The short answer

Your time horizon is how long until you need the money. Short-term money — needed within about two years — belongs in cash, in the currency you'll spend it in, because there's no time to recover from a fall. Medium-term money — roughly three to seven years — can take some risk, usually through a mix of bonds and shares. Long-term money — eight years or more — usually belongs mainly in a diversified spread of shares, because over long periods they have usually beaten cash and inflation. Most people have all three at once. Retirement isn't the end of your horizon: at 60, much of your money may not be needed for twenty or thirty years. And because any income that doesn't rise loses buying power every year, your long-term money has to grow.

What a time horizon actually is

A time horizon is simply the length of time between investing money and needing to spend it. If you're saving for a condo you plan to buy in three years, that money has a three-year horizon. If you're investing for income in your eighties, that money might have a twenty-year horizon.

Three ideas make horizons more useful than they first sound.

You have several horizons, not one

People often talk about "my" time horizon as if they had one. In practice, nearly everyone has money with different horizons at the same time: an emergency fund that might be needed tomorrow, a visa deposit that's locked for a year, savings for a purchase in a few years, and retirement money that must last decades. Each of those pots deserves its own approach.

A horizon is when you spend it, not when you retire

A common mistake is to treat the day you retire as the end of your horizon. But you don't spend your whole retirement savings on that day. You draw them down over many years — some of it next year, some of it in twenty years. A 60-year-old's retirement savings therefore contain money with horizons of one year, ten years and twenty-five years, all at once. That's true inside a living annuity too: you might draw 5% this year, but most of the capital won't be needed for a long time.

Horizons shrink as time passes

Money that's ten years from being spent today will be five years away in five years' time. So the right home for each pot changes gradually. A plan that's right today needs adjusting as horizons shorten — something we come back to later in this guide.

Why time changes the risk of investing

Shares go up and down, sometimes sharply. Over a single year, they can easily fall by a fifth or more. But over longer periods, the ups have historically outweighed the downs, and the chance of ending up behind cash shrinks the longer you hold.

South African data shows this clearly. Prudential Investment Managers (now M&G) compared the JSE All Share index with cash over more than fifty years. Cash came out ahead in 39.3% of one-year periods — but in only 22% of ten-year periods and 9.4% of fifteen-year periods. Allan Gray's research, using data going back to 1900, found that even after five-year spells in which shares lagged cash, shares beat cash over the following four years more than 85% of the time.

How often shares have beaten cash

The longer the holding period, the more often shares have come out ahead. These are historical frequencies, not promises — but they show why time is an investor's biggest ally.

Share of periods in which South African shares beat cash. First three: FTSE/JSE All Share against cash, rolling periods over about 53 years to 2018 (Prudential Investment Managers, September 2018). *Next four years after a five-year period in which shares lagged cash, 1900–2018 (Allan Gray, 28 February 2019). Past performance is not a guide to the future.

The flip side matters just as much: over a single year, shares have lost to cash roughly four times in ten. If you'll need the money that soon, that's far too high a chance of being forced to sell after a fall. Time doesn't remove risk — but it changes which risk matters. Over short periods, the risk is volatility: a fall just when you need to sell. Over long periods, the bigger risk is often not growing enough to keep up with inflation.

How long is retirement, really?

Most people underestimate how long their money needs to last. The average life expectancy figures you hear quoted for South Africa are figures from birth, pulled down by deaths at younger ages. Someone who has already reached 60 in good health, with good private healthcare in Thailand, can reasonably expect to live well into their eighties — and many will live longer.

Two things make the real horizon longer still. First, averages are averages, so roughly half of people live longer — and planning to run out of money at the average age means a coin-toss chance of running out while you're still alive. Second, if you're part of a couple, the money usually needs to last until the second of you dies, which on average is later than either of you alone. Many planners therefore assume money must last into the early-to-mid nineties.

So a 60-year-old moving to Thailand isn't investing for a short retirement. A sensible plan assumes thirty years or more. That's why it's usually a mistake to put all of a retirement pot into cash or "safe" investments at the point of retiring: a large part of it is long-term money, and it needs to be invested like long-term money. It's also why the drawdown rate you choose on a living annuity matters so much — anywhere from 2.5% to 17.5% a year is allowed, but a high rate early on can leave too little for your eighties.

The three horizons and what suits each

A simple framework for matching money to time. The boundaries are guides, not rules — your own split depends on your income, goals and comfort with ups and downs.

Short-term money is about certainty; long-term money is about growth.

How to match your money to your horizons

Matching is a simple process. You don't need special software — a list and a calculator will do.

