The unequal race

I saw this picture that just strikes out at me, urging me insistently that I put it up on my blog. Here it is: In the picture, it clearly shows the difference between those from a wealthy family background and those from a poorer background. Even though the physical starting line is the same, the race can never be fair simply because the financial starting line will never be the same. Considering the two person running the race. They had started...

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Have you done your taxes?

As I was doing my e-filing of tax (the deadline is on the 2nd week of April), I was pleasantly surprised by two changes. A picture, or in this case a table, represents a thousand words: You can see that the % for each tier had been reduced for tax assessment year 2012. I noticed that there's more breakdown of the tax bracket between 40k to 160k too. The result would be less tax for everyone, but more so for the lower income bracket percentage-wise....

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Just do it

What is it with humans? We crave for the comforts and security of routine but get frustrated and bored by the very same things that we do again and again. We want to experience adventure yet fear the road that lies ahead. We want to be do the same thing that we did yesterday yet we get bored by them in the end. I've talked to people who complained about their lot in life. For every suggestion that I offered, but they shot me back with 10 reasons...

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The 4 priorities

I believe that when we start working and start having a decent income stream, we shouldn't start investing straight away with that money. I think that certain foundation needs to be built first before we should think about growing our wealth. These following points, in my opinion, are listed in order of priority. I'll start with the first point with the greatest priority, followed by the last with the least priority: 1. Savings This is the start of everything. Unless your family provides you with a huge sum of money to begin with, you'll have...

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Clearing the clutter in your life

I hate clutter in my life. It can exist physically or emotionally. Physical clutter includes the mountain of nonsense gathered over the past months (some are years) and stacks of paid and unpaid bills on the desktop. Even my computer desktop is cluttered with pdf and word document files that are archived off to read in the future. Games shortcut that I'll never have time to complete, movies link that I'm supposed to follow up in the near future....

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Nikkei crashing

Japan had the greatest earthquake in its history, of magnitude 8.9. This triggered a tsunami that devastated the eastern and mostly northern part of Japan island. Due to the specter of possible nuclear meltdown over the nuclear power stations situated in Japan and consequently damaged during the natural calamity, Nikkei crashed very badly. The first day it crashed around 6% and today it crashed another 10%. That's a very bad crash, bringing Nikkei...

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Somebody by Depeche Mode

The Japan earthquake cum tsunami is very heartwrenching. Is it only when disaster strikes that we think more deeply on what is more important in our lives? I guess so, because all I want to do right now is to hug my wife and say that I love her. I was listening to our march in song a moment ago. It's called Somebody by Depeche Mode. A very old song but one that speaks volume of our relationship. I didn't mention this in my wedding but this means more than the official wedding vows that we exchanged. This is our wedding vows, presented in the...

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Cache Logistic trust

Cache logistic trust Weekly Daily Company pays dividend per quarterly, with annualized DPU at 0.077. At price of 0.925, dividend yield is 8.3 % pa. Gearing is 23.7% based on last FY results. Sounds like a good trade...perhaps within the week. But the profit margin isn't that fantastic. Selling near 0.95 to 0.96 yields only around 3% ROC...not that fantastic. Even if the weekly divergence plays out and I sell at 0.97, it'll be around 5%...

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Collected thoughts

I was quite out of touch of the whole world, having spent most of my week out in the jungle having no access to internet and newspaper. Even my starhub reception out there is intermittent at best, so I can't even call out or sms if I want to. Anyway, nothing much changes with or without me - the world revolves on its own in my presence or not. Some random thoughts: 1. I noticed that I had many pens in my pencil case. I was trying to clear out some non-working pens and was testing out the ink of the pens, so I was scribbling on a rough paper...

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