Wednesday, July 22, 2015

How best to utilize the Singapore Savings Bond?

With the recent announcements of the Singapore Savings Bond (SSB) coming up in Sept, which is just 2 months away, there's a lot more thinking on my part regarding how best to utilise this new instrument to preserve and grow our wealth. The advantages of this savings bond is widely reported in the newspaper. It's that you can cash in and liquidate the bond any time without price risk. For bonds, there is a maturity date and if you hold the bonds...

Monday, July 20, 2015

What would change if you earn $25k per month?

I saw a newspaper article today here that talks about the difficulties of older aged PMETs who are struggling to find work after being laid off in the last financial crisis. In the article, there are several examples of people earning (to me) an extremely high income. There's one getting $25k a month and another earning $9k per month. On Sunday Times, there are a few woman earning $10k and $9k per month, and wanting their significant other to earn...

Wednesday, July 15, 2015

Should everyone invest?

Before answering that, let's change it to another question: Should everyone have tuition? No. Because not everyone needs it, though most will probably have to seek some sort of guidance every now and then. If you're highly disciplined, understands what is going on in school and has access to occasional help, then go ahead and do it independently! I also don't have access to tuition at all in my schooling days, but that's a zillion years ago and...

Monday, July 13, 2015

6 problems that prevent students from scoring

This article is first published in my tuition site here. I thought it'll be great to share this with the parents and students who sometimes read this site. ------------------------------------------ In my years of tutoring, I found that there are 6 categories of problems that students faced. I’m going to list out all these potential problems and then we will see how we can reduce or eliminate them. 1. Not knowing the content well 2. Lack of exposure...

Thursday, July 09, 2015

Half year review

Tracking is different from managing goals. If you track your goals but didn't do any reflection, then the feedback system is lost and you might not really use the data that you've tracked wisely. You can even say that tracking is a tool to mine data for reflection, so that you can have a better outcome at the end of the day. Time flies, and the more I age, the faster it flies. Days zoomed by, followed by weeks and then months. Before I can unwrap...

Wednesday, July 08, 2015

HSI free falling -1450 pts

HSI did a good show today. Following the rise and fall of Shanghai closely, especially the latter, HSI went into free fall and dropped a staggering 1450 points, which represents a total of 5.84%. It's a figure that we don't see often and I thought it'll be good to save a screenshot of today's market close for future reference. So here we go: What good is the knowledge of such things? I think firstly, it gives you a sense of how bad market...