2nd Anniversary - A Good Time for Some Reflection

This day marks the 2nd anniversary of this blog. Or to be more exact, the day when the idea of blogging came to my head.

I still remember very clearly that two years ago, I was sitting at the balcony of some hotel room enjoying the breeze and just doing some journalling.

Two years have passed.

In this two years, I realised a few things. Perhaps it is the "older but wiser" syndrome.

1. Friends don't stay forever. I have lost contact with a lot of friends. This is due to either a change in workplace or due to other unforseen circumstances. I meet up a lot less with close friends compared to the past due to family committments. What I have realised is that friends come and go. When you have the opportunity to meet up every day because you work in the same office, it seems like the relationship will last forever. Once things change, you realise that you most probably will not meet up with some people again. Perhaps in facebook only?

2. Be a bit more discerning. I have learnt not to be too trusting of other people. I am now a lot more skeptical when I hear advice from people.

3. Investments go up and down. It has been a roller coaster ride in the stock market for the past two years. I am a lot more immune to the ups and downs in the stock market now.

4. Unclear of future direction. I remain very unclear about the direction that God wants me to go with regards to many things in my life. I feel a bit lost sometimes as I do not seem to be progressing in my career. For a guy, a career basically sums up his relevance to society, family and sometimes even defines him as a person. Without a clear cut career path in front of me, I have been lost, discouraged and depressed.

5. Blogging is good but..... At the blogging end, I now blog to keep readers entertained and educated. Hopefully they learn something from my mistakes and experiences. Blogging is good but it takes up a lot of my personal time.

The picture above depicts slaves taking the route from Africa to Americas during the slave trade. Sometimes, I feel like I am on this ship not knowing where I am going and what the future holds for me.

Perhaps I am at the start of my mid-life crisis...

No Such Thing as a Happy Peak Hour Bus Ride

I took the bus during peak hour today. It was around seven pm.

The bus was already quite packed when I first got on. I was literally at the front door holding on for my dear life.

The bus captain however decided that more passengers could still get on at the next bus stop. I found myself squashed like a sardine with the rest of the passengers and had to hold on the frame of an advertisement as I could not get my hand on any hand rail or stuff.

The whole journey was unpleasant to say the least. The bus was totally packed and the bus captain still made sure that all passengers got on board at every stop.

I could not help but laugh when I got off the bus and saw the advert at the exit door reminding passengers to tap off. The "passengers"/ models in the advertisement all looked so happy.

I looked around the entire bus and saw only grumpy faces all around me.

How ironical!

Dividends from Capitaland

Just received a small amount of dividends from Capitaland.

A total of $315.00


Red hot property market

Singapore's red hot private property market is still not showing much signs of slowing down. In fact, The Interlace by Capitaland saw 144 units sold at a median price of S$1,067 psf. Capitaland has also invested heavily in China's property market. I hope to see more dividends from Capitaland in the future.

To think about it, if one does not have enough capital to invest in a rental property, a good proxy would be to invest in property counters or REITs.

Waiting for other dividends....

I am still waiting to receive dividends from other counters like Suntec REIT, Kingboard, Innotek, etc.

Will post the full amount I have collected once I receive them =)

Beware Land Banking?

On the Straits Times today, it was reported that over 200 investors have lost $6m in British land deals.

These investors had been persuaded to buy to a piece of land in rural places like Swindon and Gatwick in England for $15,000 each through Singapore company Land International (Far East). They had been promised "high returns with regular payouts for three years".

The parent company was shut down by the British government in 2008 following an insolvency probe.

Now, investors literally own the piece of land as they have been given title deeds. They now have to look for a way to dispose of their land in ways that might be costly. Investors will also not find any shelter under the law as land banking is not regulated by MAS or any other Act in Singapore like the Securities and Futures Act (SFA) and Financial Advisers Act (FAA)

"As land-banking investments involve investors acquiring direct interests in real estate rather than securities related to real estate and, as such, fall outside the scope of the SFA and FAA." - MAS spokesman

I do know of people who have invested in land-banking before and my advice or questions to them is always this:

1. Land-banking is not regulated by MAS. You will not get any protection from the law should anything bad happen.

2. If you are investing in land-banking, you are literally buying a small plot of land. Do you really want to own a piece of land in a faraway country which you have never set your eyes on? If I asked you to buy a piece of land instead of presenting it as "an investment opportunity with great returns and proven payouts", would you still be investing in it?

3. If the potential for development is so good, why do they need to sell their land to foreigners? Why aren't the locals or the English buying their own land? Why isn't the company seeking bank loans to just acquire the land for themselves and develop them to keep the profits for themselves? Don't give me the rubbish about regulations stating that blah blah blah...

Many people are often too trusting when it comes to money and investments. Always open your eyes really BIG before going into any investment that promises high returns.

Losing Sleep Over "New" Financial Crisis?

Anyone losing sleep over the "new" financial crisis that seems to be impacting the stock markets in recent weeks?

I am amazed at how I hardly feel anything nowadays when it comes to stock markets going down south.

Yes, my stock portfolio gets affected but it doesn't affect my daily life as I don't check the prices of my stocks everyday.

Perhaps it is because I have been through a few up and down markets so I am a little bit less emotional now even when my portfolio does take a hit whenever bad news come along.

