Fire and forget...the past will haunt you one day

I knew about Chartered semi conductors's delisting procedure since last year, when it was splashed across the newspaper. I did not think much of it until this week, where I learned that my parents actually had 1 lot of it bought @ 14? Why the question mark? It's because they did not know how much they had bought it since it was so long ago. Since Sept 09, they had a lot of corporate activities. First a 27 rights for every 10 shares held. Then immediately...

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Consolidation period in my life

The market mirrors life. Recently, I felt a consolidation in my life. What do I mean by that? In market terms, it means that the prices fluctuate around a range while the fight between the bulls and bears continue. Whilst the two forces are fighting, the prices reflect the impasse created, so it neither moves up decisively, or down. In my life, consolidation just means that I spend a lot of time waiting. Calls go unanswered, sms takes a very long...

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Disability income

I thought I know all about the disadvantages of being a full time tutor. Till yesterday that is. I had been toying with the idea of getting a disability income protection plan to cover some loopholes in my armor. Basically, the plan is to cover the scenario when I'm disabled (partially or totally) and I'm unable to carry on with my job. The plan will pay me a monthly benefit, after a deferred period of 3 months or 6 months, for a period of years. Thus, the premium for such a policy is a function of 1) Monthly benefit, if you hit the definition 2)...

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Reality check

I'm going to get a resale flat soon. Let's work out some details and see if I need to quicken my savings or I've enough. Supposing I am getting a 4 room hdb. The going rate now is 400k, which includes like 30k COV. Let's put it as 450k market rate with COV of 50k. Since I'm a first time applicant and I'm going to find a flat that is near my parents, there will be a grant of 40k, which is deposited to the CPF so that I can use it to pay for deposit...

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Ideally, it's better to be practical

When I was young and idealistic, I wanted to follow my passion. I believed that if one follows passion, he will do very well in his area of interest and thus the money will be the 'side-effect', the toppings on an ice-cream. However, as I grew older, I realised this is not to be. Many people are trapped in doing the things that they do not like. However sucky that prospect of dragging yourself to work, the job does pay for the bills and the comforts...

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Saving money during NSF days

It's good to talk to people. When you do, you learn more about the broader world and you'll realise perhaps your own problem is not so unique and is small compared to others. Everyone has a story to tell. After reflecting upon them and consolidating them, I'm all ready to blog about it. This time, I heard about this young chap who is still in national service. The spending habit is quite horrendous actually, because he admitted that he spends around...

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Dr Elder's "Trading for a Living" Seminar

I went for Dr Elder's seminar yesterday. It was a very early Sunday morning and I zombied my way there around 830am for the course, which is to last until 5pm. I had read most of his books and had initially thought that paying to hear him talk about what I had known is just a complete waste of time. But I am glad that I went afterall, because there are little details that had to be spoken to, rather than read, in order to really understand. I should have known that, having worked in my line for so long. If everyone just reads from the textbook,...

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Builders and destroyers

I'm always a big fan of this site : Wulffmorgenthaler. The humor is not slapstick but it slowly grows on you. I like the site's style of tragicomedy. A few days ago, I came upon this strip from the same site, which I've cut and paste liberally. It looked like this: How apt, isn't it? I always believed that in this world, there are two types of people - builders and destroyers. Builders have the harder life of starting things from scratch, so...

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Choose the right marriage partner

** "BIAS" is a special feature in my blog where I get to say whatever I want with scant regards for your feelings. I'm not politically correct in this feature, so go ahead, judge me."I was flipping through one of Napoleon Hill's books when I saw that one of the pointers to achieve success is to find the right partner. How true! It is important to get the right partner to achieve success, otherwise the journey to success will be made extraordinary...

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SGX chart

For my own reference. Been a while since I posted any charts, so let's kick start this. Seems like a good buy at this circled level. Yield should be 4.3% at that price, pretty reasonable. A bit heavy for trading though. If I do buy, it'll be another batch to lower down my price. Crystal ball is not working very well and is a bit cloudy. Wait for it to clear up first, then look at weekly to decide....

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10 points on Japanese reits

Confession - I seldom cut and paste entire article from elsewhere just to have an article. But I really thought this is a good piece on Japanese reits. This article came from this site, which I liberally copied and pasted into this article. I give full credit to the author and shame on me for copying it here. Whatever lah. This is purely for my own reference. ----------------------------------------------------------------------- Japanese real...

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Unstable income stream from tutoring

I've got more things to share regarding my career. Frankly, it's personal ranting too for the pent up frustrations. This post is about the instability of the income stream. For those of you who is used to getting a fixed pay, well, this will be something you won't be used to. I'm going to show you something rather personal. I was debating with myself whether to put it, but heck lah. I'll just remove some numbers and some lines. You can see my...

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The other side of being a tutor

Seems like quite a few folks here are interested to become a full time tutor. Having been in this line for close to 7 yrs, I think I'll have something worthy to contribute to them, so I shall. I've written extensively about the prospects of being in this business in my past post, so I won't repeat the points already mentioned. Instead, in this post, I shall try to talk about the other aspects of being a self employed, specifically as a tutor. Here's...

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