Learn from the Ants!

There's a lot of things that we can learn from the ants. Here's a trick on productivity coming straight from the ants colony itself - it's called Ant Colony Optimization. How does a scouting ant tell the rest of her colony that there's food here? She will secrete more pheromones - some kind of ant perfume - along the path that she found the food. When her colony mates passes by and picks up the pheromones, they will follow the trail, find the...

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The 3 components of ROE

I've written in the past about the dangers of relying solely on ROE calculations. The danger comes from not knowing the components that makes up ROE. For the uninitiated, it refers to a matrix called Return on Equities. Not this roe lah! I think it's important to use Dupont analysis of ROE to break up the components of ROE into 3 main categories: Financial leverage = Total assets / Equity Assets turnover = Revenue / Assets Net margin =...

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Winning the skirmishes but losing the war

We are sometimes so caught up with our lives that we neglect the big picture. We often keep doing the things that are urgent, but forget about the things that are less urgent but nevertheless are important. Study the matrix above. Urgent means that it has a time factor to it. It needs to be done as soon as possible in order to meet datelines that are either self-imposed or externally imposed. Important means that it fulfills certain long term...

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Will you buy a chair for 1.6k?

I read a very interesting article about the comfort principle this morning. It's about optimising your spending in such a way so that you maximise your comfort level. If not taken to the extreme, this provides a very good guide on spending on things that are of value to you, not merely to catch up with or impress others. Similar to the author in the article, I also spent A LOT of money on a chair. When I renovated my current home, I knew I will...

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Hedging both sides of the bet on life

We usually hedge against a long life by planning for our retirement. We save up. We make sure we have enough passive income to last 20-30 years after our retirement. But we also have to hedge against the possibility of having a short life. Nobody knows when we're going to pass away. While it's never good to live in the present and forget about the future, it's also equally bad to concentrate solely on the future and skim on the present. I know...

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$10k a month as a tutor? Think again.

I think by now you should have read this post about a tutor who earns $10k a month. Most of what is mentioned in the article is quite true and I can vouch for its accuracy. Some comments on it though, before you quit your job to become one: 1. There's no CPF contribution by employer, leave, benefits, company dinners, health insurance sponsored by company. There's no company benefits at all. You must learn to take care of your own affairs. Being...

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Retirement thoughts

I was thinking about retirement income recently, especially after reading a click bait post from a magical blog. I felt cheated because I was baited into it, so that set me thinking. It's not the same topic however, but certainly in the same general area of personal finance. To get a retirement income, we have to settle a few variables. Once those variables are thought of, we can perhaps (roughly) solve this question of getting the monthly retirement...

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Is it a "waste of yourself" to be caught up in investing?

I think financial education is a must in this world. It's not even an option. Everything (almost) transacts in monetary terms, so without a working knowledge of money, you'll be severely disadvantaged in this world that you're currently living in. But even though it's a necessity, it doesn't mean everyone needs to be an expert in it. There are different levels of involvement. Essentially, if you're not interested in financial stuff, you just need...

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