personal finance

Although money makes the world go round, you may find yourself in a spin by not having sufficient funds in your bank account. But if you struggle to make ends meet, feel as though your pay cheque doesn’t go far enough or simply want some extra cash to spend on life’s luxuries, then consider giving one or more of the following 10 easy money-making tips a try:

1. Forex trading

Short for foreign exchange, forex is the largest financial market in the world and allows anyone to take advantage of currency fluctuations caused by interest rates, inflation, government policy, and a wide range of other factors. It has fewer barriers than other forms of trading and is simple to get going.

 2. Online surveys

Research companies are always on the look out for members of the public to answer online surveys and test new products. This can be done while watching TV or before you go to bed at night and will result in either cold hard cash or another type of reward.

 3. Sell your holiday snaps

You don’t have to be a professional to sell photographs, as stock image agencies constantly need new and novel images of far-flung foreign destinations for their databases.

In recent years, there have been many articles of old folks in Singapore living in poverty. This prompted Dr Alexandre Kalache, former head of ageing issues at the World Health Organization (WHO) to voice concerns that Singapore still has much room for improvement in terms of helping elderly to age with dignity.  Whilst I do not have the data to illustrate the profile and root causes leading to the plight of these people, at the back of my mind, I wonder to myself what it is like to spend my golden years in survival mode. Can CPF savings be your ticket to retirement?

Perhaps one of the most controversial topics among Singaporeans would be – Do you really need your CPF to retire? Is the CPF scheme still effective in addressing the retirement needs of Singaporeans? To tackle these questions, one needs to trace the history of CPF and its original intent.

Implemented in 1955, CPF is a compulsory savings scheme that requires all employers and employees to contribute a portion of the employee’s monthly gross salary to their CPF fund. In those days, most workers depend solely on their personal savings when they retire and most employers did not provide any form of retirement benefits to their employers.

As we enter 2015 and bid 2014 farewell, many of us are making new year resolutions to improve on areas which we would like to improve in the coming year. SG Wealth Builder is certainly no exception.

There were several ups and downs for me last year but overall, I think 2014 had been pretty good for me. There were also some lessons learned in my life journey which I hope to pen down in this blog, so as to remind myself not to repeat the same mistake again.

Family

This year, there will be a new addition to my family! My second child is expected to arrive in late April this year. To welcome this bundle of joy, for the past few months, I had been busy making arrangements for his arrival. My wife and I initially were planning to hire a domestic helper because we fear that she may not be able to cope with my daughter and baby son.

However, after several months of discussion, we decided not to go for it because of the concern that the maid would create more headaches and issues for us to manage. We had heard and read so many horror stories of maids mishandling baby kids and children in Singapore.

Many times, we took our health for granted. It is only when we lost our health, then we truly appreciate the beauty of life. I chanced upon this blog by a Singaporean girl called Adelyn Xinhui. She is born with cornea defect. I think many Singaporeans would recognise her face as she appeared in several Mediacorp charity shows before.

Xinhui has just released a music album, hoping to raise money for a cornea transplant operation. The operation cost more than $40k for each eye. Please read her story in (http://adelynxinhui.blogspot.sg/). In a gesture of support, my wife and me had bought one copy from her mom. Please help to spread the words around.

This operation may offer the girl a chance to lead a new lease of life and she genuinely needs help from fellow Singaporeans. I believe most of us can spare $20 to do a good cause.

Below is an extract from Adelyn’s blog:

My name is Adelyn. I am 10 years old. I was born with cornea defect called “Peter Anomaly”. I was sent for 4 times of cornea transplant when I was between 8 to 12 month old. However, all the cornea was rejected. Today, I can only visual lights, shadows and colors.

Many people underestimate the magic of compounded savings. Two years ago, when I was wooing my wife, I gave her a plastic piggy bank as an anniversary gift. I noted back then that she had difficulty saving regularly because she needed to repay her student loan and supported her family.

So I gave her a piggy bank hoping that she developed the good habit of saving. She was pleasantly surprised to receive the gift and made a commitment to deposit only one dollar coins in it. Subsequently, I also bought one for myself and after we got married, we challenged ourselves who can save more.

