced with. And the last person I was thinking about was myself – it was the people in my life who love me who were number one in my mind.
Yes, depression affects me first and foremost, but it also has a devastating impact on my husband who rides the emotional tides with me. He knows when my mood starts to dip and I know how it affects him, how I bring his mood down with mine.
He lives with the exciting weekend plans that we have to cancel because getting out of bed is too much of an effort. He has to find the right words to console me on the nights I sit crying on the couch for no conceivable reason. He has to convince me that I’m not a failure when a project I’ve spent months on has turned out (in my mind) to be rubbish. Perhaps this seems trivial, but it’s not. It’s exhausting, it’s frustrating and it’s called depression.
When you reach a point of contemplating (or planning to commit suicide), you believe that ending your life is the single easiest way to bring peace to your loved ones, to end the suffering that you cause them. Following that, it’s also about finally finding your own peace – depression is exhausting. It consumes you on a daily basis. The ‘Black Dog’ constantly reminds you you’re not good enough, you’re a failure… It’s completely irrational but it’s also completely real to the person who is suffering.
We’ve lost so many well-known people to suicide over the years and every single time the news breaks, the world stops to mourn, to show anger and to throw judgement against the person, labelling them a coward and calling them selfish.
Chester Bennington.
Avicii.
Anthony Bourdain.
Professor Bongani Mayosi.
All of them immensely talented individuals who committed suicide. Suddenly mental health takes priority and we start to have conversations about it. But soon those conversations come to an end and the next big thing happens – protests, the petrol price, the unemployment rate…
1. Should it really take tragic celebrity suicides to shine the spotlight on mental health?
Health24 writer Mandy Freeman reflects on the recent suicide of Linkin Park’s Chester Bennington. Why does the world only take notice of mental illness following the suicide of a celebrity?
2. What to do and say when someone wants to commit suicide
Celebrity chef Anthony Bourdain’s recent suicide sent shock waves through the world. Here are ways you can recognise somebody who’s contemplating suicide.
3. ‘I Googled how to kill myself’
Suicide is not a cowardly act. It’s also not an easy decision to make. Health24 writer Mandy Freeman opens up about wanting to commit suicide.
Depression is real and affects so many people differently. Don’t assume that because someone you know seems happy, full of life and always smiling, they are not secretly suffering. Chester Bennington’s wife, Talinda, tweeted this following his death:
So all I can ask is that we show a little more compassion to those who suffer from mental illness. The journey they’re on is not an easy one – it’s an emotional roller coaster day in and day out. And when a person finds themselves at the point of suicide, know that they have analysed every possible aspect and they believe this is their only way to find peace, and allow their loved ones a happier life.
For a suicidal emergency call the South African Depression and Anxiety Group on 0800 567 567. Their 24-hour helpline is 0800 12 13 14.
Published on Xneelo, 2022
Conversions and generating sales leads are important in every small business marketing strategy – and one of the most effective methods of capturing leads is through the use of a landing page.
A landing page gives your promotions a place to live on your website, and can make it easier to generate new leads. It also provides you with valuable insights into how effective your marketing offers are performing when you track the analytics.
In this post we go through everything you need to know about landing pages, how to create them and how to apply them to your own marketing plans.
A landing page is a stand-alone page on your website that lets your visitor complete an action of value, such as capturing their information through a form, downloading an ebook etc. A visitor usually lands on this page after they’ve clicked through from an email, advert or social media post.
There are two common types of landing pages: click-through and lead generation.
Click-through landing pages give visitors the info they need about an offer they’re interested in. The ultimate goal here is for them to buy something.
Lead generation landing pages are specifically designed for you to collect information through a form and often offer something in return for a visitor’s information, such as a discount.
Once you’ve identified which landing page you need for your business, you’ll need to create one.
A good landing page should include the following elements:
This is the first thing visitors will see when they land here and a good headline sums up your offer. If you’re unsure what it should say, ask yourself this question: “What will visitors who convert receive?” The answer will help you write a compelling headline.
The copy on your landing page should explain the value of your offer in a simple but compelling way. You can use bullet points to break up large chunks of text.
Don’t forget to include keywords in your page title, header and text so that the page will be optimised for search engines and appear in common searches.
Adding these links lets visitors share a landing page with their connections on social networks, which increases the reach of your landing page beyond your network of followers and email subscribers.
This is where your visitors will enter their information in exchange for something, which helps convert them into viable sales leads.
Include an image that gives visitors an idea of what they’ll receive. It also adds to the visual appeal of a landing page.
For ease of use, Managed WordPress Hosting customers can simply add a new page to their Starter Site of choice and use the WordPress Block Editor to drag and drop the above elements into place.
There are a few things you’ll need to consider when creating a landing page that will convert. Here are three best practices to guide you.
You need to offer your visitors something in return for their information. What this is, will depend on what business or service you offer on your website. If you’re selling products, for example, visitors are more likely to convert if you offer them a discount on a future purchase.
A call to action (CTA) tells people what you want from them, such as signing up for your newsletter so you can grow your subscriber database. Make sure you add the CTA above the fold (the top half of the screen), so visitors don’t have to scroll to find it.
Someone who arrives on your landing page is probably here because they’re looking for a solution to a problem. Focus on the benefits to a potential customer instead of listing all the features that your product or service offers.
Once you’ve created a landing page and identified your goal, people will need to find it.
There are a few simple ways you can drive traffic to your landing page:
Any personal information you collect has to be POPIA compliant. This means you’ll need your visitor’s consent before you can process any of their personal information. For example, when a customer checks out on your online store and enters their email address, you need to ask for their permission before you can save it to your database to use for future marketing. Make sure all personal information you collect and keep is safe, and that your customers can access, correct or delete any of their data. You also need to give people the option to opt-out at any time.
