Life and Finance

*Apologies to everyone who read double. I have made a serious mistake of leaving the other 1st draft inside the post. It's now corrected." 2017 is coming in a little less than 1 month! Hence, it's time for a reflection to see how I fared throughout 2016. It's also time to take stock of all my growing up years and plan ahead for 2017.  On human capital, In 2016, nothing has changed.I graduated from polytechnic in 2015 and I have less than a year now to completing my National Service. I have been thinking about furthering my studies and it's an answer that I am still unclear of even after a year into NS. Do I apply for full-time university or join the grind and study part-time? To be honest, I won't have to face this dilemma if my grades were good enough for full-time NUS or NTU. I believe a few other factors hold me back from even trying for the other university,  SIT.  The age factor is always at the back of my mind. I'll be more than 25 years old

Meet Kinokuniya and Books Depository.  The former has physical brick-and-mortar and online stores while the latter is solely an online retailer.  For all the book lovers out there, I am sure these are some of the places we go in order to satisfy our book cravings. Kinokuniya was where I picked up my first book on investing. I summarised some of my thoughts on that book here . Since then, I have bought at least 6 other books on investment and other genres that cost at least $200 in total from Kinokuniya.  Book lovers should also know that Kinokuniya is not the cheapest for pricing. I came to know Books Depository  recently, and boy is there a huge difference in price.  Let's compare an investment book, say  Common Stocks and Uncommon Profits and Other Writings.  On Books Depository : $18.56, original price: $30.03  On Kinokuniya : $37.40, member's price: $33.66    If we are to compare prices only, then we have a clear winner here. Kinokuniya is st

Too expensive. A waste of money. I don't need insurance. I don't know how much I'm covered. My parents bought insurance for me and handles it.  These are just some of what people say. I've had some friends who said that when the topic is broached.  Insurance isn't easy to understand at all!  So many policies, so many insurers.   To be honest, I'll still choose to let my parents handle it all. But I'm no longer a little boy. I took it upon myself to understand all my policies that my parents bought and which are the policies that I bought on my own. As to how it really started, other than me turning 21, it was also partly due to me wanting to know what I am actually buying.  So it is time to look into the policies I have. Readers who know more about insurance, feel free to correct me on any point. Gladly appreciate it!  Life Insurance CPF Dependents Protection Scheme Covers every CPF member from 21 years old and insures $46,000 in even

Random Walk One in which future steps or directions cannot be predicted on the basis of past history Around late last year, I sat down with my first ever book on investing/finance:  A Random Walk Down Wall Street.   I didn't know what to expect then.  At its core, the book says you should just buy index funds and make it the core of your portfolio, manage it passively. Of course, then buy some individual stocks if you want the excitement.  In other topics which stood out the most to me,  The Fitness Manual presents exercises such as: You must start to save and start early, build reserves and insure yourself, be competitive with your reserves, make use of tax relief by putting money in retirement plans, understanding your investment objectives with a sleeping scale.  The Life Cycle Guide presents how you can assess your risk based on age, and how the allocations like cash, bonds, stocks and real estate ( REITS ) can be rebalanced as you age.  Behavioral finance is ta

If I am to describe myself as an investor now, I will probably be an index investor. It has since been about 9 months ago that I subscribed to Invest-Saver. There were a couple of reasons that got me started.  Firstly, I wanted to get started with stocks, secondly, learn about investing with a small capital and lastly, to discipline myself financially.  9 months on, how did it fare?  Dollar-Cost Averaging $100 goes into the RSP monthly, except for June's amount of $200.  Total Investment Costs and Cumulative Portfolio Value as of 30 July Capital Gains/Losses as of 30 July There were dividends of $2.93 in January and $10.59 in July.  Total Return is $17.64 as of 29/7/16 which includes the dividends minus the commission costs. ( Note that a few months back, the STI was really volatile and Total Return was negative, so it isn't all rosy always). Current share price stands at 2.93 as of 29/7/16).  I am going to continue this plan until my ORD becau

