Money management; personal finance; Investment

Lifetime Membership Since 2010, I have been blogging about money and stocks in SG Wealth Builder. My spouse often asked why am I doing this through the years. After all, I am not compensated for the sharing and my blogging had led to a lot of sacrifice of my family time. Indeed, if I am doing this merely for fame or money, this blog would not have sustained till now. I am talking about 11 years of blogging, not 11 months.

Many bloggers would tell you that building a blog from scratches requires a tremendous amount of effort and time. Sometimes, after years of blogging, there is no guarantee that a blogger can find success in the readership. Along the way, I have seen so many promising bloggers giving up and turned to commenting in other investment forums instead.

The sole reason for the sustainability of SG Wealth Builder is passion. I love doing stock research and sharing my ideas with others. And I love writing because I always thought that to be able to inspire or create a change in others is a form of calling.

At certain stages in my life, I did consider giving up blogging because of my family and career commitments.

As an investment blogger, my commitment is to deliver quality content so that readers can benefit from reading my blog. Beyond this, I also hope to build a community by engaging my readers. Thus, if you find this article useful, please email subscribe to my blog for free or share your thoughts in the comment block. Today, I will share the scary truth about accredited investor rule in Singapore.

I learned about the accredited investor rule a few years ago from a local entrepreneur who worked in the financial sector for many years. He candidly shared with me his experience as a wealth manager and touched on how the industry made money from investors based on this rule.

I have previously written about this rule in this blog but apparently many readers still have many doubts about it. You may check it out here.

Make your money work hard

Like many people, I share the same aspiration to enjoy the good life through building wealth. In this regard, my conviction is that investing offers the possibility of a ticket to financial freedom.

But have you ever wondered why so many Singaporean investors lost big sum of money in financial products like Minibond Notes, High Notes 5 and Pinnacle Series 9 and 10 Notes back in 2008?  

Lately, a few finance bloggers wrote about the cost of raising up a child in Singapore. Some estimated that the cost might be up to $1 million while there were some who felt that $200,000 to $300,000 should be a comfortable range. Whenever I come across such articles, I always have mixed feelings. Whilst it is important to be pragmatic in a high cost society like Singapore, I don’t like this money culture whereby we view things in monetary terms and measure relationships in dollars and cents.

As a father of two kids, I always tell myself that my love for them must be unconditional and I would not expect anything in return from them when I grow old. By the same measure, my wife and I do not see the point of calculating the cost of raising our children. This is because we do not want our children to grow up wondering how much it would cost to support us when we are old and jobless. We feel that it is our mission to take care of ourselves and be financially independent when old.

My girl and boy are our greatest gifts and we would not trade anything in the world in exchange for them. 

For the longest time, there were several investment bloggers who had been talking up the merits of topping up CPF Special Account (CPF-SA) with cash or CPF Ordinary Account (CPF-OA). They gushed and purred about how parking those extra $7000 into CPF-SA can earn risk-free 4-6% of return. Apparently, many readers were so impressed that they were pretty sure that these two fellows had uncovered the sure-win secret formula to wealth building. One of the readers almost kissed the foot of one of the bloggers.

Finally, today SG Wealth Builder came across one fellow blogger who had the guts to stick out his neck and pointed out 6 Reasons not to Voluntary Top Up your CPF Special Account with cash or CPF Ordinary Account.

If you have not read the article, I would urge you to read it (at least once) because it is one of the most well-balanced investment article I have come across with regard to CPF matters. The author described the approach of topping up your CPF-SA as “dangerous” and cautioned Singaporeans to consider carefully before doing it. As a wealth builder, I fully agreed it!

I shall not list down all the 6 reasons written by the blogger but fundamentally, his points on cash-flow and business opportunity costs were exactly what I had in mind whenever I came across bloggers espousing the merits of voluntary topping up CPF-SA.

In my previous post, one of my readers, CreateWealth8888, commented that my ex-colleague might have achieved financial freedom and therefore resigned from my company without a job.

Well, I am not going to dwell on the issue of his resignation reason but I think CreateWealth8888 brought up an interesting topic and that is being financially free in Singapore.

Everyone has his own definition of financial freedom. For me, being financially free in Singapore means you need not work but can still live comfortably without having to worry about the bills. And I think this is an important fact.

Most Singaporeans derive their incomes from their jobs or businesses. It is crucial that after we retired, retrenched or resigned from our jobs or businesses, there are financial mechanisms or means in placed to ensure that our quality of lives do not suffer as a result of the lack of mainstream income.

There are a few who became rich overnight after striking lotteries or inheriting assets, but normally this sort of wealth do not last. So essentially, being financially free does not mean you have to be rich. But what you need is to equip yourself with the know-how on how to kick-start your life journey to financial freedom.