Millionaire or not, plan for retirement.

Being a millionaire today is different from being a millionaire 30 or even 20 years ago. This is simply because a million dollars is worth less now due to inflation in the cost of goods and services. These days, even a HDB flat could cost a million dollars!

So, someone with total liquid assets worth a million dollars does not impress me. What might impress me is how he got it and what he is

Made and still making money from S-REITs.

In an environment of very low interest rates, S-REITs are logical beneficiaries and in more ways than one. Regular readers would have heard this many times already. Readers who are new to my blog might want to read some of my older blog posts on S-REITs and why they are expected to continue performing well.

When we invest in S-REITs, it is with a primary aim of receiving regular and meaningful

Young working Singaporeans, you are OK. Really?

This was just in the news:

Young Singaporeans in the workforce today will have adequate savings in their
Central Provident Fund (CPF) accounts by the time they retire, according to an
independent study by the Ministry of Manpower.

A recent study using the Income Replacement Rate or IRR indicates that
Singaporeans are adequately covered. Pension economists measure
retirement adequacy by

Tea with AK71: Tonkatsu, Saizen REIT, Mazda cars.

Many things happened in my life lately. Some good and some bad. Well, mostly bad, I feel. Anyway, all I can do is to soldier on and roll with the punches. Take the good with the bad.

Today, after going out in the morning for an extended family gathering, I detoured to Orchard Road to take in the sights and have lunch at a tonkatsu place in the basement of Ion Orchard which my sister brought me

60 years leasehold condominium in Singapore.

When I was told many years ago that residential properties in Hong Kong generally come with a 50 years lease, I was amazed. So, if someone in his 30s were to buy a condo in Hong Kong and if he should live to be 90 years old, he could be kicked out of the property as there is no guarantee that the lease would be extended?

To someone from Hong Kong, a 99 years leasehold property in Singapore is

What should a Singaporean have by age 35?

I came across an article in Yahoo!Finance: "The 5 things every Singaporean should have by 35."




The 5 things the author listed are:

1.  A time deposit that would be maturing soon. He thinks that people should start by having a reliable investment scheme in their 20s and went on to say that fixed deposits are a good place to look... er...

2.  A relevant degree. He thinks that a degree is the

Voices, noises and choices.

The amount of information out there is enough to make one feel somewhat overwhelmed or even faint. I have not been reading blogs as much in the last one week and kept my reading primarily to Channel NewsAsia, The Business Times and Yahoo!Finance. Even so, it probably is enough to make heads spin.

Some proclaimed that the U.S. housing market has bottomed and is picking up! Conventional wisdom

Low interest rates' a double whammy for some.

Central banks in many large economies around the world are keeping interest rates really low, near zero in countries like the USA and Japan, in fact. Low interest rates are seen as the way to encourage economic growth by making borrowings cheaper.



To revive their sickly economies, the relevant countries' low interest rates could be instrumental. However, as money would go to where it is

Affordability of housing in Singapore.

Hot on the heels of my last blog post on property prices in Singapore and whether more cooling measures are on the way, I came across an article in TODAY which reported that HDB slammed PropertyGuru for inaccurately reporting that it is more affordable to buy a private property than a resale HDB flat.

I am not really interested in their squabbles since it has no bearing on my life. However, I am

More cooling measures on the way?

A friend told me that the middle class in Singapore is rich and they have plenty of money for investment. That is probably just a guess. So, I would also hazard a guess to say that many are probably leveraged up to invest in properties and that they are not all cash rich per se.


Notice how it is new launches which are doing well? This is evident in January and Februarys' sales figures. The

Office S-REITs VS. Industrial S-REITs (4).

For some time now, I have been saying it is better to be vested in industrial S-REITs rather than office S-REITs. My research supports this idea.


Now, with the government imposing more cooling measures on residential properties, many investors turned their attention to industrial and commercial properties instead. This has hastened the rising prices of such properties.

Indeed, when a relative

Buying a private property as an owner-occupier? Think like an investor!

This blog post is in response to a comment by a reader, Jaime. See it here.



Hi Jaime,

How to buy a private property for self stay? I am most probably considered an amateur when it comes to buying private properties but I am happy to share my thoughts with you.

Just keep visiting showflats if you want to buy new. Or keep viewing apartments (look through the classifieds in the papers or search

What the very rich are doing with their wealth?

I read an article provided by Bloomberg News that Singapore will become the world's top wealth management centre by 2013, surpassing Switzerland and London.


It looks like our tiny island nation is attracting a lot of wealth from around the world and we are not just talking about HNW individuals. We are talking about super HNW individuals and families!

These families are setting up family

Tharman Shanmugaratnam has spoken.

I think Tharman Shanmugaratnam is a really brainy guy. He also did our country proud when he was selected as the Chairman of the International Monetary and Financial Committee.

When Tony Tan talks about the economy, I listen. When Tharman S. talks about the economy, I listen too and he has spoken.

"Tharman Shanmugaratnam told a conference that the world has now “entered a phase where there is a

Money continues to flow into Singapore.

Singapore continues to attract inflows of money. I have friends from USA and Europe who are parking their money in savings accounts in Singapore although they get only 0.1% interest. Why? The Singapore Dollar has been appreciating against their home currencies and is likely to get stronger.


Singapore also has a AAA rating when it comes to sovereign bonds. This has been attracting much attention

Dr. Marc Faber: How not to lose money?

I have the greatest respect for Dr. Marc Faber and his insights have so far been spot on. In a recent interview, he said "I am ultra-bearish about everything geopolitically. In an environment of money printing, we have to ask ourselves, how do we protect our wealth? ... Where do we allocate the money?"

In summary:

1. Treasuries:

"U.S. government bonds are junk bonds," Faber said. "As

Cheap shopping and makan in Johor Bahru?

I have not updated my blog in two days and I am suffering from withdrawal symptoms! So, what have I been up to in the evenings? They were spent packing and moving stuff. When I say moving stuff, it means moving stuff from the city fringe to the remote western part of Singapore. Imagine the journey, to and fro! Of course, there would be some cleaning up as well. Actually, a lot of cleaning up.