Seven money habits of AK71's.

This blog post is mainly inspired by a conversation with my mother on some of my habits. Recalling a popular book titled "Seven habits of highly effective people", I came up with "Seven money habits of AK71's". ;p

Habit No. 1:
I never order canned or bottled drinks when dining out.

Fresh food needs on site preparation but I can walk to a nearby supermarket to buy the same canned or bottled

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

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

The very first step to becoming richer.

Singaporeans have a reputation for being very good at complaining. This is not a bad thing per se. After all, if some things are really bad and in urgent need of correction, we should complain. How else would the relevant authorities know about the problems and to take action? I draw the line at taking videos and photos of minor incidents and posting it on Stomp!


However, what I really find

Good debt is always good?

I look at debt as a necessary evil. Sometimes, I need that extra help in order to buy something.

Then, do I take as long as I can to repay the debt? Well, in this environment of very low interest rates, the concept of good debt has gained traction. Why not?

The idea of good debt is appealing because it gives us more funds which could possibly generate higher returns than the interest paid on

To be richer, be comfortable with being invested.

I met someone recently who told me he is swearing off the stock market for good. I asked him why. He told me that he lost a lot of money in the global financial crisis but he managed to recover all his losses in the ensuing recovery. That is good news, isn't it? Well, apparently, Mr. Market took back some of the gains in the last one year. So, he is still in a nett loss position.

I asked if his

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

Have conviction and make money?

It is impossible to see into the future. People who say that they can are like fortune tellers. How much are their advice worth? How much would we pay fortune tellers to read our palms?



Saruman's seeing stone in Lord of the Rings.


Whatever decisions we make are based on a whole gamut of factors. Then, we have certain expectations of how things would turn out after making such decisions.

The

Millionaires usually emerge from bear markets richer.

On 9 July, I wrote a piece on how fear of a collapse of the eurozone must be so strong that investors are paying Germany to borrow money from them.

Today, I read in The Business Times that "Millionaires added US stocks more than any other asset in the latest year as average investors fled to bonds, according to a survey by Fidelity Investments."

The survey involved 1,020 households with at

Fraud: Advice from a fraudster.

Often, we hear the saying that if it sounds too good to be true, it probably is. However, could we be missing out on something good if we simply tell ourselves this each time there is a deal which looks too good to be true?

So, how do we tell if something is a genuinely good deal or if it is a well disguised pit. For sure, it is not easy. Even very savvy people have been victims of con jobs

Borrow money and be paid to do so!

No, there is no typo in the title of this blog post. Yes, you read it correctly!

So, where can we go to borrow some money and be paid to do so? Who are the people lending us money and paying us for it? Maxi-Cash?

Nope, not Maxi-Cash. What I am describing is happening in Germany and, unfortunately, the option is not open to us. So, it would remain a dream.

Hey, day dreaming is actually good

Fraud: Taking money from some adults is like taking candy from a baby.

If people promise us easy money, we should have to be very cautious. What is it about? How is it possible? Why is it so? Don't be a victim of fraud.


Just a few weeks ago, a client told me how he was given some physical gold for investing some money in a company. Apparently, the gold given to him was worth some 60% of the money he invested. In case the company went belly up, a new investor would

Perpetual bonds: Good or bad?

With interest rates so low these days, one would not be wrong to wonder why are companies and even a REIT issuing perpetual bonds to raise funds with coupons of up to 7%. To a layman like me with very rudimentary understanding of economics, it could be one of two reasons:

1. The business or REIT concerned is not able to get loans because its business is too risky.

2. The amount of liquidity

Leverage up and buy investment properties now?

Today, I stumbled upon an interesting if disturbing bit of information. "Online loan" is the hottest in a list of keywords being searched for in Yahoo Singapore! For whatever reasons, Singaporeans are leveraging up or looking to it, it seems.


With the economy almost at full employment, it is harder to imagine people borrowing because they are in dire straits. Then why? They could be borrowing

Be a plumber or be unemployed?

I read an article in The Straits Times today on how a 50 year old Chinese plumber makes RMB10,000 a month clearing drains in Wuhan, Hubei, China. This is about S$2,000 and about 5 times more than what a fresh graduate in China is able to command as an office executive.


The plumber has saved enough money to buy a car and pay off his mortgage, feats which Chinese office executives are envious of.

Trading to put food on the table.

I read an article in today's Sunday Times by Goh Eng Yeow on how to sniff out good stocks to invest in. However, I am not going to blog about sniffing out potential winners in the stock market. I am going to blog about something that's probably less exciting: the day trader who wrote to him saying how he lost a big fortune in the stock market last year.


"With mounting bills, and zero financial

Towards a modern day good life.

We have our own circumstances which make demands on our finances, time and energy. Often, we hear people saying that they do not have enough money, time or energy to do all the things they have to do or want to do. How do we work towards having the money, time and energy to have a modern day good life?



Finances:

How much something costs is quantifiable, of course. Although people might find

A common piece of advice on saving.

I want to say something about a very common piece of advice dished out by many financial advisors and that is to save at least 10% of our take home pay. Now, this is an easy enough one liner but is it easy to put into practice?

For me, however, I have always said that saving even 10% is too little. Of course, everyone's circumstances are different. So, for some, 10% is all they can manage. For

2011 full year passive income from S-REITs.

On 7 Dec, income distribution from AIMS AMP Capital Industrial REIT was received. It was also the final income distribution to be received from my portfolio of S-REITs this year.

Total income distribution received in 4Q 2011:
S$ 29,040.65.

Add this to S$ 75,785.49 received in the first three quarters of 2011, the grand total for the year 2011 is S$ 104,826.14.



I received more income this