How much do you need to have a family & live comfortably?

I was just wondering how much a typically Singaporean needs to earn in order to survive comfortably. The government is asking us not to be perfect and to have a family life (which includes 2 kids) as soon as possible. I am wondering how it is even possible to have all these without the necessary thought to the financial expenses involved. How much does a Singaporean need without kids?



Let's run through some of the expenses involved:


1. Housing - $750
2. Insurance - $500
3. Parents - $500
4. Food - $500
5. Transport - $200
6. Entertainment - $200


Total : $2,650

Riddle: How many kids do you see in the pic above?  Answer: two

 

That amount of money is based on a typical single with housing (4-5 rm resale), with no cars and no kids. Let's just round it up to $3,000. I've no idea how much you need to raise a kid, but my guess is that at different levels, different sums of money will be needed. Initially you'll need cans of milk powder and diapers, then you'll progress to toys, books, clothes and shoes, then it'll be tuition fees, school fees and enrichment fees and so on. I don't even know how to begin calculating.



But I think a safe guide will be at least twice the amount of money calculated i.e. $6k for household income. I think with $6k as a household income, it'll be a life where you can afford to spend a little now and then, but on big purchases, you'll still have to deliberate and think if your year end bonuses allow for it. The occasional trip overseas will be to nearby SEA countries (think thailand, M'sia, Indonesia) instead of lofty places like Europe, Australia or USA.



What about retirement? With 6k combined income, I think there's not much left for retirement in the CPF account. I think most would have to be spent on education for kids, as well as for the mortgage payment for housing loans. Is a car possible? Maybe...a small family car, nothing luxurious, nothing fanciful, but it'll be extra load to the family. Better make sure both are gainfully employed because if anyone got retrenched, then the hardship will be felt immediately. I doubt there'll be much savings that can be made based on a 6k household income.



Since both parents have to work, then a domestic helper is necessary. Supposedly there's no family support to help out on the caring part, then a maid have to come into the picture, which will add in an extra few hundreds to the expenses per month. No choice I guess, unless either the husband or wife is a high income earner who can earn more than the combined total of the household, perhaps like 8k or 10k, then one of them can stay at home to take care of the family. Then again, such arrangement will raise the risk of the family as a whole because when the economy downturns and jobs starts flying off, a retrenchment exercise is going to introduce a lot of stress to the family. At least for dual income family, one can still stand while the other retreats.



Is it a wonder then, that Singaporeans delay having kids, or don't even want to have kids? I think any responsible parent will think twice on their ability to shoulder the financial burdens of having 1-2 extra members to the family before heeding the calls of the government to drop the perfect conditions to have a kid. It's not just adding an extra pair of chopsticks to the dinning table...if only it's that easy.

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How do you know if you are addicted to the cbox?

** "BIAS" is a special feature in my blog where I get to say whatever I want with scant regards for your feelings. I'm not politically correct in this feature, so go ahead, judge me."


I noticed a significant increase in the number of people going to the cbox. It definitely shows that the market activity is picking up. At the most bullish times, my cbox volume indicator gives a good proxy to the general activity happening in the stock market.


Should be interesting to see if you need some treatment from being addicted to my infamous cbox, haha :)

1. Do you know the people who are using the cbox better than your face-to-face friends, even though you might never have met them before?

2. Do you have a compulsive desire to log on to the cbox during  free times in school or at work, just to see what the people there are talking about?

3. Do you have a separate cbox 'hidden' in the background of your workdesk of your computer so that you are kept in the know of what's happening in the cbox without letting people in your office know that you're doing that?

4. Do you have a desire to help out other people in the cbox or simply to share what knowledge you have or just some interesting things you're heard or read by providing links?

5. Be honest with yourself. Have you been spending more than 5 hours per day at the cbox, excluding sat and sun?

Looks like some of us here, haha!

If you answered YES to more than 3 of the above 5 questions, I think you're addicted to the cbox. Congrats, you are part of the growing community of bullythebear cbox users!

