Be Brave.

A student of mine recently got 'scolded' by me. She was trying to solve a physics problem but she had no idea how to do it. I had a glimpse of her thinking when I asked her to think out loud. She said after doing this and that, she had no idea what to do. Then I realised that she is trying to figure out entirely the solution of the problem in her head before she even attempt it on paper. I told her severely that perhaps in simpler problems, the...

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What's the minimum salary to live comfortably?

I was wondering what is the salary that one would need in order to survive life here in Singapore. It would not be surprising to hear a wide range, perhaps from as low as 1k/mth to as high as 20k/mth. That's because we want different things in life and for certain things, we really do not want to do without because if these basic comfort levels are gone, then our quality of life also decreases. After all, we do not want to merely survive; we want...

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Changing market strategy?

Some people follow a market strategy of being a contrarian. This means that if others are buying, then you will be selling and vice versa. I think this makes a lot of sense, at least in theory. The hard thing is not about the theory itself, but deciding when the theory is applicable. If you look at a snapshot of all the available market theory, they will work in particular situations but not in others, hence to a beginner who is bombarded by a thousand and one market strategy, he will only get more confused after reading all these. I am...

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Sharing my monthly ritual

I just finished tidying up my month end accounts. I've been doing this for quite a while, so it didn't take too much time as all the necessary process had already been routinized and it's just a matter of clicking the right websites and recording down some numbers. Let me share what I do every month end: 1. Open up my excel spreadsheet. There are 2 books that needed me to fill up. First is the monthly expenditure. In the past I used to record all my expenses, big or small, onto that spreadsheet daily. But these days, I tend to consolidate...

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