My chin up journey

For the past weeks since the start of the year, you can see 2 persons in the east near to a pull up bar, around 10pm to as late as 11pm. One of them would go near to a bar first, mount it by jumping up and the other would as quickly as possible, grab the ankles and help to assist the person to go up. It'll be 2 sets of 6 assisted chin ups, if they are feeling strong and energetic, or 3 sets of 4 reps if they are not feeling up to it. Always, there'll...

Read More

LP's asset portfolio

I'm inspired by Derek when he shared his asset portfolio here. Like him, I'm not going to include the asset value of my residential property, nor my CPF or insurance surrender value. No point including property, as it easily overshadow all the other assets, distorting the percentage. Besides, I don't really see my residential property as an asset. Personally I would include the surrender value of my insurance, or decided to keep it as consistently...

Read More

POSB did it again!

Not long after the 1.5%, 6 months (cap of 20k) exercise that I blogged about here, they came up with another bigger amount and longer tenure. This current one is 1.88% pa for 12 months, with a minimum amount of $1k to a max of $1 million. In addition, there's also a $88 ang bao for the first 10,000 customers. The details are all found in their website here. The full terms and conditions is found here. To qualify, you need: 1. Register by...

Read More

My spending threshold

I always believe we should grow bigger than our problems. It's the way to make a big problem smaller, simply because you've grown bigger in size. I've written about these topics at length here: 1. Of dragons and men 2. The relative size of your problems 3. Outgrow your problems 4. Growing bigger than your problems In the past, I used to fret about $10 meals. I only had very little pocket money and that's all the budget I had which also includes...

Read More

MRT reserved seats

Tan plugged in his earphones, trying hard to ignore the stares of other passengers. He tried to close his eyes, pretending to sleep, so as to shield himself from the knives those eyes are throwing at him. In front of him, a pregnant lady stands close to him. He heard someone muttering, but it's drowned out by the music blasting from the earphones. Tan is, afterall, sitting on the reserved seat of the MRT train. It is Tuesday 8:32 am. To be inside...

Read More

Start with the man in the mirror

I started ‘playing’ the market with no skills, dabbled in warrants simply because they are cheap and that I have limited amount of cash and patience. I've no idea how warrant works but that doesn't stop me from buying and selling them, often several times in a day to the tune of 15 to 20k per trade to scalp the minute changes. It’s a wonder that I didn't catastrophically burst my bank account. I've heard of people making a lot of sense talking about...

Read More

How to beat OCBC 360's return

To the above blog title, I should add, 'in a relatively safe manner'. Risk and returns are directly related, so if you want to beat OCBC 360's 3.05% pa returns, you can always invest in the stock market with the potential risk of having capital losses. Here, I'm going to try beating the 3.05% returns, as well as equal it in terms of the risk of losing your capital. Possible? Read on. We all know what's so great about OCBC 360 account.  If...

Read More

The story of Old Cody

Near a mountain, far far inland lived a happy, but a lonely man. He is not rich; doesn't own a car, shiny rubies, nor smoke a cigar. What is his name? If you care to ask. He’s Old Cody – farming is his task. Monday six morn, he asked rich Richard, if he is free, to view his orchard. Shaking his head, poor Richard replies, "I am not free, to see the sunrise, so Old Cody, I bid you goodbye". Old Cody shrugged, at least he did try. On...

Read More

(Some of) My 2014 expenditures

Finally after using YNAB for 1.5 yrs, I have a full set of expenditure data from Jan 2014 to Dec 2014. This is a software that enables me to track my spending to a great degree of accuracy. No faulty mental accounting nor mistakes here, so it's as good as it gets. These are some of my expenditures: 1. Food/restaurants : $424 per month, or $14 per day ($4 per day for restaurant, $10 per day for foodcourt/hawker/coffee shops) 2. Utilities bill:...

Read More