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Learned one very expensive lesson with emigrating. Get a good chartered accountant that does cross border tax and emigration in SA and one in your new country. I have been through 5 accountants and a tax lawyer. The tax lawyer here in Portugal got me sorted.

I went cheap and hired independent tax accountants. The first one was a cross border chartered accountant registered with SAIT and SARS. He did my 2014 tax. We left in June 2014. He assured me that once I have officially emigrated via SARS and SARB then no Exit Tax or further CGT is payable. WRONG or perhaps he was referring to the Exit Tax for the rich like Mark Shuttleworth who had to pay 10% Exit Tax.

There is a difference between Exit Tax and Departure Tax. Departure Tax is CGT that you pay when you emigrate and all your investments are "Deemed as sold" on the day of emigration and bought at the same price the day after. This readjusts your base cost to a "clean slate" in your new country for tax purposes.

Your accountant will file your tax for the FULL year for the year of your departure and it will include the "deemed sale". You will pay your normal tax plus the CGT on the deemed sale up to the date of departure. The rest you will pay according to the DTA. 

Once this is done you can close your SA tax books via a procedure that I can explain in another post.

Preamble done.
So we arrived here in June 2014 and hired a cross border charted accountant in Lisbon who studied at WITS and worked for PwC SA. He assured me that if I apply for the Non Habitual Residency regime I will not pay tax for 10 years. Once again.....WRONG. CGT is excluded from this regime.

Not knowing that it is excluded I sold my winning stock CML and made well over R1m gain and was hit with a whopping tax bill. Tax on share gains is a fixed rate of 28% here and is a separate tax.

Tax in Portugal does not follow the 183 day rule but you are taxed from the date of intention to stay like a rental agreement even if it is signed on the last day of the tax year you will be taxed for the full year.   

As I am a freeloader and a cheapskate I researched and sent emails to every tax website I came across to get me out of this shite.

The only one to answer was a tax lawyer in Portugal. What he stated is very important. LOOK AT THE DTA.
The DTA between SA and PT clearly states that CGT from shares is only payable to the country where one is resident.
As you cannot be tax resident in two countries at the same time my deemed sale took place in SA and I was not yet resident in PT. So the CGT from the deemed sale will be taxed at a much lower 13% in SA compared to 28% here.

This will save me over R300k. So do your homework before you leave. 

That FIN24 article is a bit misinforming. Portugal has a 50% inclusion but only for fixed property. Shares have a 100% inclusion rate.

I should have invested all my money in this preference share 3 years ago and I would still have all my capital left. Instead I now have a drawdown of about 40%.
It pays out 12.5% pa monthly and the only tax you pay is Withholding tax on dividends and your capital is guaranteed for the 5 year investment period.
https://www.ecsponentlimited.com/products/five-year-fixed-rate-income-provider-class-d/

ADI has a great CEO and management team that are hell bent on growing the company hence their frequent acquisitions. This is why they only pay divies once a year at a low percentage. These acquisitions hurt their results and frighten investors. The past 5% increase in HYE HEPS is great despite their new acquisition. I will hold as they have enough cash to make more acquisitions. They are in competition with EOH as the CEO said. 

Buying stocks have become a gamble so perhaps the index method is the best way forward. I have always liked STXIND as it was the best performer for many years and looking at the 10 year chart I think I should sell all my individual stocks and buy into it. Then I will only hold DIVTRX and STXIND.

I forgot about yozzi's question as to expenses so here goes:

I pay €375 for a fully furnished 2 bed flat and it is modern.

My rent plus utilities plus TV, unlimited internet and food amounts to €580 pm. This does not include entertainment as it differs with lifestyle.
A car is not needed here as public transport is great.

Orca, when the chips are down how do you cope? I hope for you that mrs's health improves

I'm not at all religious but I prayed for the first time in my adult life as did a hundred friends and family. I also thought I was like a cowboy as they only cry when their horse dies. I shed some tears with our girls when things looked dire and this made us stronger as a family and we can beat all odds together.

This is all behind us now and at the rate of her recovery she would be back to normal in a month. 

Thank you @bw. Yes. she is very well but still has her stomach tube as her taste buds have not returned to normal yet. Some foods are too foul tasting for her so we are still somewhat housebound. It will come out end November then we can get completely back to normal.