How to invest and be rich in Singapore

Hi sgwealthbuilder,

I read your blog post on how to start building wealth from young and I enjoyed it thoroughly it helped me to understand more about investing and how I should go about developing myself as an investor.

However, I realize you tackled the situation for young investors who have yet to start or are interested to start. Hence, I was hoping if you could share with me your experience or some wisdom on what a young investor who has some knowledge, capital and owns a few shares already. I really would like to know whats the next step of vision and many blogs do not really touch on this category of ‘very young investors who accidentally started before reading financial blogs’.

I’m sorry I have yet to introduce myself, I’m a young army boy just turned 19 and saved up just about 12k and invested about 8k into Suntec Reit and FCT a couple of months ago. I do plan on purchasing gold because I like the feeling of holding my assets and I am aware of the benefits of having gold (cheap during economic booms and recovery, which are happening soon I think?). 

I noticed you mentioned you do not normally give advice to people since you are not a financial adviser and such but I hope you could guide me somehow as my parents and close relatives do not invest and I’m the first to venture into this ‘taboo’ world. 

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How to build your wealth from young

Hi SG Wealth Builder,

I am one of your readers of your blog, apologies if this email came as a surprise, I stumbled upon your blog while browsing the net on my iPhone.

Allow me to introduce myself. I’m John, a 3rd year polytechnic student. Though mentioning this might have made your head turn away, since I’m still young and probably in no position to search for any financial-generating opportunities like Stocks or Investments due to the lack of capital, but I believe it’s good to start young. I cannot find any tips that cater to someone like me, hence i wrote this email in hope to hear from you.

Problem is I don’t have any opportunity, or know of any methods to grow financially. hence I hope that through this email, I can get some guidance from you of what a person at my age and situation should do.

Hope to hear from you, thank you.The above is an email from one of my readers but the name has been changed to protect his identity. Since I started blogging four years ago, I have received quite a number of emails from readers seeking financial advice from me and normally my policy is not to reply their queries.
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Is It Possible To Sell Property Without An Agent?

Property owners often think whether they can sell the property of their own or not. This line of thought pops up in mind because there is cost involved along with additional procedures and countless meetings. And some people do not want to involve a third party unless it is absolutely required.

The simple answer to the question is – yes it is possible for property owners to sell by themselves. There is no law in Singapore that says one cannot sell the property of his / her own! But for that they need to be equipped with related information, should know in and outs of property selling and must have an idea about the selling procedure.

In a demand driven real estate market like Singapore, owners often think of selling their existing property and buying a new one. With the continuation of price cooling off since mid 2013, many property owners have already sold their property in a bid to hunt for new ones. Urban Redevelopment Authority announced that about 27,000 public housing flats will be ready to sell in 2014. And according to industry experts, 95,000 new private units will come on the market over the next five years. This opens a wide door for property owners to consider selling the existing one and buy a brand new one.

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Singapore Finance Bloggers

I started this blog since 2010 and along the way witnessed many fellow finance bloggers leaving the scene one by one. Many of them started off very brightly but slowly faded off. Eventually they just gave up blogging all together, probably because of work or family commitments. Some of them were actually brilliant writers and I thought it was a loss to our local community when these bloggers stopped sharing their financial experiences online. Even though there are new finance bloggers coming on-board in blog aggregators like The Finance.sg or Singapore Investment Blogs, I hope this declining trend will not carry on, otherwise this unique group of bloggers would just disappear.

Yes, I used the term “unique” because there are not many Singapore blogs on personal finances. Most bloggers prefer to develop themes on food, lifestyle and politics but not personal finances. I suppose there are a few reasons to this. Firstly, it is easier to capture readership if you write articles on food, lifestyle and politics. These are common topics that attract large unique visitors. This is because Singaporeans like to eat and constantly look for interesting places to go, so naturally they tend to visit blogs for recommendations.

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