Make money. Build Wealth. Preserve Wealth
I used to enjoy reading Tan Kin Lian’s blog because it contains a lot of useful tips on life insurance and personal finance practices. In fact, he inspired me to set up this blog to share my thoughts on career and wealth building journey.
Somehow, after his failed presidential election in 2011 (he garnered the lowest vote of 4.9%), he became more vocal against the Singapore government. Out of ten articles, five of his articles would criticize government policies. Tan’s style of writing has also become more cynical and self-righteous. His articles have become such a huge turn-off to me that I did not follow any more since 2011.
However, in one of his rare articles on career advice, “How to build a long-lasting career“, I think there are some good take away which I would like to share with my readers.
Tan Kin Lian wrote that to be successful in your career, you need to choose a job that fits your skill set. Whilst I agree to this statement, this context may not be applicable to fresh graduates who lack working experience and relevant skills to prospective employers.
In order to embark on a long-term career, you must first work in a specific industry.
If you are in sales and therefore have the ability and vehicle to write your own pay cheque, your duty is to go out and expand your income. Why? While it looks like the world economy is rebounding post 2009 it is in no way, shape or form back to boom times. Governments are struggling to find their feet and control debt and the government is not going to repair the world economy – business will! And it’s the sales people in businesses that can make this happen.
There is plenty of money in the markets; we just have to get it moving.
There was an online article written by a foreigner who described her experiences living in Singapore. Not too long ago, she came here with high expectations of Singapore and our culture. After some time, she was indeed happy with her life here, until she became pregnant recently.
She complained that nobody gave up the reserved seats in the train. Once, when she almost fainted at the train platform, nobody came forward to help her. She felt disappointed by Singaporeans’ lack of empathy and compassion.Being a local and having lived in Singapore for 34 years, I can concur with her that Singaporeans are basically self-centered and very money-face.
When her article was published, a lot of Singaporeans came forward to dispute her views and threw brick bats at her. Many claimed that what she wrote was based on an isolated incident and argued that it was unfair to judge us based on that single incident. Many also threw up lame excuses to justify our lack of compassion. There are very few locals who supported her views and many just dismissed her accusation as baseless.
When we come across such an article, instead of doing self-reflections, we are always quick to go into defensive and denial mode.
There are many online articles on how one should invest physical gold and silver, but very few people actually revealed their experiences on the precious metals. So it is refreshing to read Doug Casey’s experience on bullion investments in his book, “Right on the money: Doug Casey on Economics, Investing, and the Ways of the Real world with Louis James”. The book contains forty interviews Doug had with Louis, touching on topics such as investments, assets, gold, real estate and ethics.
My favorite chapters are from Chapter 9 to 14 under the segment “The Art of Investing”. In these chapters, Doug shared his candid thoughts on physical gold and silver. Interestingly, even though he made his fortune through speculation, he actually advocated investors to avoid trading physical gold. In fact, he urged investors to accumulate it as an asset on a consistent basis. Even though the interviews were held in 2011, I believe his views remained valid today because he was convinced that gold would go higher and that he saw any form of correction as opportunity to buy. He viewed the US government as the greatest danger to Americans today and labelled Bernake “as zero experience in the real world”.
If you are looking at starting a personal or professional blog, having a high traffic is vital to the success of your project. This may seem like common sense to many readers but many bloggers consistently overlook the importance of online traffic because they don’t realise that unlike brick and mortar business, or traditional mainstream media (e.g. newspapers and radio), unique visitors to your blog do not happen by chance.
In today’s context, given the billions of websites in the online galaxy, you cannot expect to achieve overnight success by advertising through newspapers or radio. You must have a sustainable strategy to capture traffic and make your online project a success. This is because the more unique visits your blog gets, the more established it becomes. More unique visitors would mean that a large group of people have visited your blog and read the content. This means that your marketing technique is successful.
Once you succeed in creating a high traffic blog, you can easily devise ways to monetize your blog and create a form of passive income for yourself. It is thus important to know the technique that drives traffic to your blog because it can determine whether you can make money out of it.
