5 room HDB BTO flat

I came across a blogger in The Finance SG and felt compelled to blog down my thoughts. Apparently this blogger and his girlfiriend had purchased a 5-room HDB BTO flat but had difficulty forking out $4000 cash for the balance downpayment. He is still a full-time student and has no income.

Lack of integrity
After reading his article, I can only said this blogger has no integrity at all. He bragged that he managed to fool the HDB into delaying the signing of the agreement lease for many times. This is because he don’t have the cash to pay the balance downpayment and has to depend on his girlfriend’s year end bonus and use her CPF savings to pay for it.

Property

To me, this fellow don’t deserve the flat at all. Obviously he don’t have the financial capability to afford the flat, so HDB should have given the flat to more deserving applicants. In fact, I wondered aloud how in the bloody world did his Housing Loan Eligibility got approved? The couple’s monthly income is only $2400 and this guy is still studying. Either HDB is not doing their due diligence or this blogger is telling half truth.

Self-denial and overestimation of ability
One of the blogger’s readers pointed out that if he cannot even afford $4000, he has no business buying such a huge flat.

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Singapore government revamped Medishield

On 10 Oct 2012, I wrote an article on “The state of healthcare in Singapore” and criticized the limitations of 3M (Medisave, Medishield and Medifund). Two days after my blog posting was published, the Singapore government immediately announced changes in the Medishield, our national healthcare insurance. Among the changes included the coverage and claim limits for policyholders.

Readers might call it pure coincidence. After all, the changes would take effect only in March next year, even though it was announced two days after my blog posting. I would like to think so but more importantly, the response validates my concerns of the state of healthcare in Singapore. In my previous posting, I had criticized Medishield’s fine print of “SGD50,000 maximum claim per policy year”. The government noted that and stated that they would increase the cap to SGD70,000 next year.

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Some readers may argue that enhancement is incremental only but I feel that at least the government is moving in the right direction. In fact, the announced changes in the Medishield only served to reinforce my argument that it is time for our national insurance policy to be enhanced. Going forward, I feel that the next step should be to relax the ruling on the use of Medisave and also to review the eligibility requirements of Medifund.

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The state of healthcare in Singapore

The past few weeks has been very distressing for my family. My dad was hopitalized and warded in the intensive care unit for pneumonia. During this period, we received a couple of calls from the hospital informing us that my dad was in very critical condition and that we should visit him immediately.
Thankfully, he pulled through and is now warded in the general ward. At the back of our mind, we were also very concerned about the costs incurred because we are all aware of the exorbitant hospitalization fees in Singapore.
Incidentally, my late father-in-law was also hospitalized in intensive care unit, albeit last year. His situation was more complicated as he needed a lot of blood transfusion, kidney dialysis and other life supporting equipment aids. Eventually, his body could not take it and he passed on after three months in the intensive care unit. His hospitalisation bills amounted to more than S$300,000 and after Medishield and subsidies, my wife’s family still owed the hospital ten of thousands dollars hospital bills. The hospital (which is different from my dad’s) hounded my wife’s family for payment and even issued them with lawyer’s letters.

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The $8.00 operation
I recalled in 2010, one of our Singapore ministers had a heart bypass operation and he bragged to the whole world that he only paid S$8.00 for the hospital bills.

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Investment mistakes

In my previous post, one of my readers, “Jack”, wrote me a long comment. He blasted me for being callous and for gloating over Genneva victims’ plight.
Well, firstly I must apologize that his comment was inadvertently deleted today when I used my iphone to view his comment. As my policy is to publish all comments, I sincerely hope Jack can re-post his comment again in my blog for sharing purposes. With regard to his comment, I have a few issues which I think need some clarification.
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Fools Never Learn
The objective of my previous blog is never to provoke anyone. If readers find my blog offensive, there is always a choice not to patronize my blog. Now, if you ask me again, I would still say those who lost their money in the Genneva fiasco deserved it. In fact, I hope they don’t get back a single cent at all. Why?
Because people never learn unless they are taught a painful lesson in life. In 2008, a lot of Singaporean lost their money investing in Minibonds. About 8,000 people in Singapore had sunk in S$376 million in Series 1 to 3 and 5 to 10 of the Minibond notes. They thought that they were investing in bonds and since they were sold by local financial institutes, they couldn’t go wrong.
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Gold scams

A few days ago, I saw a Channel 8 news bulletin on Genneva Gold Trading Firm, which is a company that offers gold buyback scheme to investors. Apparently, it is being sued by its customers for not meeting its financial obligations. Quite a number of Singaporeans had actually invested with the company.
In the news, one customer even [This is a premium article. The rest of the content is blocked and can be accessible by SG Wealth Builder Members only. To read the full content, please sign up as member.]

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