Recently, both of us decided to count the number of one dollar coins in our piggy banks as my wife’s piggy bank was filled to the brink. Before counting, it was obvious that I had lost as mine was only about one-sixth filled. Nevertheless, we were very excited to know how much she had saved over the last two years. In the end, we counted 2000 one-dollar coins for my wife and for me, its less than $200. Both of us marveled how much she had saved considering that she is now a full-time housewife with no income.

Singaporeans who are contemplating a new car must be wondering if it is worthwhile to buy now. This is especially so considering the sky-high Certificate of Entitlement (COE). Despite the recent drop in the prices of COE, the entitlement to drive a new car on Singapore roads still remain very expensive. Buyers need to fork out at least around $100,000 for a new car. This is by no means a small sum, even for a big-ticket item. So let’s examine what are the factors we should consider before damaging our pockets.

Buy for the right reason
Most Singaporeans, especially those conservative and thrifty ones, consider cars as sheer liabilities, at least in Singapore context. They argued that public transport is excellent in Singapore and hence there is no need for a car. But I beg to differ. For some people, having a car can be an asset to their job or business.

For example if you are a housing agent, you definitely need a car to meet clients at different time and places. In addition, some jobs, especially those sales and marketing ones, also require candidates to possess private transport so as to meet clients.

On the other hand, some Singaporeans buy car because of family needs.

Most experts recommend novice investors to engage financial advisor to help them achieve their financial goals. Yet how do we find someone whom we can trust? Over the years, I have met many financial consultants, some good, some down right bad. I would like to share with my readers some of my experience dealing with these jokers.

Title Inflation
Many of the financial advisers I met carried with them big titles like Associate Director, Vice President, Sales Director, etc. A lot of them were also quite young. I think many of them suffered from the mistaken belief that if they carry big titles, customers will respect them more and will be more inclined to buy from them. Actually I don’t care about titles when I look for a financial consultant. To me, titles are just job designation. But normally I would look out for someone who is a Certified Financial Planner. I would give the fellow slightly more face-time.

Know your needs
Before you even sat down with the financial advisor, make sure you know what you need. Not all planners offer comprehensive advice tailored to your needs. Decide what you want and expect from the adviser. For example, last month, I was shopping around for a medical shield plan for my baby girl and invited a financial consultant to my home for a discussion.

In my previous post, “Sentiments of a Singaporean”, one of my readers pointed out whether it is fair to burden taxpayers who are single and do not have children with heavy costs of baby bonus.

It is human nature to feel sour grape seeing others who have babies receiving monies from the government while you are ineligible. Henceforth, it is perfectly natural that they might feel jealous having to give monies to citizen who are entitled to baby bonus. After all, they themselves don’t benefit from it, while should they support such proposal?

However, if we are able to cast aside our narrow-mindedness and place national interest before us, I feel that spending the extra $4-5 billions dollars is totally justifiable. At least from the perspective of a Singaporean. After all, if we don’t implement any drastic measures to increase birth rate soon, we are going to end up paying even much more 10 – 15 years down the road.

People are our only resources. If we are unable to produce enough babies, there could be implications on our economy and defense. This is because in future, there may not be enough young adults to support ageing Singaporeans. We may also lack enough young males for national defense.

For the past few days I have been doing spring cleaning and happened to flip through my investment notebook. I went through some of the interesting lessons learnt during the period 2007-2009.

The collapse of the Lehman Brothers really change the investment world forever and the old strategy of holding stocks for the long-term for capital appreciation may no longer works.

In view of this, we need to equip ourselves with well-planned strategies to protect and grow our wealth. In 2009, I had made three guiding principles for investment.

Invest in myself
Many people, myself included, tends to chase the money and invest in everything under sun (stocks, ETF, property,gold, unit trust, etc). Everything, except themselves. We may not realize that our knowledge, ability and skills are the most precious assets that enable us to make critical judgement calls to generate income through jobs, sales, investment and business activities.

Henceforth, most of us tend to neglect investments on acquiring new knowledge or skills. I had told myself that I must acquire or gain new mastery of knowledge in niche areas like precious metals and real estate investment trusts.

Invest in health
As cliche as it might sound, health is really wealth, this is especially so in an expensive society like Singapore.