Financial Freedom

Chris Rene Forever Lyrics

I heard this song from Chris Rene titled Forever which I feel is absolutely wonderful and amazing. Chris Rene is a contestant in the current US X Factor TV show. This song Forever is from his album Sould Out.

Lyrics

(Synthesizer and bass plays)
I said it’s all about you and you reply with the vice-versa
In the beginning I was, like this might hurt you
Love is a strong thing, it can make you wanna die or make your heart sing
Nothing compares to the joy you bring in me (bring in me)
You could make a, a cripple man walk and a blind man seeIt’s all about you and me

I was blind to see that you were in love with me
Girls flirtin’ with me but you still stuck with me
And didn’t give a f*** with me,
If I needed it, you would give your blood to me
And this means you’ll be mine till the end of time
We gonna ride, gonna shine, in this life of mine
Took me awhile to figure it out
But you’re the reason why I live my life no doubt

Chorus
And you’re the only one who makes me feel this way
I ain’t got no time to waste
Where I need to be is beside you
I spent so many years trying to find you, baby
(Woo, you baby, hey yea, hey yea, hey yea yea)

How you feel baby now that we’re having one
Yeah they telling me our life’s just begun
I look forward to this new life as a daddy that can handle his son
We ‘bout to have all kinds of fun
You’re a mother now (uh)
Who would’ve thought you would ever be a mother wow
It’s kinda crazy how things turned around
We went from living on the streets and being homeless downtown

And now we’re standing on our own too feet (yeah)
Hail Mary, come with me
My father’s up in heaven watching over me
Thanks for staying close to me
And in my heart I know that’s where we’re supposed to be
With a third heartbeat and live so complete (eh)
And we can start a family yeah
And we can start our family yeah, we can start our family yeah

And you’re the only one who makes me feel this way
I ain’t got no time to waste
Where I need to be is beside you
I spent so many years trying to find you, baby
(Woo, you baby, hey yea, hey yea, hey yea yea)

First Steps to Success as a Property Investor

Successful property investment requires a good knowledge base. It’s important to get a good basic grounding in all the practices of property investment, from selecting properties to management and financing. These are the real bread and butter elements of property investment. It’s extremely important to learn each aspect and understand the issues in each part of the process. This is a type of business where learning by experience can be very costly.

You will need some professional assistance with property investment, including legal support and professional investment advice, particularly if you’re buying high value properties. There’s a large range of issues involved in any purchase or sale of property, and this advice can both save and make you a fortune, quite literally.

The property investment market has a nasty habit of boom and bust cycles which need to be well managed to ensure profitability and good returns on investment. Losses can hit hard, particularly if you’re borrowing to invest, or you have an investment that needs capital commitment to be profitable in a falling or stagnant market. A good working knowledge of the right market strategies and tactics will give you an advantage in any sort of property market or investment situation.

Stage 1- Basic elements of property investment education

Before you make any investment moves, it’s well worth attending some of the professional property investment seminars. These seminars are particularly useful for investors in need of fundamental information regarding markets, risk management and investment strategies. Property markets can be quite volatile, and some local markets may be flat while others are booming. These are primary principles in property investment, and it’s critically important to develop a clear vision of the issues in your own property market.

Stage 2- Finding the right property investment advisory services

The best property investment companies offer a range of services which include:

· Resources for property research- These include market reports, news and other up to date information which can provide valuable insights into your property investment options.

· Property investment strategy advice and programs- The most successful property investors have a clear market strategy which sees them through boom and bust markets. Defensive and aggressive investment strategies have their benefits, and learning these strategies is a

· Consultation services- These services can be absolutely invaluable, providing full spectrum support for investors, whatever their needs. (Please note that in the early stages of investment, this consultative process is also very valuable as “advanced training”, because your advisors will be able to walk you through the issues and explain them for you and provide good options for each investment.)

Stage 3- Your own investment team, on standby

At the end of your education phase, you’ll find that you have excellent knowledge of your investment options, as well as a team of professional experts on hand whenever you need them. The most successful property investors in the world have professional teams to support their every move, and the best property investments are never accidental.

Talk to a professional property investment advisor, and check out their services. You’ll never look back.

[The above is a guest post]

Poll Results: Starting Pay When You First Started Work

I polled my readers on this blog on what was their starting pay when they first started work. This poll was really started after I wrote the article on Starting Pay for Graduates. Anyway, here are the results of the poll:

57% of respondents reported a starting salary of less than S$2000 when they first started work. 27% of respondents reported a starting salary of between S$2000 and S$3000. The remaining 16% reported a starting salary of more than S$3000 when they first started work.

So how do you measure up?