No, I am not talking about the rise of artificial intelligence but rather on how we folks today are increasingly gluing our faces onto our smartphones.  Singapore is ranked the highest globally in mobile penetration rate, read this  here . Well, we do see almost everybody using a smartphone here, so much so that there are rising cases of zombies. In South Korea, authorities have tried to mitigate their  smartphone zombies  apocalypse.  Photo from Asia News Network Now, if you are reading this post while crossing the road, I suggest you put your phone into your pocket. If you are walking down the stairs from the train platform, please put away your phone. The rise of the smartphone zombies There were a few cases, whereby the person in front of me was watching a drama show, and she was so slow in walking down the stairs that everybody behind me was obviously annoyed. There were another instance, where I tapped on the shoulders of a guy in front of me, simply beca

Update: I made some changes in the post below, reflecting some of the information that was not written previously and  made existing information clearer. As of 2/7/16.  Good news for us in NS! Other than putting the allowance into other savings accounts that offer meagre interest rates, we have this option now! An option to save for the 2 years or 22 months of service. Introducing the  POSB Save As You Earn  (SAYE) account. I was truly excited for this when I got wind of this. Looking deeper, I made some comparison. I thought the CIMB FastSaver  might serve as a useful comparison as well.  POSB SAYE 1. Saving At the end of 2 years Good for new enlistees who just wants to save a fixed amount every month and not do anything with it until they ORD. It gives fixed deposit rates for small amounts. Note: This works like a 24-month fixed deposit,  so you will lose the 2% cash gift interest if you withdraw the sum. So do make sure you are

Come 20 June 2016, Singaporeans can check if they are eligible for the GST Voucher 2016 handout!  You can check it here:  GSTVoucher2016 .  On top of the regular GST voucher, there is a one-off Cash Special Payment this year.  I was surprised that I was eligible for it last year even before crossing my 21st birthday.  I'm all hands up for handouts! I hope I am eligible again! Of course, it must be done with consideration for the country's wealth. I'm confident that the government has considered that. The additional one-off voucher (which will costs $280 million) will help Singaporeans a little more this year.  Some personal thoughts I was searching for more info and I came across the article. He quipped that" if we spend some of these in our neighbourhood shops, it will support our local businesses as well! Gratitude for Mr Heng. I read that he was a good MP and his residents liked him. Hope he makes a full recovery and continue to contribut

After opening a FastSaver account with CIMB 6 months ago, I can say I am a satisfied depositor. I took home a good $10 cash gift. I shared that happiness with my family and friends. Of course, some scoffed at the promotion and interest rate. I tried to convince them. I failed. That's alright. They are happy with POSB. Probably they didn't understand inflation. They didn't think $10 is worth the simple 6 steps process. In this 6 months, the coffee prices increased by another $0.10 at a nearby kopitiam. Just last month, one of my army mates got really interested and opened FastSaver too. He told me about this promotion  for another CIMB account. CIMB StarSaver  is offering 0.8% if you maintain $500 of fresh deposits. I assume the promotion is to get some people to sign up for StarSaver since FastSaver is presumably the better option here to a new depositor with no conditions. I could be wrong on this, though. Do your own analysis. Anyway, he got his interest fr

Gen Y or Millenials (the cooler sounding name). That's me! Picture from Huffingtonpost An article (see here: Survey: 2 in 3 young people have not started investing ) in the Sunday Times by GYC got me thinking. I am unsure of the intent of the survey but I assume that it is meant to set younger people thinking about the purpose of investing and hopefully, more will be receptive. If the earlier generation, say, the parents of millennials are already finding it difficult to save for retirement, I can't help but fear how we, millennials, will fare. Not knowing how to invest The young people of my time grew up in an environment where information is easily accessible. So it came as a shock when I saw in the article that one of the reasons cited were a 'lack of financial knowledge'. 61 per cent of the two thirds do not invest because they do not know how to. If I went back into time, I will have cited that reason also.. Two biggest influences are

I have been without financial goals for most of my life up until 7 months ago. I began tracking my expenses on Excel and keeping a record. I also made it a point to read posts from bloggers and the Invest section of the Sunday Times regularly.  The idea of indexing and passive income was something new and I am glad it came into my life now.  All this reading have helped me along the way to better understand the need to save and set financial goals for myself.  So what will be my financial goals be for the short to long term haul?  Emergency Chest (Long-term) The SAF is a good employer, providing an iron rice bowl for at least my 2 years of National Service. So during this period where I am serving, I aim to save as much as possible. I am fortunate because my parents still give me an allowance, therefore I am able to save more. After National Service, it is pretty much on my own if I'm heading out to find a job.  Goal: $10,000. Save $250 per month on top of existing sav