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I loved some of the comments so much that I decided to add in a few more checklist to see if you're addicted/ These are kindly contributed by those who commented on the cbox. Possibly addicts themselves, haha:

6. Did you change your phone or bought one just so you can access the cbox?

7. Did you try ways to bypass the company's internet control so you can access the cbox?

8. Did you come here to check your bids so as to get 1 or 2 cents lower than the folks here?

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STI component members

My broker sent me this very interesting chart with the STI 30 component stocks and their respective data. With STI reaching 3100, I thought it's a good idea to look at this. There are quite a few data associated with each component stocks, things like PE, Consensus target price, Divy yield and Recommendations by analyst.

This is what I've observed about the data:


1. Just a quick look at the recommendations offered by analyst for the 30 counters, we can see that there is a heavy bias towards a buy call. With the exception of SMRT (0 Buy, 8 Holds, 10 Sells), you can see that most of the calls made by analyst are Buy calls. Seems like many are optimistic about the next one year ahead, with upgrading of earnings and the economy recovered from the last crisis. For analyst to stake a sell call is a heavy bet on their analyst and their reputation, so SMRT might be interesting to look at. Why is there so many analyst calling for a hold/sell and nothing on buy?



2. If you look at the consensus target price for the various counters, you'll notice that some had been reached, some had been exceeded and there are some marching towards their target price. The difference between the target price and the current price is not very far. If one is so inclined, I suppose the consensus estimate for STI for the next 1 yr can be computed by finding out the respective weightings for each counter. I'll just take the banks as a guide, knowing that they will form a big part of the weightings. I think another 10-15% in STI is expected. This means we're looking at around 3400 to 3600 in a year's time.



3. Looking at the PE ratio, you can see that the 'land' counters are really high compared to historical PE. Most of the other component stocks have their PE ratio in line with historical PE. Banks seems to be underperforming, with their historical PE higher than current. I believed that if STI is to go up higher, banks will be the one to catch up to bring the whole index upwards. For property counters, the direction seems clear - sideway (best scenario) or down (likely scenario). I think STI also seems to be sustainable at this level because except for the 'land' counters, the PE is not exceeding high above its historical PE. In fact, it's pretty much in line with it.



4. I didn't know that with the exception of Genting (perhaps it's new) and NOL (years of losses), the rest of the components stocks pay dividend. It'll be great to hold the bluest of the blue chip with a good dividend, but how to do that? We must be courageous and buy them when everybody wants to dump them. That's what we're here for right? To encourage each other to buy when others are fleeing, and to have a community to provide each other with the social proof of being greedy and others are fearful.

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Support you we shall

** "BIAS" is a special feature in my blog where I get to say whatever I want with scant regards for your feelings. I'm not politically correct in this feature, so go ahead, judge me."



Yesterday I received news that momoeagle, one of the active cbox member here, decided to call it quits after adsense pulled a fast one on him. You can read about it here and the email that they sent to him. It's the very same email that I received from them when I was about to cash out my earnings from the advertisements. I blogged about that many moons ago here and I was still disgusted over it. Basically beyond appealing that's nothing much we can do here.



But I guess I never looked back since. I started to find other sources of ad-venue since adcents are not giving me much returns anyway, so who the hell needs them? Anyway, the point of me starting this is not to be famous or to even earn a living out of it. I reflected upon my blog's objective several times throughout its lifespan - it's always the same, I'm blogging because I wanted to record my journey and idiosyncrasies for my own record. If others find it enriching and amusing, and continue to support me my reading them, I'm very honoured. I think what makes me continue blogging is the immense support found online and offline amongst the superfriends. If not for this, I would never have met so many like-minded people, so diverse in their views and so willing to share. I'm even inviting a few people whom I've met many times online but never face-to-face for my wedding. That's the extent of the community built up over many nights of chats in my 'infamous' cbox.

I don't like white roses...it's like a red rose drained of passion, of spirit

What WILL make me sad is when my entire blog articles got removed, perhaps when the server for hosting the sites suddenly goes kaput. That will really ruin my day. It's not just the removal of a source advenue for me that makes me disappointed but rather the loss of my recorded memories. It's like someone came over and remove a few years of my life...ouch...I hope that never happens.