I received the above letter from one of my readers a couple of weeks ago but could not find the time to reply due to my work commitment. As usual, I was reluctant to provide specific advice or guidance on investments that would mislead my readers into thinking that I am a financial guru. I just want to emphasize again that I am not. As a matter of fact, I don’t even work in the finance sector. But after much thoughts, I decided to share some of my insights pertaining to the reader’s question.
Many Singaporeans want to be rich and retire early in Singapore. But not many of them are keen to invest the time and energy to gain the knowledge required to be a millionaire. I came across a recent article by well-known Hong Kong billionaire, Li Ka Shing who shared some tips on how to become rich. Li Ka Shing’s story is one of rag-to-riches, so his success is particularly inspiring.
Like many of you, I share the same aspiration to achieve financial freedom. While I have not achieved Li Ka Shing’s wealth status, his strategy resonates with my philosophy of having a growth mindset. This means that one should put in the extra effort to develop new skills and knowledge. Take note that none of his pointers below encourages you to hoard money like a scrooge.
In that article, he outlined a unique plan that can help to improve one’s financial destiny. His approach is refreshing to me because so far I have not come across anyone with a similar approach. Basically, the gist is to split your income into five portions.
1st portion (Expenditure)
The first set of fund is to cover your living expenses. He elaborated that one should take hardship when young and eat simple.
Recently I liquidated my remaining K1 Ventures shares in my CPF Ordinary Account. Total profits, including dividends and capital gains, amounted to $1,400. This represented a total return of 13% in 3 years. It could have been more if I had not pared down the investments since last year. As of now, I am not vested in any stocks.
The intent of investing my CPF monies was really to divert a portion of my CPF monies from the Ordinary Account before HDB wiped out the monies for settlement of my HDB purchase in 2010. I wanted this investment to be a buffer in case I got retrenched from my job and still need to service my housing loan. With no income, this investment could then be liquidated and used to pay the HDB monthly installments for at least one year. This buffer was important for me as I am the sole breadwinner.
Three years later, I am glad that the nightmare scenario of losing my job did not happen. But nevertheless, I decided to sell off all my K1 Ventures. Firstly, my financial situation has improved substantially due to higher income and advancement in my job. These developments contributed to significant cash savings for me.
It is more difficult for cooling measures to bring down prices than it is to bring down volume sales. The reason is that the market is constantly in search of a fundamental price for each home, factoring in many variables and pricing signals unavailable to analysts and policymakers.This
Recently I chanced upon this stock called Baker Technology Limited and decided to do some research after a fellow blogger claimed that this is a good investment. Usually I am fairly skeptical on penny stocks in SGX because good ones with growth potential are far and few. Most of them are either overvalued or simply trash stocks not worth mentioning. But just out of curiosity, I decided to do an evaluation on this stock.
Dividend Stocks
In light of the low interest rates, one of the favorite strategies in recent years is to invest in stocks that consistently pay out good dividends. For those who invested in Baker Technology Limited, this investment may look like it fits the bill as a classical dividend stock. In 2013, it paid out $0.10 of dividends and this year May, it will pay out $0.05.
The author wrote the following:
Having begun life way back in 2010, this one-man-blog is one of the ‘old guard’ of Singapore finance blogs – but it is still regularly updated with insightful posts on wealth accumulation, investments and money-making in general. In fact, this blogger furnished his readers with more posts in 2013 than any other year. Some in-depth information on investing here, and while it may not seem like a blog for beginners at first glance, many younger, less experienced investors do write in for advice and tips.
DirectAsia.com has established itself as one of Singapore’s leading online insurers in recent years. The company’s mission is to change the face of insurance in Singapore, and to bring the best value insurance policies and customer service to the region. On this aspect, the company’s core values are aligned with the philosophy of my blog, SG Wealth Builder.
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.
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.
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.
Happy new year to all readers! On this first day of 2014, I would like to pen down some thoughts with regard to how the previous year had panned out for me, as well as my new year resolutions for 2014.
2013 had been an incredibly good year for both my career and my blog as well. Readership for my blog, SG Wealth Builder, has soared from 50,000 page views in 2012 to 440,000 page views in 2013. The dramatic increase was due to my commitment to blog more often, surge in my blog’s email subscription and also due to the expansion of my blog network. These factors had contributed steady flow of readers to my blog and spiked up the traffic.
