Sheng Shiong is Not the Cheapest

Sheng Shiong Supermarket has always been associated with being cheap, or should I say it correctly: "Providing goods to customers at a cheap price."

I did not start out as a fan of Sheng Shiong as the first store that I visited happened to be located at Jurong Superbowl. During my visit then, I found it to be disorganised, messy and more like a wet market. The impression that was left on me was that there was a reason why Sheng Shiong managed to sell its food so cheap.

Then over the years, I realised a slow transformation that took place. Sheng Shiong seemed to be able to upmarket itself and provided a very clean shopping environment for customers while still providing very good value for money. They also started a fresh seafood section with live lobsters, crabs, prawns and even abalones!

Over the years, I begin to associate Sheng Shiong with being the cheapest supermarket around.

Today, I was proven wrong. I visited NTUC Extra and realised that some items in NTUC were selling much cheaper than Sheng Shiong. The blueberries were selling cheaper than the blueberries in Sheng Shiong. Much cheaper!

So it goes to prove me wrong that all cheap stuff can be found at Sheng Shiong. As a consumer, you still need to know where to shop to get the cheapest goods.

But overall in terms of price for the majority of grocery goods, I will still rank the supermarkets as follows:

1. Sheng Shiong

2. Giant

3. NTUC

4. Cold Storage

The only other option is to cross the causeway into JB to do your shopping there.

Where do you do your grocery shopping? Do you shop at only one particular supermarket or do you go to various supermarkets to get your groceries?

Wearing Clothes That Are Too Expensive

I referred to Lee Wei Ling's editorial on the Sarong Dress Party Girl in the Sunday Times.

In it, she gave a detailed account of how she opted for comfort and cost when it comes to clothings. I can identify with her.

Over the past few years, I can count the number of new clothes that I have bought for myself with two hands. The clothes that I buy are often very comfortable and cheap too. In fact, they are so comfortable that I love to wear them whereever I go. Nevermind the stares that I get from strangers.

I once boasted to my wife that I must have been the one who brought the fashion of wearing bermudas and flip-flops to Orchard Road. That was my dress code literally everywhere I went.

On the other extreme, I know of people who have spent a fortune buying branded clothes and bags and stuff that could easily wipe out half their monthly salary. But how often can one wear those clothes? Some of them don't even look very comfortable.

For me, I consider myself frugal. I will only buy clothes that are above $50 if I consider their quality to be good. Otherwise, I will refrain from spending such frivolous money.

Let's take the example of shoes:

I only have one pair of dress shoes and one pair of casual shoes. The rest are all slippers. I do not even have sports shoes as I use the ones that are bought free-of-charge at the e-marts from the Singapore Armed Forces. Some people I know have so many pairs of shoes and they keep changing them every year. My shoes are worn for at least two to three years or until they break. I do not see the need to buy new shoes every year just to keep up with the fashion. As long as they are still in good condition, I will wear them.

How many pairs of shoes do you own? Do you consider yourself a fashion junkie? Or are you even more frugal than me?

Additional $800 per Month

I have started giving tuition and that will bring in an additional $800 per month. I have realised that a lot of people are giving tuition (in fact almost everyone I know), and that is why I decided to do it too.

The job satisfaction of giving tuition thus far has been great. The parents are so appreciative of the help that I am giving.

I enjoy teaching. There is a certain joy and satisfaction I get when I see students improving.

But there are also times when I do not enjoy teaching. Somedays, it can just get so tiring. And I can feel brain dead sometimes when the session is too intensive.

Anway, I am really glad that I have an additional source of income now. The additional money will go a long way in propping up my family's finances.

Falling In Love with Our Stocks

Why on earth do we make the silly mistake of falling in love with our stocks..or investments?

A few days back, I posted about the 7 Investment Sins and some brief thoughts on the Price versus Value debate.

Over at MusicWhiz's corner, he had also written about the various investment sins too.

Today, I thought I would just write more about one of the problems that most investors (including me) suffer from:

FALLING IN LOVE WITH OUR STOCKS (and sometimes our investments too!)

(Beautiful Image Above by kwerfeldein )

Human beings tend to get emotionally attached to the things that they possess. Certain people have gone on to suggest the reasons why we fall in love and why it even feels so good to be in love.

Apparently, being in love helps to trigger some of the circuits in your brain that gives you pleasure. Dopamine which is the main chemical that is involved produces feelings of euphoria, sleeplessness, and focused attention on the thing that we fall in love with. Also, the feeling of love tends to last for two to three years. INTERESTING FACTS!

Does that explain why most of our stock holdings only last for two to three years? We research them, fall in love with them and them ditch them for something better after a time frame of usually two years!

This is my experience personally. I have been investing for close to 7 years and I can say that I hardly own any of the stocks that I first owned when I started out investing!

There is however one particular stock that remains in my portfolio today. It is Unifood holdings. Back in the good old days of early 2002, people were singing praises about this stock. I did my research and made the mistake of falling in love with it. The price dropped and I was too emotionally attached to let go of it. I had fallen in love with it. 7 years on, the stock price has dropped. I am now stuck with it.

The problem of falling in love with our stocks is that we let the emotional part of us go into overdrive and after spending some cognitive energies rationalising why we should purchase that certain stock, we simply stop our cognitive engines and rev up our emotional engines. We start to grown a certain attachment to the stocks that we have just bought into. Just the way love is blind, we stop seeing the flaws and only start to see all the good points of the business.