So, momo, if you're reading this, please continue to fight the good fight. I've learnt some valuable stuff over at your blog and will be hoping to read more of what you dish out.

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Timeline for AIMSAMPIReit rights exercise

Quite a number of aims shareholders are asking about the rights timeline. I thought I'll paste up the whole thing up here. This is taken from their presentation slides available in sgx website, under company announcement. I think the key dates are the rights acceptance period and the nil paid rights trading period.

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AIMSAMPIReit rights exercise

I've AIMSAMPIReit and it had gone XR today. The right issue is 7 shares issued at $0.155 for every 20 shares held upon XR. Since I had 30 lots of Aims bought at $0.220, I will be having some odd lots after the rights issue. For those who have no clues on how to subscribe for rights, my newbie's FAQ link here might help out. It's still useful to ME after having done it for so long, haha! Here's the calculations:

Right shares entitled: 30/20x7 = 10.5 lots

Amount to fork out for 10.5 lots = 10.5 x 0.155 x 1000 = $1,627.50

Total amount of aims after rights = 10.5 + 30 = 40.5 lots

Average price after rights for 40.5 lots = (0.22x20 + 0.155x7)/27 = 0.2031

I will most probably subscribe to excess lots over and above my entitled ones. Firstly, it's to top up my share holdings to avoid odd lots. The chances to apply for excess will be higher if your holdings have odd lots, so I hope to get at least 0.5 lots. Secondly, at 0.155 per right shares, it's a steal. It'll average down my overall holdings and get a very very decent yield. For more detailed information, look at AK's and Momo's links,  which I'm sure they will be happy to provide at the commentary of this post.



So the problem here is how much to subscribe? What are the chances of getting them in the first place? I think I can only control how much I want to subscribe, I'll leave the rest to fate. But it's not just suka suka subscribe, because you will have to pay them first and if it's unsuccessful (or partially successful), they will refund you back. In fact, you'll probably see the refund in your bank account before the shares are in your CDP, so that's the best way to see if your application for excess rights are successful or not.


I think I'll follow momo's suggestion to double up. How about 40.5 lots excess? In that case, I'll need:

40.5 lots excess at 0.155 each = 40.5 x 0.155 = $6,277.50

Entitled amt of 10.5 lots = $1,627.50

Total amt of capital to fork out =  $7,905

Total amt of lots if all successfully subscribed (I doubt so) = 81 lots

No point calculating how much my average price will be because I highly doubt I can get all the rights shares I want. If I really do, then I'll be afraid because what do all the rest see that I do not see? hahaaa, funny human beings...

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Preference shares Part II

I've written this article on preference shares a long time ago, suitably titled as Preference Shares Part I. I thought I should finish that article now, haha, after so long!



To have a quick recap, let's go through some of the terms. Nothing much had changed since the last definition, but today I'm not in the mood for fancy words, so let's just use plain Jane terms. There are a few terms in preference shares that need to be understood.



Non-cumulative : This means that if they did not give out a payment in the stated date, they will not accumulate that payment to pay more in the next payment date. In other words, the payment is not guaranteed, unlike a bond. However, all of the preference shares I saw state that if the ordinary shares are given a payment, they are also obliged to pay for the preference shares. Cumulative means that if the payment is somehow not given for this particular payment date, it will be accrued and paid on the next payment date. Non-cumulative is important because I just read from my older post that only non-cumulative ones are placed in Tier 1 capital for banks. Not sure if that's still in effect now, given the new basel III regulatory rules.



Non-convertible : This means that the preference shares cannot be converted into ordinary shares. Convertible of course means that it can be changed to ordinary shares.