1. List your goals with dates — the visa deposit now, a condo in four years, help with a grandchild's university in nine, retirement income every year after that.
2. Put a cost on each, in the currency you'll pay it in.
3. Work out your yearly income gap — spending minus guaranteed income such as annuities, pensions and rent.
4. Allocate money to the short horizon first: emergency fund, locked visa money and about two years of the income gap.
5. Allocate the medium horizon: purchases due in three to seven years, plus the income gap for those years.
6. Everything else is long-term — invest it for growth, and plan to move some of it into the medium pot as time passes.

Many people are surprised by the result. Once the short and medium pots are properly funded, they often find they can afford to invest the rest for growth with real confidence — because a market fall no longer threatens their next few years' spending. That's the point: the short and medium pots are what let the long-term pot do its job.

Our guide to building an international financial plan shows the same idea as a "three pots" structure, step by step.

School and university fees: the classic long horizon

Education is one of the clearest examples of why horizons matter. Fees for a child who is three today won't be due for years — long enough for that money to be invested for growth rather than left in cash. Saving monthly for thirteen years with growth of 8% a year, around 40% of the goal can come from investment returns rather than your own pocket. Then, as each year's fees get close, the money moves into safer holdings and into the currency the school charges. Ask about school-fee planning, or compare schools in our international schools directory.

Where to start

A review to match your money to your real timescales, a specialist for moving money between currencies as each horizon arrives, our number-one offshore account for long-term hard-currency savings, and a cheap route for everyday money.

Sequence risk: why the first years of retirement matter most

Once you start drawing an income from your investments — from a living annuity, say — a new risk appears. It's called sequence risk, and it explains why the same average return can leave two retirees in very different places.

When you're taking money out each year, a market fall early on does lasting damage: you're selling investments at low prices to fund your spending, so fewer of them are left to benefit from the recovery. The same fall late in retirement does much less harm, because by then there's less money invested and less time for it to matter.

Same returns, different order

Two retirees each start with R6,000,000 and take R300,000 at the start of every year. Over ten years, both get exactly the same ten yearly returns — just in opposite order.

Illustration only. Years three to eight are up 8% for both. Same average return, about R1.8 million difference — purely because of the order.

How time horizons protect you from sequence risk

The best defence against sequence risk is exactly the horizon structure described above. If the next two years of spending are in cash, and the following few years in cautious investments, a bad year for shares doesn't force you to sell them. You spend from cash, wait for markets to recover, and refill the cash pot from your growth investments in a good year. Inside a living annuity, the same idea works by holding part of it in a money-market or income fund and drawing your income from that part first.

• Hold one to two years of spending in cash at the start of retirement.
• Keep the next few years in steadier investments such as bonds.
• Refill from growth in good years, not bad ones.
• Be willing to trim your drawdown a little after a big fall early in retirement.

Inflation and the long horizon

Over a short horizon, inflation barely matters. Over a long one, it's the biggest threat to your spending power — especially for any income that doesn't rise, such as a level life annuity, a fixed rent from a property back home, or a pension with little or no increase.

The chart at the top of this page shows what that means. With prices rising 4% a year, R120,000 of income that never rises is worth about R81,000 in today's money after ten years, and about R55,000 after twenty. A retiree who arrives at 60 and lives to 90 could see a level income lose well over half of its buying power.

That's why "playing it safe" with long-term money can be the riskiest choice of all. Rand cash earns a decent rate today — the Reserve Bank's repo rate was 7.25% in September 2026 — but it carries the rand's own long-term weakness against the baht. Baht cash in a Thai bank, with the Bank of Thailand's policy rate at 1.00% in August 2026, is unlikely to keep up with inflation over twenty years. Long-term money usually needs to be invested for growth so that, as fixed income shrinks in real terms, other income can fill the gap.

Currency and horizon go together

For a South African in Thailand, every horizon also has a currency question. The general rule is that the shorter the horizon, the more closely the currency should match your spending.

Short-term money you'll spend in Thailand should mostly be in baht already. In 2026 alone the rand moved between about ฿1.89 and ฿2.07 — a swing of nearly 10% — and if your next year's rent is sitting in rand, that move comes straight out of your budget. Medium-term money for a known baht cost — a condo, school fees — can be converted gradually, or have its rate fixed in advance with a forward contract, so a fall in the rand doesn't change the price. Long-term money can stay international: a global share fund or hard-currency savings in an offshore account are spread away from the rand, and there's time for currency swings to even out.

