Portfolios of the Poor

I am reading this book, titled "Portfolios of the Poor" by Collins et al. It's an interesting book because it studies the poor, defined broadly as those living with 2 USD per month or below, in a few continents like South Africa and India. We are talking about people who have irregular income, living in slum cities, plagued with various health issues and still have a family to support. They are living with less than $2 US per month on average,...

Read More

Beware of the rug under your feet

I saw a newspaper article on Straits Times regarding JC students shunning geography as a A lvl subject here. These are the articles that represent one of my grave concerns with my career as a tutor. Major changes like these can make or break my livelihood, and it's very important for me to stay up to date. Imagine if I'm a pure geography tutor who specialises in this one and only subject. Geography tutors are fairly rare, unlike the more ubiquitous...

Read More

I paid off my car loan!

Last month, I just finished my paying off the loan for my pre-owned car. Before the cap for borrowing had been set by law, I've already put in 50% down payment for it, so the amount of money that I borrowed is relatively low. Still, it's a great relief to have paid off something and have no debts. Now, if only that car loan that I've just paid off is my housing loan, haha! Since I'm relatively happy and relieved that I've paid off my car loan,...

Read More

We walk together but alone

On Wed, I met up with 2 financial bloggers. Though it's not the first time we met, the online conversation spilled over to face to face interaction and before long, we chatted for nearly 5 hours just like that. This is shorter than the 6 hours I spent a few months ago here. My wife would probably lament that 3 grown men can chat longer than 3 aunties lol! There's usually a lot more sharing of personal experiences during such face to face interactions,...

Read More

My Saizen arbitrage

Just received a circular for Saizen unit holders, telling us a lot of finalized details about the upcoming disposal of their entire portfolio to Trangle TMK. Of note here is the special distribution of $1.056 per unit to unit holders. I bought and sold a few rounds already, but after they made the announcement near Nov in 2015, I bought it again at $1.0938 (inclusive of comms), hoping to arbitrage on this, which I blogged about it here. Let's see...

Read More

Addictions

This post first appeared in Kungfu Cats Academy. I watched this TED talk recently by Johann Hari regarding Addiction. It's a good talk show, and it talks about how everything we knew about addiction is out-dated and wrong. In essence, addiction had been shown to be cured by introducing more social bonds to the addicts. If the addicts have something to look forward to, where they feel they are needed and wanted, then they will not depend on substances...

Read More