Financial freedom tag-team

It's important to choose a spouse carefully, it seems. According to the book that I'm reading, "The Millionaire Next Door", it mentioned that for a large proportion of the millionaires that they had interviewed, their spouse are more frugal than them. The constant complain about their spouse is that they can't get them to spend money! The book mentioned about having quality offense and quality defense when playing this game of financial freedom....

Read More

The little boy and the dollar notes

A stranger walked towards a small little boy whom he met along the streets. The man told the little boy that it is most fortunate that fate had brought them together, hence he is going to bestow a gift to the little boy. He can have a choice of a $100 note or a $10,000 note, with no strings attached. He can just take the money and go, with the knowledge that on this particular day, a kind stranger had chosen to bestow a great gift to an unknown...

Read More

Market warning bells

Market bells are ringing softly....can you hear it? When will the bells ring louder? You don't need to know how to read charts or value companies to know that the market is overheated. It can be as easy as paying more attention to the surroundings and people around you. These warning signs might not tell you the exact date in which the market will crash, but a rough estimate is better than none, so that you can make preparation in case it happens. Here's a few points that I can think of: 1. When newbies that comes to the market and start...

Read More

How good are you at accumulating wealth?

I'm currently reading a book titled "The millionaire next door". From the few chapters that I gathered, the book is about the characteristics of wealthy people. As I read it, I am keenly aware that while wealthy people have certain characteristics that make them wealthy, it's not true that by following such characteristics, I'll be wealthy too. This logical flaw is similar to this: It is found that all cancer patients drink water, so drinking water...

Read More

Thoughts on dollar cost averaging

There's a lot of talk about using the standard chartered bank trading platform to do averaging down. The reason is because the platform offers a very cheap way to buy small lots without the penalizing minimum trading fees, which is usually $25 ++ minimum. What's averaging down actually? It's just a way to reduce the emotional part of investing by buying at suitable time interval using a fixed cost, regardless of the price. By doing that (you can do the math), when the prices are low, you'll end up with more shares and when the prices...

Read More

Are you surviving or living?

In thinking about our wants and needs, conventional literature always advise us to concentrate on our needs and forgo our wants. Resources are limited, hence we should ration the things that our resources can exchange wisely in case it runs out. We should budget what little we have and try to scrimp and save to make sure it last long and good. Excess and frivolous frills should be trimmed, reduced and eliminated. Get the smallest house that you can afford, do not overspend and buy a huge house. Get the cheapest furniture and get the barest renovation...

Read More

My personal financial goals

I need some long term plans to have an idea of how I should allocate my resources, and if that proves to be insufficient, to step up my effort to get more income and hence more savings. The biggest financial bomb so far is my resale flat. I got a loan of 501k from HDB, with a monthly installment of 2k over a period of 30 yrs. Let's do some math: Loan amt: 501kTotal amt paid at the end of 30 yrs: 2k x 12 x 30 = 720kInterest: 219k Due to the curse of compounding, even at a low interest rate of 2.6%, over a long period of 30 yrs, the original...

Read More

Old MacGrath and his bucketful of milk

Old MacGrath owned a farm in a countryside where he kept a few cows for dairy milk. In one particular milking session, the cows gave him a huge bounty of milk. Usually, Old MacGrath will have two full buckets of milk on average, so can you imagine his wrinkled but beaming face when after milking all his cows, he realised that he had not two, not three and six buckets of milk! Old MacGrath was full of joy, and on the way back to the farm, he was...

Read More