Published on Xneelo, 2022
WordPress 6.0 is the second major release of 2022, and it comes with almost 1 000 enhancements and bug fixes.
As a website owner, here are all the major updates and features you should be aware of.
WordPress 6.0 includes several performance updates aimed at speeding up the page loading time on your site. Queries on navigation menus have been simplified to use fewer database queries, while cache performance has been improved by looking at cache time limits and memory size of the cache.
While these improvements may be small, every bit helps improve page load time, which ultimately benefits the visitors to your site.
The update includes improvements that help make it easier for people with disabilities to use WordPress sites. People with visual impairments use programmes to describe the image content, and the ALT text describes the image. If you don’t add ALT text, WordPress will use the article title. There’s also an option to display icons and the appropriate text in the block editor, which is helpful if the icon can’t be read by an auxiliary programme.
WordPress 6.0 introduces several new templates for specific functions, including templates for displaying posts from a specific author, category, date, tag or taxonomy.
This feature prevents you from accidentally deleting, moving or editing an important block, which is beneficial if you work with many reusable blocks and don’t want anyone else working on your site to change them. It also helps preserve design layouts if you create templates. You’ll know a block is locked because you’ll see a padlock when you click on it.
If you’re hands-on with writing content for your website blog, then there are a few notable new features that will be beneficial. The new stack block lets you customise your posts with vertically stacked content, and includes settings for justification, orientation, text and background colours, typography, padding, block spacing and borders. WordPress 6 also introduces a new theme export tool.
You can insert internal links and titles more quickly with a simple shortcut: insert two square brackets ([[) followed by the post title. The editor will show you any matching posts on your site and is useful when you want to add internal links.
The latest version of WordPress delivers an enhanced user interface that makes it easier for you to design web pages and edit text. New tools include a new colour panel, border controls, transparency levels, and more layout flexibility. There is also an improved navigation structure and a new web-fonts API which can be used with available themes.
Not updating to the latest version can make your website vulnerable to security breaches and hackers. Your website may also experience incompatibility issues with plugins, affecting performance and speed.
All xneelo Managed WordPress Hosting websites have the option to have their WordPress automatically updated for convenience. It’s important to remember that all updates are compatibility tested before roll out to ensure no disruption to your service.
Published on Xneelo, 2023
You’ve got a product or service to sell, you’ve registered a domain and now it’s time to create your website. One of the first things you would do for a new site is decide what pages you need. In this post we outline the five must-have pages every business website should have.
WordPress is a great choice for business owners as it allows you to create a professional website quickly and easily without any programming experience. Plus, when it comes to your look and feel, you’ll be spoilt for choice with a large selection of WordPress themes for business.
Research shows that 99% of websites have a 10-second opportunity window – this means visitors decide in 10 seconds whether they want to stay or leave. Your home page is your opportunity to pitch your business offering – your product or service – and hook your customers by telling them what problem your product or service can solve for them.
Good navigation is key to visitors being able to find what they’re looking for, and quickly. As a start, keep all your important information above the fold – this is the section of your site that visitors will see before scrolling down.
Keep your home page design simple. Add one featured image or video to the content above the fold, with a short headline that introduces your business. You can include a subheading or a sentence that describes your business in a bit more detail below that. Don’t forget to add a strong call-to-action – tell visitors what you want them to do.
Additional practical tips that can help create your home page:
From your home page, your customer should be able to know exactly where to go to find what they need. Don’t make them look too hard!
This page needs to tell visitors who you are and what your business is about. It’s your space to tell your brand story, share your values, and unpack your vision.
If you’re not sure what to include on your about page, you can start with these important details:
Make sure all information you include is relevant and up to date. And don’t forget to include any awards your company has won – this is external validation that can instill confidence in prospective customers.
Remember to be human, authentic and honest. You want your customers to trust you and believe in what you do and why you do it.
Your products and/or services pages should provide information about what your business offers. This page should be easy for visitors to scan and navigate quickly. If you have a large catalogue, create a separate page for each product or service, as too much information can be overwhelming.
Some key elements to include:
Customers need to be able to get in touch with you – so include your contact number and email address. It’s also useful to add Google Maps if you have a physical address that’s open to the public to help customers find you. Integrating Google My Business is another great idea.
You want to make it as easy as possible for customers to get in touch with you. Contact forms can help automate the process. Keep your forms simple and only ask for important details. If you only need contact information, for example, don’t ask for a physical address too. Tell people exactly what information you need, why you need it, and how you plan to use their information. There are important legal considerations to keep in mind when requesting customer data.
You can also consider using a chatbot if you’d like to further automate the contact page and create an effortless experience for customers. Tidio is a popular WordPress live chat plugin that comes with a customisable widget and free mobile apps for Android and iOS.
Your contact page should make it as easy as possible for customers to get in touch with you. If you’re worried about spam, your Managed WordPress Hosting plan has built-in spam filters in place to ensure you don’t get hounded by junk mail.
The blog or news page is often underrated but plays an important role in the success of your website. For a start, it’s a great Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) tool, which is important if you’d like your website to reach more potential customers.
Whenever you publish or update content, Google receives a signal that says your site is active. In addition, writing blog content means you can target keywords that you can’t include on your landing pages.
Beyond SEO, though, a blog page can:
Now that you know what website pages to include to optimise your user experience, consider using one of our Managed WordPress Hosting Starter Sites to build your website.
Creating a business website doesn’t need to be difficult, nor do you need to hire expert help. Take the time to research the best practices, look at what your competitors are doing, and most importantly, use the tools available to make your life simple.
Published in Fresh Living magazine, Spring 2022