Par value: Each preference share is issued at par value. Let's say the par value of this particular one is 100 upon issue. The preference share is traded in the open market, so it will be subjected to price volatility, meaning that it can go above or below the par value. During the crisis, most if not all the preference shares are traded way below the par value, but I think now most are trading above it. It's important to understand that if the issuer is to call back the preference shares, they will buy from you back at the par value. Hence, it's a good idea to buy yours at below par, so as secure a capital gains on top of any dividend payment. Unlike a bond where there is a maturity date (where the issuer will buy back the bond at par value), there isn't one for preference shares. There will, however, be a callable date, after which it may be liable for call back at par value.



This is not to say that buying above par value is a bad thing. If the preference shares pay you 5% pa and you buy above par value by 2%, it's still a good deal if it is called back after 1 yr because you'll still get 3% (5-2=3) returns. Of course, if you buy below par value, then there will be a margin of safety, so to speak. Price volatility is not a problem as long as you hold it till the issuer calls back the shares. In the worst case, if the issuer goes belly up, then too bad, you get almost nothing.



In the event of liquidation, where the assets of the company that issued the preference shares are to be sold, the creditors will get the first tranche of money. Creditors will be those that buy bonds. However, preference shares are ranked above ordinary shares.  Hence preference shares are junior to bonds but senior to ordinary shares in the event of liquidation. Let's hope nothing of that sort happens in the first place, so place your bets on companies that are safe. No point getting a preference shares of 15% pa on a very risky company. I believe when one is buying preference shares, you want to have the liquidity of share market to buy in or sell out yet at the same time have a sort of nonchalance to price movement. Getting preference shares is the surest thing to getting a almost guaranteed dividend income without worrying about price movement.



I had bought this non-cumulative, non-convertible 6.20% preference shares from hsbc, with par value of 25 USD. Callable date 16th Dec 2010 and anytime after that date. Dividend comes in quarterly tranches per year, on the 15th of March, June, Sept and Dec. I'll work out some calculations here for my own reference in the future.


Price bought: 24.1 USD
Yield : 6.2/24.1 x 25 : 6.43% pa
Price discount to par value : 1-24.1/25 = 3.6%


If they recall back on 16th Dec 2010, I'll get at least one quarter of the yearly dividends, or 1.61% (6.43/4). Since they will have to buy back from me at par, I'll get 5.2% (3.6+1.61) returns before commission and forex. If they recall one year later, I'll be looking at 3.6% + n (6.43)% returns, where n is the number of full years I'm holding. Sounds like a good deal to me.

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Berkshire business books bites the dust

Another one bites the dust. Berkshire business books gives me fond memories. They sell books that are much cheaper than those that are found in physical stores. But these days, with online bookstores aplenty, I think they are not getting the business they needed. I bought a few books from them, that's about it.

Goodbye!

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My top 5 list of possible career options

** "BIAS" is a special feature in my blog where I get to say whatever I want with scant regards for your feelings. I'm not politically correct in this feature, so go ahead, judge me."


I was thinking what I would do as a career if I were to just follow my passions blindly, with no regards to the monetary rewards and social repercussions. Yes, social repercussions - there are some jobs that you can't bring yourself to tell others because people would look at you as if you're an alien who just landed on Earth. My job is almost like that actually, but I guess I've grown accustomed to it.


"So what do you do for a living?", he asks.

"I'm a private tutor"

"Oh...good hor, no need to pay tax"

"..... But I do."

"Oh okay...the weather very hot today hor?"


And the conversation shifts to something else. I guess without your social ranking (aka manager, executive etc.), people do not know where you stand in society, hence explaining the awkwardness in social occasions. Quite interesting to take note of people's reaction, actually.


Anyway, here's my list for career that I would do. They are not in any order of importance, just which one came to my mind the first:



1. Artist

Not the sing song type but the one who draws and paints. I'm also interested in such things but thought better of it to pursue as a career. Singapore? Arts? Somehow the two words do not equate together. I'm a practical soul, most unfortunately. Hence, I do not think I'm the arty farty people who can really do this kind of thing for a living.

2. Novelist

I always think that my penchant for words is better than my English grades show in my report books. There must be a conspiracy between all the English teachers because I always seem to get a low B or usually a C for my English results. I say they don't appreciate my kind of style. The next best thing to being a novelist is to be a blogger. I publish whatever crap and there are still people who reads them. Financially rewarding as a blogger? Okay lah, earn some kopi money. Satisfying? Definitely.

