The chains of Habits

The chains of habit is too light to be felt, until it's too heavy to be broken. Habits can be both good and bad. Here, let's focus on the good ones. If you want to start a new habit, research says you need at least xx days to form it. 'xx' can be anything from 21 days, or 49 days (7 weeks), to 66 days. I think it doesn't matter how many days, but the point is that you must do it consecutively, or regularly enough, until you can't pass the...

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Circle of life

I noticed that with each Christmas that passes me by, it seems that my life gets simpler and simpler. I remember that in my younger days, I would go out to party with friends. Nothing wild, just going to Orchard for the countdown - you know, that sort of thing. Countdown parties seems like the craze for me back then. It's not that Christmas is particularly important for me, maybe it's just an excuse to let loose a while. 'Thon' - that's the word...

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A little a day goes a long way; A lot goes a longer way

Savings more or earning more is the way forward? Some say it's savings more, some say it's earning more and some say both are important. To me, I think the sequence is more important.  I think if you're having a fixed pay where your income is fixed, then there's nothing else you can do to increase it. If you want to save more, then you have to cut your spending. The savings equation is very simple; Savings = Income - Expenses. Cutting expenses...

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The year 2015 in terms of books read

Year 2015 is like any other year in terms of my book challenge. I completed my 52 books challenge for 2015 with some more weeks to spare! I find that this year, the quality of the books I read are fantastic. There's a lot more breadth and also a lot more depth. I started reading up books on spiritual growth too, so I think that's a genre that I can always do more in depth. As usual, I'll put up a list of all the 53 books I've read this year, and...

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Digging deeper into ROE

Look at this company's ROE below: FY 2011  -- ROE 72.6% FY 2012 --  ROE 47.7% FY 2013 --  ROE 33.7% FY 2014 --  ROE 25.6% The ROE (return over equities) keeps falling from the 70+% range towards the current 25% range, but it's still pretty high. Would you say something is wrong? If so, what went wrong? It's important at this stage to break up the ROE into parts. It's called Dupont analysis, where ROE is split up into three...

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ARA rights are out

ARA right shares results are out. It might not be out officially, but I saw the amount of refund from my bank account and deduced the amount of rights shares that I got it. To double confirm, I will have to check my CDP account to see that the shares are physically transferred into the account. Either way, I'll receive a snail mail from them to inform me of the rights results. ARA had been pretty good to me but I cashed out and subsequently left...

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How to make CPF contributions as a self employed?

I seldom talk about CPF, because I'm a self employed. It's a little different for me. When I want to find out more about it, there's not a lot of information out there that curate and collate all the info that I want. Hence I put up this article about CPF especially for self employed. The details are still relevant, perhaps the figures need to be updated from time to time, but those are easy to find out once you know what you're looking out for. Every...

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The highlight meeting of the year

I do meet bloggers from time to time, and this is one of the perks of having a blog. No, it's not just about the ad dollars or the good comments you might receive on a post well written. Because if it is about that, then I would have long given up on blogging since there are times I have neither. It's about the little things. And on Monday, I happened to meet up with two bloggers at the same time. In a good meet up, you never really feel that...

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Year 2015 is a Challenging year

The year 2015 is closing soon. This had been a rather 'challenging' year for me because I issued a lot of personal challenges to experience growth in as many areas as possible. I think for me, it's important to be a better person this year than the last, and I try hard to do that as well. Here are 4 major challenges that I threw on myself: 1. Career challenge 2. Body challenge 3. Mind challenge 4. Spirit challenge Career challenge My career...

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Short term goals for my long term plans (Update:2015)

Exactly last year, I posted this article titled "Short term goals for my long term plan". I think it's great that facebook memories reminded me of it - it's a great feature. It's time to update that goal and see what I've done and what I still need to do. This is for last year 12th Dec 2014: Invested in market: $75,000 Investible cash: $70,000 Total capital so far: $145,000 Capital shortfall: $240k - $145k = $95k or approximately $100k This is for this year 12th Dec 2015: Invested in market: $115,000 Investible cash: $81,000 Total capital...

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Putting all your eggs in one basket

There are employment benefits like discounted share options for people working in listed companies. I think it's a great option to buy such discounted shares since they do add up to a substantively, especially when there's not a lot of restrictions on selling. The point is that if you offer employee shares of the company they are working in, they will be more aligned to perform better since they are all stakeholders and shareholders. But that's...

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Networth updated!

Okay, it's time to do an update on my networth position. Seems like my click bait-ish post last year titled I've Zero networth is picked up in fb and started a few posts by other bloggers like BIGfatpurse and The Turtle Investor. They said it's controversial, haha and I agree that it is so. I think it's because of the way I calculate networth seems like I'm self flagellating myself and deriving pleasure from my own self inflicted pain....

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The New Bees and The Veteran

The new bees sat in the auditorium, eagerly awaiting the arrival of the trainer. They had been waiting for weeks for this combat course conducted by The Veteran. This is among a series of training seminars organised by The Queen for the orientation of new bees in the hive. The Veteran is an ex soldier bee and her reputation far precedes her. During the 2008 great bear attack, where an opportunistic bear tried to steal the golden honey in the hive,...

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To be carefree with money

These days I'm more carefree with money. To others, it might not be a good thing, but for me, I think it's good progression towards the kind of person I want to be. When I was younger, I'm a lot tighter with money. I guess the circumstances necessarily force one to become like that, so as to survive. Hence, to be able to become financially free, that is, to be free from thinking about money, I need to be able to spend money without worrying so...

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