Merry Christmas to all readers! Below is a guest article from Gideon, a hedge fund manager for Blyton Fund. He is a global macro investor using similar strategies as George Soros. He search the world for the best profits with the lowest risks. He cover equities, foreign exchange, commodities and bonds across global markers. He is based in Singapore and is open to managing funds for others. Below is his article on US QE Tapering.
Incidental with the announcement by the US Fed on the upcoming tapering of the Quantitative Easing program, there are positive signs to buy into several equity markets and to long the US dollar against selected currencies.
The major equity markets will advance higher
Currently the Wall Street’s Dow Jones is at a historic high of 16,200 points, recording a stock market bull run that stretched from 2009’s 6500 points. This represented an incredible 250% jump within 4 years for the United States’ stock market. A sensible investor would have refrained from investing in the stock market, given the bubbly state. Conversely, gold’s performance has been dismal this year.
Anyway, back to the topic on income. We walked past EC House Express Cut and saw the job advertisement for a hairdresser. The advertisement stated the salary of $3000. It was not stated that the position required experienced applicants nor did it state for the preference of Singaporeans or foreign applicants. But I was quite surprised that a hairdresser in Singapore can command such high salary nowadays. After all, when I graduated in 2005, my starting salary was only $2600. So it seems to me that the salary gap between a skilled labor and white collar graduate is closing up rapidly in Singapore. The question now is: are Singapore workforce overpaid or is it a case of high inflation? In today’s context, can a degree really provide good income or open the door to opportunities?
I recall not too long ago, Sakae Sushi offered $3000 for a dishwasher.
In my interaction with local finance bloggers, I was surprised that many of them confessed that they didn’t know anything about gold bullion. In recent years, there were also a lot of negative reports of Singaporeans fallen prey to gold scams and frauds, losing millions of dollars in the process. With this in mind, SG Wealth Builder partners with BullionStar to educate Singaporean about the precious metal and the fundamental behind it. This article is extracted with permission from BullionStar, a Singapore online bullion company where you can buy gold and silver at competitive prices.
In April, a number of top Federal Reserve officials fed the media with more taper talk. St Louis Fed Bank president James Bullard said that he favoured “trimming” the QE program in $10-$15 billion increments if the economy improves. Then John Williams, president of the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco, said that if there was substantial improvement in the labour market, the Federal Reserve “could end the purchase program sometime late this year”.
According to an article by Property Guru, 105 HDB flats were sold below valuation in October. Based on HDB data, this trend is significantly down from the average monthly 0.3% for H1 2013 and reflected the number of flats sold below valuation increased four times in October compared to the first half of 2013. This phenomenon indicated a weakening demand caused by the “twin attacks” of stricter home loan rules and massive new flats construction programme announced by HDB in recent years. So should property investors press the panic items and run for their lives?
As written in my previous article, the cooling measure will not change market sentiment. Throughout history, the best form of cooling measure had always been a recession.
So I foresee that property prices will stabilize for the next two to three years, baring any form of recession taking place in Singapore. However, I don’t think that premium over valuation, commonly known as “cash over valuation (COV)” will enjoy its heady days.
This is not surprising as most students were not taught about how to manage money in schools and at home, most parents also seldom discuss household budgets with their children. As Asian, we also find it taboo to talk about money issues during social meetings. All these factors reinforce the notion that budgeting is not relevant to successful personal finance, which is totally untrue.
Many people thought that budgeting is all about counting beans and tracking your daily expenses. But I beg to differ. Sure, there are means and various mobile apps designed to track your daily expenses but I find that managing personal finance at such micro-level would take the kick out of living a meaningful life.
Just imaging this: having to think twice about buying or treating your good pal that cuppa of Starbuck coffee. Or how about skipping a close colleague just to save that ang pow money? Money is important but we should not let it rules our lives and stresses us out.
So I chided him for trying to induce me to invest in Yongnam. Of course he denied flatly and vehemently defended that he was just sharing good stuff. I gave him the benefit of my doubts since he is my good friend, nonetheless, I did not invest in Yongnam.
One of the most common mistakes made by new Singapore investors is the tendency to adopt a herd mentality. Tempted to make quick profits, many novice or inexperienced investors enter the stock market and rely solely on rumors and tips from friends or brokers.