3. High flying executive

My job does not have a corporate ladder for me to climb, so I always wonder how it feels like to climb one. Will I be a dagger and cloak kind of people or will I be the underlings who gets tramped under? I think wearing a power suit with neck ties to work seems sexy to me when I don't have to actually do it, hahaha. Perhaps the perks and the social pecking rules are the incentives? I wonder what it'll be like to have subordinates report to me, or to have reports to deliver to customers and you know, the likes of rats doing the rat race.

4. Pianist

My utmost regret is not to be able to learn piano when I'm young. I always feel that I can do a good job (in fact, a very good job at it) but am not given a chance to do so. It frustrates me when I tried laying my hands on the keys of the piano but what I produced is just noise, but under a skilled hands, beautiful music emanates out from it. I play the guitar (suckily though, been self-taught) but piano is still....well, classier. All is not lost though, because if I have a kid, I would really want to learn the piano together. It'll be interesting to be the oldest student there amongst the tiny tots, haha

5. Educator

To encompass the whole spectrum of people who teach others to learn a skill and do coaching, I would loosely use the word 'educator'. I think my character is very suited for this type of work and I enjoy the interaction very much. Probably would do what I'm doing till I can't do anymore, but of course, without the intensity that I'm doing at now, which hardly leaves me with room to recuperate.

So there, presenting to you my top 5 career options. Interesting list to write down actually, and see what you could be doing in an alternate universe where everything is different and you're not restricted by monetary concerns and the generally uncomfortable and harsh realities of life. Would you share with me your top 5 list? haha :D

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As I was finishing this post, I've a sudden urge to add in my 6th on the list. I feel that I'm not doing myself justice if I didn't add in. It's THAT important.


6. Computer programmer

I think I would have liked being a computer programmer. I've done a few modules on software programming (no biggies like C++ or java, mine is the engineering's very own ancient FORTRAN) and they interest me to no end. I like how I can construct algorithms and figure out different but progressively more efficient way to get to the end point. It's like solving a mathematical problem and you can get to do it creatively and still reach the same goals. Yes, I think maths is a very creative subject.

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The soundtrack of my life

I had this gigantic mp3 player - one of the first few generations of mp3 players, I proclaim proudly - from iriver. It is one gigantic piece of awesome, orgasm inducing music device, though it looks like a brick since it's essentially a harddisk. Not as sexy and slim as ipod...gosh, it does not even come with colours (it's only black fonts with blue background). I bought it for nearly 700 bucks for 10 Gb of storage and it's mine, so I loved it very much :)



Recently I brought it out of cold storage to listen to the songs I had inside. Usually I listen to songs by albums, put in the exact sequence as laid out in the album. If the artist and album producers decided that there is some magical rituals in putting the song listings in a particular way, who am I to say it's not? But yesterday, I put it to random shuffling, so instead of listening to albums one by one, I listened to my treasury troves, well, randomly.



I've always thought of producing an album known as my personal soundtrack. It's like the movie sound track of LP's life story. There are certain music that define my existence here on earth. When I was in primary school (the defunct Bedok View Primary school), I was quite into Chinese music. 特别的爱给特别的你 by Sky Wu, 蝴蝶飞呀 by Little Tigers and 红尘有你 by Wang Jie are very representative of what I listen to. I was humming my way into PSLE with these songs as the backdrop or playing hopscotch with these soundtrack. As it was my first foray into the vast universe of songs and pop culture, these songs are very very significant to me.