There's a trade-off. Rand cash currently earns much more interest than baht cash — 7.25% against 1.00% — so converting long before you need to costs you interest. The answer is usually to convert in step with your horizons: as money moves from the long pot to the medium pot, and from the medium pot to the short pot, that's the natural moment to move it into baht. Remember that direct offshore transfers use your R2 million single discretionary allowance each calendar year, with SARS approval for more, so larger moves need planning too.

Keeping your horizons up to date

Because horizons shorten every year, your investments need gentle, regular adjustment. Two simple habits do most of the work.

Refill the pots once a year

Each year, move a year's worth of money from the medium pot into the short pot, and from the long pot into the medium pot. Do it from whichever investments have done best — in a good year for shares, take it from shares; in a bad year, take it from bonds or cash and leave the shares to recover.

Rebalance back to your plan

Markets will pull your mix away from your plan: after a strong run, you'll own more shares than you intended; after a fall, fewer. Rebalancing — selling a little of what has grown and buying what has fallen — keeps your risk where you meant it to be, and quietly makes you buy low and sell high. Living annuities let you switch funds and review your drawdown rate on each policy anniversary, which makes a natural yearly check-in.

Revisit after life changes

A new relationship, a health diagnosis, a decision to buy rather than rent, a child's plans changing, a decision to return to South Africa — any of these can change your horizons overnight. When life changes, redo the list of goals and dates.

A worked example: Johan's three horizons

Johan is 62, single, and has lived in Hua Hin for two years. He has R6,400,000 of savings and investments, including a living annuity, and a small level annuity paying R60,000 a year. He spends about ฿70,000 a month. Figures are illustrations at ฿2.04 = R1.

His yearly gap. ฿70,000 a month is about R412,000 a year. His level annuity covers R60,000, so his investments need to provide about R350,000 a year. Because the annuity never rises, the gap will slowly widen.

Short horizon (0–2 years): about R1.2 million. His ฿800,000 visa deposit (about R392,000), an emergency fund of four months' spending (about R137,000), and two years of his income gap (about R700,000), less what he already holds in baht. Held in Thai deposits and some rand in a money-market fund.

Medium horizon (3–7 years): about R1.6 million. The income gap for years three to five, plus a reserve for a new car. Held in bonds and a cautious mixed fund.

Long horizon (8+ years): about R3.6 million. Everything else, in a low-cost global share fund, part of it held offshore in hard currency. This is the money that has to keep up with inflation over what could be a thirty-year retirement — and the money he'll eventually leave to his nephew.

Before the review, Johan had almost everything in rand cash, worried about markets. Now he can see that a 25% fall in shares wouldn't touch his next seven years of spending — so he can leave his long-term money invested through the bad years. Each year, he'll refill his short pot from whichever investments have done best, and move it to Thailand as it's needed.

Time horizon mistakes to avoid

1. Treating retirement day as the end of your horizon, and moving everything into cash.
2. Investing short-term money in shares — the visa deposit, next year's rent, a condo deposit.
3. Planning to the average life expectancy instead of a long life.
4. Setting a high living annuity drawdown early on, leaving too little for later years.
5. Selling long-term investments after a fall because short-term money wasn't set aside.
6. Converting everything to baht at once instead of in step with your horizons.
7. Never refilling or rebalancing, so your risk drifts away from your plan.
8. Buying a product with a lock-in longer than your horizon for that money.

Questions to ask about your own horizons

Work through these once a year, or whenever something big changes.

• What will I need to spend in each of the next few years, and in which currency?
• Is the next two years' spending already in cash, mostly in baht?
• Could a 25% fall in shares force me to sell?
• Is my long-term money growing faster than inflation — and not all in rand?
• Is my living annuity drawdown sustainable for thirty years?
• Have my plans changed — a purchase, a move, a family need?

Keeping your accounts secure

Long-term investments need protecting for a long time too. Managing accounts in two countries from phones and shared Wi-Fi means a few habits are worth building now:

• Use a password manager and a different strong password for every account.
• Turn on two-factor sign-in wherever it's offered.
• Use a private, protected connection on hotel, café and condo Wi-Fi.
• Never act on unexpected calls or emails about your investments.

How we researched this guide

We used Prudential Investment Managers' analysis of the FTSE/JSE All Share index against cash over rolling one-, ten- and fifteen-year periods (September 2018); Allan Gray's study of South African shares against cash from 1900 to 2018 (28 February 2019); the living annuity drawdown limits and Regulation 28 offshore limit; the Reserve Bank's September 2026 and Bank of Thailand's August 2026 rate decisions; and rand–baht rates through 2026. The inflation and sequence-of-returns examples are simple illustrations, not forecasts; the worked example uses ฿2.04 = R1. Checked 23 October 2026. Past performance is not a guide to the future. This guide is general information, not personal financial advice.