Value of time

Time is getting tighter for me these days. I remembered fondly years ago, that I'll have time to walk around shopping malls and have the leisure to stand and stare. I can go jogging around 4pm, or swimming at 1pm - those are the days. Still, to get out of the rat race, this is the little sacrifice one must make to quicken the process a little.Dream mentioned that I must take time to smell the flowers. I agree fully. If yesterday is a cancelled cheque,...

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My ideas on insurance

As a lay person to insurance, it is not easy to ‘break into’ the knowledge banks of insurance. While I profess that I’m no way near a level where I can tell people what to do with their insurance, at least for now, I understand my own insurance needs and plans – which is the raison d’etre for wanting to know more about insurance.Let’s just talk about the difference between a whole life plan and a term plan. A whole life plan is an insurance policy...

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Personal finance distilled

You know, I've been reading a lot of books on personal finance. But after reading a great variety of them, you'll get a rough idea of what most of them advocates. I'll attempt to summarise those few pointers that I get from reading all these books (don't ask me which book mentions what, I seriously can't remember).1. Know your expenses well.This is very easily said, but hard to follow. I've been tracking my expenses for more than a year already,...

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Woe be to those who missed out ROE

I was just waiting for the bus to come when I thought more in depth about the concept of return on equities, otherwise known as ROE for short. It’s not those little things that you put onto sushi though.WARNING: THIS IS ONE OF THE MOST CHEAM AND LONGEST POST I EVER DID ON ACCOUNTINGS. PROCEED WITH CAUTION.ROE, usually denoted as a percentage, is defined as the net profits per equities of a company. Equity is the amount that is left when you subtract...

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Celestial

I’ve got another request by one of the superfriends to do a review on Celestial. I’ve covered Celestial quite some time ago, around end of 2007 I believe, so I think it’s a good time that I revisit this company again and see what had transpired between then and now.Celestial is in the business of manufacturing soyabean protein-based food and beverage products and is selling them under its own brand name. They are also entering the biodiesel business which began a trial run last Oct 2008.For this review, I’m only reading their 3QFY08 results, which...

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Data pulse

Trying to help out a fellow regarding his investment into this firm, Datapulse. From the books that I read, either this or Datacraft was one of the hotly punted stocks way back in the dot com era. I started browsing through the statements with a skeptical eye, knowing that Datapulse was dealing with those computer, gadgety stuff (they are actually providers of total solution to CD/DVD for content distributors in Asia Pac region). How good can they be. I think I'm wrong.I only looked at their FY08 results released in 2008, Sept.Net profit margins:...

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