After that, I went into Maris Stella and had a musically unfruitful 2 years of my life. I was busy adjusting to the new pace of life and didn't have much joy to listen to music. It was the 90s and the beginning of funky hairdo, bold makeup and shoulder padded blouses. And Michael Jackson. I love to buy those big compilation cassette taps and CDs, titled suitably as Mega hit X (where X is a set of integers greater or equals to 1). I was trying to find my musical direction, so I sampled all sorts. There's the very lovely It must have been love by Roxette and (Everything I do) I do it for you by Bryan Adams. I love Bryan Adam's husky voice and his unique way of singing. I practically rushed home to listen to this song in certain periods of my secondary school live. I remembered 'ripping' (if you can call copying songs from cassettes to cassettes ripping) songs into my own personal compilation albums, songs like Paint my love by Michael learns to rock, the very long title by Meatloaf - I'd Do Anything For Love (But I Won't Do That), Soul asylum's Runaway Train and a little bit of Chinese songs. I'd changed my taste from chinese to english songs by secondary school but it'll be a sin to forget about Kit Chan's 喜欢你, 心痛 and 伤心. About the only local Chinese artist I like is Kit Chan. Much more than Stephanie or JJ anyway.

And people wonder why I've a melancholy nature. I supposed years of listening to love songs made me as such. There are 3 classes of love songs - the longing for love (She will be loved by Maroon 5), the joys of being in love (I want to hold your hand by Beatles) and the heartbreaking of love (I will survive by Cake). Each can be sub categorized into more subtle differences, but you get my point. Somehow, I always loved the type 3 class of love songs. So am I melancholy because of love songs, or I listen to love songs hence I became melancholy? I lean towards the latter.



I kept a lot a lot of cassette tapes depicting my secondary school life but sadly those didn't survive. A cruel woman in my home threw them away when I went to army. I remembered being devastated for a quite some time when I cope with the sudden loss of that important part of my life, my memories. How can someone throw other people's memories away? I forgive her but will never forget about it.



I went on to Temasek Junior College and was during the 2 short years, I have only 2 groups of artist that interests me most. Faye Wong and Cranberries. Especially cranberries. Most especially cranberries. I was practically listening to the CDs for most of my life in JC and it is definitely my soundtrack during the 2 years of my life there in TJC. It's my first 'heavy' music - Zombie. Ode to my family is very significant to me because I was humming that during my promos and A'lvls. It has that calming effect on me. Who can forget Linger and Dreams too? I loved this kind of enigmatic voices, so on hindsight, I think Faye Wong is the equivalent chinese verson of that obsession with this particular kind of sound. I bought the very expensive Faye Wong album in JC1 that costs me 30+ bucks at that time. I particularly loved the song 其子, which is the soundtrack of one of the TV movies made by SBC/TCS/Mediacorp (whatever name they call themselves these days, I can't keep track). Actually in the past she used the name Huang Jing Wen, as opposed to the more populist name Faye Wong now. I only bought two albums by her, one is the  天空 album and the other is a canto compilation.



There are little pleasant distractions like 愛相隨 by Emil Chau. It was not until very very much later that I discovered what I really like about music in general. As long as there's a guitar strumming, I would love it. I only knew that much much later in university around 2-3 yrs later. It's interesting to look back though, as I explored the wider universe of music. My classmates are all hot about Zhang Xin Zhe (Jeff Chang), though I'm not. I don't really like high octave male voices, haha :)



I think that marks the real end of my Chinese music era. No more Chinese music from there on...just the occasional songs here and there (I call it a one night stand with that artist). Just love and bye kind of thing.



Out of a philosophical thinking that my life cannot be suitably compressed into one blog post, I decided to blog about my soundtrack from army to the present time in another blog articles. If my soundtrack only lasts one post, it'll be a boring and short movie. Neither do I want it to become a long and draggy Lords of the Rings trilogy (seriously, who ever wants to watch the Return of the King twice? It's so draggggyyyyyy...). Yes, yes, 2 posts should be enough.

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Why I don't blog about the stock market anymore?

Someone mentioned in the cbox (the 'infamous' cbox as AK puts it) that how come I don't blog about stocks and shares these days. If you look at the recent posts, it's all about my ramblings and rantings. Whine whine whine...occasionally there'll be the personal finance or insurance topics that interests me greatly, but almost nothing about stocks or shares.


