Random Thoughts

Have been busy lately so have not been finding much time to write anything new.  And not that there is anything new that I can contribute in terms of financial knowledge to the already booming community.  There are so many high quality articles on newspapers, magazines, blogs, etc where one can find information about investing and personal finance that it is making me re-think what is my purpose in maintaining this blog and whether it is still worthwhile to put in time, effort and energy into something where my contributions are perhaps not worth mentioning.  After all, there are so many other ppl who are much more knowledgeable and who write much better than me.

The amount of emails that I get are also way too many for me to reply and track (so sorry if I have not been responding).  I am too busy to attend any events, market products or liaise with people to exchange links/post guests postings.  Ask any blogger and I am certain they will tell you this is like doomsday for any blog.  But this approach has served me pretty well thus far.  I know blogging is about building a community but I don't really have that much time on my hands.

Because I have been "dry" on new things to write, I have started reading quite a fair bit.  Just finished a book by David Bach on the Automatic Millionaire.Homeowner.( I read another of his books previously on the Automatic Millionaire which is sort of summarised here)  It was really easy to read and I skipped all the parts that were not really relevant to me so managed to finish the entire book in less than a day.

It was written in 2005 before the subprime crisis but the main idea is that we should all aspire to own our own homes rather than rent a home since owning a home is a way to automate savings simply by forcing oneself to save.  Of course, that is assuming that your home value does not drop drastically along the way.

Another idea that I like is that one should try to become a landlord and rent out your house.  It has always been something that I have thought of doing.

The last takeaway I had from the book was the idea of bi-weekly mortgage payments.  The concept is to make more mortgage payments (or pre-payments) so that you pay less interest on the mortgage loans.  Of course, I am certain many people disagree with this approach as they will cite low interest rates in Singapore as a very good reason to stretch out your mortgage loans as long as possible.

Just a quick and short sharing.