All About Income

In my previous posting, I talked about simplifying financial planning to just 4 variables : Income, Expenditure, Savings and Returns.

Today, I thought that I would just explore a little more on Income.

Earned Income and Passive Income

Many people are only familiar with earned income which is the salary they draw from their day jobs. Others supplement their income by holding part-time jobs (e.g. tuition). Since most people are familiar with earned income, I thought that it might be timely to highlight another source of income which is passive income.

Passive income is simply money that flows into your pocket without you having to work for it. This can be obtained through dividends, annuity payments (CPF Life), or royalties (e.g. from books you have written).

Discovering that one can rely on multiple streams of income instead of a single source of income can be a relief especially in times of job loss or change of jobs. By not relying solely on a single source of income, you sort of diversify your "risks".

Of course, conventional wisdom still holds that you can actually just rely solely on your salary if you are really good at your work and the marketplace values your work highly. This include highly paid atheletes, musicians, directors, etc.

So whether you should rely solely on a salary or on multiple streams of income is a choice you have to make based on your own personal situation.

Protecting Your Income

We all take our salary for granted at times.

It is important to realise that there are certain events in life that might render one jobless. This might include unfortunate events like death, disability, illnesses, accidents or just hospitalisation.

It is thus important to realise the need to hedge against these risk by protecting any loss of future income that might be earned by you. Today, insurance companies are willing to bear this risk for you. You can thus protect yourself and your family from any loss of income by buying insurance.

Protecting your income can also be through simple steps like going for personal upgrading and development courses to ensure that your remain employable.

RETIREMENT INCOME

Perhaps the most worrying trend is that Singaporeans do not plan actively for their retirement.

During retirement, most people will not be earning a salary as they stop working totally. Without an income, they either have to rely on their savings or passive income to support their lifestyle during their retirement years.

CPF Life is an example of relying on one's savings to ensure a stream of income is present for one during retirement. The reason why CPF Life was initiated was to ensure that Singaporeans have enough savings to last them through their retirement years.

If one relies solely on their earned income, it is necessary that they realise this fact which I have illustrated below. Take Mr ABC who plans to retire at age 60 and who has an expected life expectancy of 80 years.

Mr ABC's projected income flow:

Age: 25 - 35 Annual Salary: $50,000
Age : 35 -45 Annual Salary: $80,000
Age : 45 - 60 Annual Salary : $120,000
Age : 60 -80 Annual Salary : $0

For a good twenty years (age 60 to 80), Mr ABC will not be drawing an income. He will need to rely on his savings over the past 35 years of his working life (age 25 to 60) to support 20 years of retirment.

If he is fortunate enough to live till age 95, he will have to depend on 35 years of savings to support 35 years of retirement!

Adding up his total income over 35 years, he can expect to draw a neat sum of $3.1 million dollars over his entire working life. Without taking returns on investment and inflation into account, if Mr ABC saves only 10% of his income, it would leave him with $310,000 to spend over the "worst case" scenario of 35 years in retirement.

That works out to around $8,900 per year or $740 per month.

Can he survive on that amount?

Financial Planning - Simplified to 4 Variables

Before I begin today's post, I would like to highlight that my first posting at CPF's IM$avvy site should be up by tonight. Do check it out over at the CPF $avvy Blog Corner under the month of May Archives. The title of that post is "Can You Trust Your Financial Planner?"

Financial planning can be too confusing at times. There are lots of terms that people throw around to make it seem complex.

I was thinking about it for sometime and decided that there are perhaps only 4 variables or factors that will ultimately determine whether one is financially secure.

The 4 Factors

1. Income

Income determines how much money flows INTO your pockets each month or every year. Income involves both active income (from one's salary) and passive income (from dividends, etc).

2. Expenditure

Expenditure is the amount one spends every month. It is the amount of money that flows out of your pockets to buy food, transportation costs, movie tickets, housing installments, etc.

3. Savings/Investments

Savings/Investments should be the difference between Income and Expenditure. Ideally, it should work out as:

SAVINGS = INCOME - EXPENDITURE

From the simple equation above, I guess you can see that the only way to increase your savings/investments is to either increase your income and/or decrease your expenditure.

Another thing to note is that saving money is actually quite meaningless unless you know what you are saving for. Are you saving for retirement or saving up for a holiday? In either case, you need to know that there will come a day when you are going to spend your savings. The timeframe is important so that you know whether you should keep your savings liquid or you can afford to keep them in not so liquid instruments. The end goal of savings should not be just for the hidden pleasure of seeing your bank account grow fat.

4. Savings/Investment returns

This last factor determines the rate of return your savings or investment is giving you. If you are getting a 0% rate of return, the amount of money you save will be the amount of money you have at the end of the day. On the other hand, if you have chosen to invest it and the investment gives you 10% returns annually, the amount of money that you have at the end of the day will be much more than the absolute amount you have actually saved.

Conclusion

In this posting, I have simplified financial planning into 4 simple variables that you need to take note off.

Determine what is your monthly income, expenditure, savings and the rate of return you are getting on your savings. To improve your financial situation, you just need to tweak any of these 4 variables.

I shall cover this in my next posting.