I don't know if this is a good thing or a bad thing for I suspect that it'll happen to all bloggers one day. Those who felt it but survived gone had gone on to greater heights. Those that felt it and did not survive, well, let's just say their blog's natural lifespan had been reached. I'm sure there are plenty of names in the blogosphere that had its day in the past, but had been gone by now. It's like there's an nuclear explosive - one day it's normal blogging as usual, then the next, only the site remains but there's no more updates. I suppose some blogs even had their infrastructure 'destroyed', meaning that the site can no longer be found and had been taken out with their contents erased.


So...you hear it from me first. I'm no longer as interested in stocks as I had once been in the past. 'No longer interested' is relative, of course. I'm still more interested in stocks then my gf ever will be (haha). Comparing myself in say 2 years ago and the present me, I think the present me is more disinterested and bo chup about the whole market thingy. I mean I still read about market news and read charts and all, but that's because I had to and not because I am inherently interested in it.


It's interesting to note my level of interest waning. It's partly due to my disillusionment about reading books. After you've read shelves of finance books in the library, you'll find that if you've read one, you've read all (figuratively, don't take it literally). The concepts are nearly all the same, so occasionally you'll find a gem that blows your mind, but those are rare and chances are you'll be more likely to find another book that sounds like the one you had read. Food gives nutrients to the body and books gives nutrients to your thoughts. I guess I'm weary about reading finance books now, so my thoughts are seldom about the market.

However, not being interested is different from not having to do it. I think I'll have to do it whether I'm interested or not, as opposed to say putting money in a bank. So while I am practically doing the same stuff with regards to the market as before (I think perhaps more stuff, since I do read charts everyday), I do so without the passion I felt when I first found out what is value investing, what is MA lines, macd histogram... These days, I'm more interested in freeing up my time to do what I like to do, be it playing games, reading or just watching youtube.


Another significant reason why I don't blog so much about the market is that there are people who are doing very much better than me. You can find all their blog links in my site on the top and on the right. Their articles are so much more insightful and more detailed than I can ever do, so I do not see the reason for repeating or trying to re-invent the wheel. I acknowledge that I'm not the best chartist/trader/investor - that much I know. Hence, there's no need to pretend to be good in it just so as to generate more viewership. I'll take a step backwards and try to facilitate traders and investors to meet up in the infamous cbox of mine and to exchange views. That I can do.

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Embracing our differences

I came upon this realisation that me and my gf have very different ways of doing things. It's not that I didn't know that after being together for so long, but rather during these few months of working together on a single project (i.e. our wedding), our differences are amplified and presented to us starkly. In the past, we settle our own projects and seldom have any interference from each other, so the inherent differences in our methods of doing things are thus hidden from view.



She's more of a feeling kind of person, meaning that she'll only do things when she feels like doing so. No amount of pep talk or well laid plans can persuade her to do otherwise. Me, on the other hand, prefers to come up with a plan and stick to it no matter what happens. So often times, when I'm hurried to do something as laid out by my plans, she'll amble along half-heartedly while waiting for her feeling to come, before she'll do it. It's been quite frustrating for me, but no longer.

Disciplined and structured - my way of doing things sounds like the military

Why? After some serious reflection, I thought that it's no point trying to force another person to adopt my way. She had her own successes doing things her own way, so do I, so why should she change to suit my need so that things go 'according to plan'? Besides, after nagging at her to do things for weeks, there's still no progress, so I might as well try another tack. I think it's because of this constant pressuring on my part that causes some arguments between us, and ultimately, I'm the one who feels even more stressed up.



I think if we shine the light of reflection upon ourselves, and stop seeing others as being the problematic one, it'll be the start of a new understanding and cooperation between the parties involved. This kind of concept is easy to read but hard to apply. Therefore, my epiphany that our differences are to be celebrated is both liberating and stress-relieving.



According to her, things that need to happen would happen, so there's no point rushing it. I would bear that in mind and perhaps adopt her free-style way of doing things. Seeing how she's so happy go lucky, perhaps I really should look into the advantages and disadvantages of my disciplined way of handling matters.

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