Citigroup CEO thinks Another Financial Crisis Unlikely

Vikram Pandit, CEO of Citigroup thinks that the chances of another financial crisis hitting the global economy is unlikely, mainly due to world banking system that has been overhauled since the last global financial crisis in 2008.

He remains confident that the "Europeans will figure it out" and that there is no need to worry about a financial crisis. This seems to be a far cry from the doom and gloom that has been over the markets for the past few months.

He remains bullish about Asia as he thinks that the Asian growth story will continue to be robust, even if it is impacted by any global economic slowdown. It is quite surprising that Citigroup's CEO is so optimistic about the trends going forward.

Alpine Total Dynamic and Alpine Global Dynamic

Sold off my stake in Alpine Total Dynamic and Alpine Global Dynamic soon after buying it because I realised that the dividend payout had been dropping over the years. In addition, the dividend capture strategy that they are supposedly using does not sound robust enough for my liking. Anyway, I bought the stock just before the slight rally in the markets so I was able to lock in some gains.

It looks like my search for another monthly dividend stock will have to continue.

Posts to Read

Dear reader,

You might have just stumbled upon this blog and I thank you for taking time to go through it. I hope you find lots of interesting articles even as you navigate around this blog. I thought that I might as well just highlight a few articles which I have grouped according to topics to make it so much easier for you to navigate: I must be frank that reading through some of these posts, I have entirely forgotten that I actually wrote them. It almost feels like it was a different person writing some of these articles then.

Personal Thoughts and Reflections

Salary and Personal Finance

Salary Discussion
Starting Pay for Singapore Graduates
Are You Ready to Manage Your Cashflow?
Are You Ready to Take Charge of Your Healthcare Costs?
1001 Frugal Things to Do
How Much to Get Married (Part 1) (Part 2)

Other Posts of Interests

10 Steps to Financial Freedom

How to Earn Extra Cash & The Hidden Difficulties

I read with interest a certain article on AsiaOne that gave ten ways on how one could earn extra cash. The article was well written but I wasn't too sure how helpful it was to people who actually read it. I mean what was listed down was really ten ways to earn extra cash but I guess the difference really lies in how difficult it is to make extra cash (especially if one holds a full-time job) and also what I would term as the "work-reward" ratio (i.e. how much work you have to put in versus the magnitude of the earnings/reward).

For example, babysitting was listed down as one of the ways to earn extra cash. Sure, this advice applies well to stay-at-home mums but even if $1000 is paid out for you to babysit a child for all weekdays throughout a month, is it a worthwhile effort? Likewise, Adsense was listed down as one of the ways but seriously, how long does it take for a newbie to earn $1000 through Adsense?

Why it is probably easier to babysit

These are difficult questions and will probably require difficult answers. But looking at it, I can safely tell you that it will be easier for most people to earn $1000/month doing babysitting compared to earning $1000/year from Adsense. And the context is really important. And the reason for this apparent difficulty or disparity lies in a really simple answer that probably plagues many of Singapore's local businesses too: Singapore is too small.

Imagine an American blogger. With a total resident population in the United States of 300 over million people and a high internet penetration rate, it is fairly easy for this American blogger to reach out to his target group of audience (i.e. customers) in America. Even if he was only able to capture % of the audience per day, that will amount to 3 million readers per day already. The same Singaporean blogger has no such luck. If he managed to reach out to 1% of the residents per day, it only amounts to 50,000 readers. Of course, the 1% target is really arbitary but it shows that for the same amount of effort, the Singapore blogger (with his/her Singaporean content only interesting to the locals) is placed at a severe disadvantage.

The Solution?

Well, the solution actually seems pretty straightfoward. Go global! Blog about things that the global audience can identify with and relate to. But this is challenging and extremely difficult. Unless you know what the global audience wants to read, you will probably find it extremely difficult to build up a site that will be visited by visitors. This is not to mention the language barrier, culture barrier, and other impediments that you face. And one can safely say that most people who try to eke out a living on the internet will rarely succeed. But that being said, it is not entirely impossible. There are good Singaporean bloggers who are making a living through their blogs.

How to Earn Extra Cash Passively

So I will give my own version of what I think is one good way to earn extra cash passively without much effort on your part. . Well, surprisingly, I have found out that passive income is sometimes much easier to earn than active income (e.g. blogging). I have earned a lot more from dividends paid out from stocks/shares I own compared to any other area. Of course, this pre-supposes that one has sufficient capital to invest in stocks that pay out a good yield. But this method has worked for me and has brought me fairly stable returns without me having to do a single thing. Talk about earning extra cash without putting in much effort!

Of course, not all is rosy and one must expect that there could be a possibility of the dividends being cut or the share price dropping. Nonetheless, dividends probably ranks pretty high up in my list of "How to Earn Extra Cash".