And yet most investors know that we should never let our emotions get the better of us. We are supposed to be cold blooded people just trying to squeeze the last penny out of every investment that we make.

And just like any marriage, we only start to see the flaws after it becomes too late. By then, the emotions are gone and we stare in disbelief at the stock sitting in our portfolio which we thought was the best in the world and should have risen up by ten-fold or twenty-fold.

Have you suffered from the same experience?

Or what strategies do you use to remove the emotional part of investing?

3rd Cheque from Google's Adsense

Over two years ago (in 2008), I started out on a journey to see whether it was plausible for one to earn money using adsense. I still remember the delight I had when I was able to earn $4.44 for a certain month in earnings. You can check out my posting about it here.

I remember lamenting the fact that my online earnings were low and I was not able to achieve the $1 per day target that I had set for myself. In a posting talking about Online Income from Adsense, I shared the joys and pains that I had about monetizing my blogs.

My Revelation - Earning Money Online is a Full-Time Job

I guess I moved on and realised that my blogging was not really about making money online. It was more about recording down my experiences and the thoughts that go through my head with regards to financial matters, investments or insurance. Slowly, I also added in more personal stuff which I would never share openly with strangers. The purpose was more to record it down for my own viewing pleasure in the future. Yet at the same time, I was hoping that others could learn from my experiences and not make the same mistakes that I have already made.

To me, any money that was derived from this blog was just an added benefit. Of course, there are days that I still harbor the thoughts of leaving the rat race for good and just becoming a full-time blogger. I am certain that my family and friends will desert me for good then =)

So I treated the income source from this blog as just a sort of added benefit. Of course, I still had earning goals that I hoped to achieve in due time just for the fun of it.

It is Possible to Make Money From Adsense

The only thing that I have proven thus far in my journey is this: It is possible to make money from adsense.

The problem is that the amount of effort one has to put in is totally not related to the amount that you will be earning. In fact, it is much easier to take on part-time work like tuition to earn money than to rely on adsense.

I have spent literally hours upon hours on this blog and if I translate the amount of time I have spent on it to let's say getting a part-time job that pays $30 per hour, I am much better off getting a part-time job. It is possible to make money from adsense but it is NOT EASY.

I repeat: It is NOT EASY <-- just in case some student sees this post and starts thinking that they can be the next Mr Brown or Xiaxue.

Get a job at MacDonalds, it will pay you much more than what you can earn from blogging!

My Earnings thus far.....

Jun 09 - USD$105 (forgot to record down the conversion to SGD)
Nov 09 - S$160.72
Mar 10 - S$180.75

1,500 People Visit this Site Every Month

This is actually the thing that keeps me blogging. Sometimes, I feel that my energies are being wasted in a futile activity. But at the very same time, writing has a calming effect on me. It helps me to organise my thoughts and I love to write. I am still not really a good writer as you can tell..

But just knowing that there are 1,500 readers per month makes me strive to keep this blog updated and interesting for all. I guess I have been able to make a greater impact through this blog than through my own personal life. I don't even talk to 15 different people in a month sometimes!

Yet this blog speaks to 1,500 people in a month!

Of course, I have yet to compute my readers that follow me annually. But it can sometimes be quite frightening....SO MANY PEOPLE ARE ACTUALLY READING THE STUFF THAT I PUT UP.... The last thing I want to happen is to become accidentally famous. I hate the limelight.

Should I Give Up Blogging?

I have been really weary lately. I really feel that my energies could perhaps be better focused elsewhere. I am still seeking God for a lot of questions that I do not have answers to with regards to my purpose in life and stuff.

There have been times that I have thought that I should stop blogging. Perhaps blog less frequently..or perhaps even just give up blogging forever. In this way, no one will ever find out who FF is. (FF is my online persona - it was a terrible mistake to call this blog sgfinancialfreedom cos the moniker FF just stuck with me. In fact, it was other bloggers and readers who started calling me FF. If I could change things, I would have gone by a cooler name that did not have so much focus on things like being financially free and stuff.)

Yet, here I am again..hitting the PUBLISH POST button. Perhaps I am addicted to blogging.

Networth Update for Feb 2010

Networth as of Feb 2010 is estimated around $652,000. A slight drop from Jan 2010.

The decline in networth was due to a slight drop in my entire investment portfolio as a result of the market correction.

Also worrying is my negative cash flow at the moment as the net income that the entire family is drawing in is less than our expenditures. It is likely to stay that way for sometime unless a job comes along soon.

Prudential to takeover AIA. What will happen to AIA policyholders?

I just read the news that Prudential will takeover AIA for US$35 million dollars. And I have a policy with AIA!!

Given this scenario, what will happen to AIA policyholders?

Will AIA still exist as a company or will all existing policies be taken over by Prudential?

I would like to think that AIA will soon stop existing as a company and that Prudential will just take over all existing policies in due time. This will be the most efficient way to run the business if I were the CEO.

Sometime back, Manulife bought over John Hancock and all policies were taken over by Manulife. John Hancock (JH) simply ceased to exist as an entity in a certain sense as you do not see any new JH policies or any JH agents around here in Singapore.

What do you think?