Financial Freedom SG

1. The rush from clearing each level is like when your investment amount increases after some time.

2. You need some logic to do both well.

3. As well as some luck.

4. You need some willpower to finish both as evident by the amount of friends that have given up along the way for Candy Crush and the people that quit investment after losing lots of money. ( I’d probably quit playing Candy Crush after a while too, hopefully this is not my own famous last words that I’ve to end up eating them. Most online games are not sustainable and dies off after a while, at least for all those I’ve played so far.)

5. You have some levels you do well and end up in the top 3 while some levels, you are scraping at the bottom to just clear the level. In investing, it is the same, you win some, others you just lose. You hope that investing, you win a lot more than those you lose.

6. At some levels, you just want to give up. Some investment do that to you too, especially if they have been continuously in the red.

7. If you are serious about both, you need to consider what happens when you execute your next step.Uhm, it’s hard to be serious about Candy Crush though. Seriously.

8. Always have reserves. Savings for investment and more lives for Candy Crush by sending it to friends playing it actively without them asking preferably.

9. You are always looking over the shoulders at who’s doing it better.

10. You need time to do it well.

Read an article on Yahoo Singapore this evening about the people needing to prepare more for retirement as the retirees are living longer with better healthcare and lifestyles.

According to the article reposted from Bloomberg,  “Longest retirements fuel pressure for remodel”, Singaporean retirees are living longer like in most places in the world and this causes stress for the retirees as they probably had not saved enough for this.

In the same article, there is a quoted survey by Friends Provident International of 556 people who had at least $80,000 to invest found that only about 57% felt that they are saving enough for their retirement. I went to look at the survey that they provided and there were some interesting things there too like some felt that they need at least $800,000 for retirement while others have figures of $2.5 million. 

Being a bit of a busybody, i went to Google Friends Provident International, read a bit of their website and went to one of their funds that they advertise and suffice to say that i baulked at the fees that they are charging for their investment advice. This high fees charged besides other things is also mentioned at this website by Andrew Hallam that was part of the first page of the Google search results that I found.

The one thing you can control in investment is fees.

High fees are not indicative of expert knowledge. Nor do they indicate that there is a modicum of safety or stability in the high fees charged.

Back to the topic of being prepared for retirement, I will say that quite a lot of people think that investment is hard. It isn’t, but it is not that easy either. In fact, I’d say that it takes more willpower than IQ.

In my second job working for a bank’s call centre, I remembered the trainer who showed us a newspaper clipping about a clerk who invested a fixed monthly sum to her Singapore unit trust fund. She retired as a millionaire.

All you need to do is to spend less than you earn each month (some months may be a bit of a challenge, what with insurance dues, credit card payments etc, but the key is that you have to spend less than you earn).

So no car, no LV bags, no Tag Heur watches, no frivolous expenses.

The author of the book, “The millionaire Next Door”, found firemen, teachers as people who managed to find themselves with a million. So there isn’t an excuse for not being prepared for retirement.

It’d be helpful if you can actually save a million, but that is doubtful unless you are earning millions each year. So for us mere mortals, we have to invest.

My abiding faith in the power of investment is because i was a beneficiary in that too as my father’s investment in stocks and shares all through his life was key to his being able to send me overseas for my university studies.

So I bought stocks and IPOs in my very first job right from the first year.

I’ve stopped making stock purchases in the past two years as my baby boy came along with my busy job and a master’s course (funded this time by the stock purchases I’ve made). But i have two monthly dollar cost averaging plans that are moving along without any input from me. And I plan to start again pretty soon, China looks inviting as it has fallen to below 10x in its PE ratio from sky high levels just about a year ago or so.

Meanwhile, time to relook at my estimates for how much we need for retirement based on the Bloomberg news article  and Singapore’s new high levels of inflation.

Source:
1. Bloomberg article: http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-04-18/world-s-longest-retirements-fuel-pressure-for-singapore-remodel.html
2. Friends Provident International survey: http://www.fpinternational.com/common/layouts/subSectionLayout.jhtml?pageId=fpint/SitePageSimple%3Ainvestor_attitudes#
3. http://andrewhallam.com/2011/04/weve-just-been-scammed-by-friends-provident-so-what-now/

For the past three years, I have had a busy job that zapped my energy that all I wanted when I reached home was to rest and not do much. On top of that, I am taking a part time master program and one and a half year ago, my little kid came to the world.


So investing and the blog took a back seat as I did not have the time or the energy to put as much effort into it.

With a new job, there are new things to learn and the handphone isn’t ringing off the hook and I don’t have to run around to meet clients or suppliers. So there is time to recharge and take stock.

Through much of that which had happened, the investment income my wife and me have has gone to a higher level and we have enjoyed the dividends that came into our savings account which was sucked into expenses as a baby isn’t cheap in Singapore’s context.

We tried to save money when we could, buying 15 tins of milk power at one go as it was on offer. People were pointing and staring , but we didn’t care. We bought them late last year and my baby just finished eating the last 15th tin no long ago. We finally have a 32 inch LCD TV, courtesy of my parents who got a gleaming 39 inch LED TV free. Sure, there are scratches and it looks bulky for an LCD but it works. We could have bought one for sure, but my spouse will refuse as our CRT TV in the living room still works perfectly more than 7 years later. So it still takes pride of place in the living room as it works better than the LCD anyway which cannot be viewed clearly from the sides. So the LCD went to the bedroom.

The point is that in order to have enough to invest, your salary has to be more than your expenses.

So no frivolous and unnecessary spending.

No car, no LV handbag, no ibook (but an ipad, as the little one magically stays still during feeding session when one appears) etc.

We could afford them (at least I think so, but my wife thinks not and you must always agree if you want your ears to be free), but rather have that in OCBC shares, Berkshire shares, REITS, ETFs, index fund etc.

So we go on the daily ritual to squeeze with the rest of the Singapore population and much of the rest of the world on the MRT and buses. When it is less crowded, you can play Sugar Crush, read the free daily, read news on your handphone or do emails.

My wife prefers looking at photos of the little one, but sometimes, all you see is the back of another person’s head or armpit, depending on your relative heights.

Thanks to the new job, my aim for this month for me is to convert more of my CPF money to pay for the housing loan, so that we can free up more cash for investment.