Tag: health

Investing or Gambling or Punting

On By RistrettzIn Finance, Macroeconomic, Personal Finance Series, Psychology, Random, Wealth & HealthLeave a comment

I recently read quite a bit of online articles to explore fresh new ideas and I came across some blogs discussing the fact that investing is gambling and also several others that discuss Singaporeans being overly confident with themselves. I mean there’s really no right or wrong answer to these and I personally feel that it is a little bit of a righteous standout or declaration. Yes, we all know that many people are snobbish but I would like to think that most Singaporeans are smart, clever, and full of empathy. The ones who are snob are usually the affluent group. Probably think that with a 6-digit asset, they have the right to everything.

That said, our small country has exceptional talents. These people don’t voice or come out to talk about their opinions in public. Usually, they can avoid it in its entirety or put their opinion on where it matters the most. After all, we are still humble Singaporeans, aren’t we? There was an increasing trend in the last decade about some topics that irk me a lot, let me list them down:

Kiasu/Kiasi

Meaning scared to lose or scared to die. It was prevalent in the last decade where FOMO exists today and I felt that it was uncalled for because people just flock to what most people did. It kind of made many next-gen be contrarian

Best

The concept of best has been something I disliked for some time now. At least for 30 years. For 30 years, I have been hearing the words best and “bestest”, even words that do not exist in the English dictionary appear in my everyday life. My question is, what is best? Who determines the best or why is it the best? Is what one defines as the best really the best? I beg to differ in all aspects. There is no best, there’s only what one thinks is the best. By the way, it doesn’t mean cheap means it is no good.

Similar to the way one measures a valued company. It’s not the best but it is the most valued. Then again, value is perceived hence my point – beauty lies in the eye of the beholder.

Invest in gambling

It is said that gambling is punting, investing is gambling of sorts and investing is a study of risk management. If one sees risk management the same as gambling then I’ll ask, why invest and spend so much time understanding a company or an investment? Life is an entirety of risk and we understand the risks, manage the risks, and reduce risks to enhance our lives, our experiences, and our money.

Lady luck plays a big part in our lives no doubt. Some people seem to have more of those but I’ll say, you make your own luck. If lady luck is not on your side, it is probably because it is the wrong lady. Some find their lady earlier and some later. There’s no loser at the end, it is part of the risk management and tools we can use to enhance our priority.

Disclaimer

If you like what you are seeing, do remember to check them out and do your diligence. There is no one-size-fits-all investment strategy or general rule for your every life. Join my telegram group to find out more about deals and join in the community to connect for ideas: Life Journey Telegram

If you like what I am sharing or if it resonates with you, do use my referral codes here at Referral Services. 

If you have not opened a Moomoo account to start your investing journey, you can give it a go here to recieve rewards up to S$660 (T&Cs apply). Cliek here to Open a Moomoo account

Thank you in advance. It keeps the light running on my blog. Cheers!

Being Micro (Understanding your Portfolio)

On By RistrettzIn Deals, Finance, Personal Finance Series, Promotion, Random, Wealth & HealthLeave a comment

When discussing the portfolio of Financial Planning, it is common to waive it off if you have no interest in it or talk about investments only. Like any broken recorder, the basis of Finance Literacy is fundamental however you dislike it.

Let me put it on a storyboard – As a child or if you have a child, you would want them to learn skills from a young age. (NO! I am not talking about enrichment). Here I am talking about pure survival skills like swimming, psychomotor skills, being literate, learning to drive when you are older, learning simple skills like dealing with disappointment, etc.

Similarly, financial planning is no exception to life skills. Imagining a pyramid, the top layer is not investments but insurance. Meaning risk transfer. Now, skip the boring part of insurance planning. There are a few alternatives to cheaper insurance coverage.

One of them is actually SNACK by Income. Yes, Income Insurance.

Don’t miss out now because there’s a good deal going on at the moment.

The Promotion

Here’s $50 for you to start your investment journey!

All you need to do is:
1. Download the SNACK by Income app (https://income.sg/dl-snack)
2. Enter my referral code “PAU4055” and tap on SIGN UP
3. Complete your SNACK account creation with MyInfo
4. Start SNACK Investment and ensure that you have boosted Investment! (Refer to steps 1-4 here: https://income.sg/si-start)

Get your complimentary $50 investment credits in your portfolio the following week!

Technically, it can be termed as an ILP (Investment Linked Plan) and honestly I am not a big fan of it. But you can exclude the investment option if you don’t wish to. However, for a start, you probably should do the investment portion until you get the signup rewards.

The Limit

I use the personal accident, critical illness and life insurance portion to supplement my current insurance. In any case, there is a maximum that one can be insured and it starts from $0

Life – $200,000 coverage

Accident – $ 100,000 coverage

Critical Illness – $200,000

How it Works

How this micro insurance work is that:

  1. You need to set your lifestyle activities for different classes of insurance coverage and investment (if any). For each activity that is fulfilled, a new policy will be created and added to your total coverage. In this step, you can also set a daily cap so that you don’t spend more than $0.30 (for example) per day.
    • Food & Drinks
    • Transport
    • Retail
    • Groceries
    • Entertainment
    • Utilities
    • Petrol
    • Steps
  2. Then you set your activity source. These are the ones that measure your activities such as step or visa credit card if you spend on certain categories.
    • Apple Health
    • Burpple
    • EZ-link
    • Fitbit
    • Garmin
    • Visa
  3. Then set your weekly cap – This is for the investment cap. Up to one to decide
    • You will need to have your investment objective assessed such as CKA – Customer Knowledge Assessment
    • Risk Profile.

There you go and your SNACK account will be set up for you. That said, you can redeem the fund units anytime and can stop using the insurance app anytime you want.

I get that it takes a while to get used to it but you need some time to get used to it as it is pretty automated.

If there are some brands which interest you, you can also spend and get additional coverage from them as well. Once in a while, they will run some promotional campaigns and you can get additional investment credits. So far, luck has been on my side, I have collected more than a couple of hundred in investment funds terms. Like any insurance, this is pretty efficient for an ILP since I investment directly into a fund I am comfortable with.

Disclaimer

If you decide to sign up with SNACK, do remember to use my referral code: https://income.sg/dl-snack and my referral code PAU4055.

If you like what I am sharing or if it resonates with you, do use my referral codes for other services at Referral and Recommendations

These pictures were taken off the Endowus website for reference.

2020 – The Year in Review

On By RistrettzIn Personal Finance Series, Wealth & HealthLeave a comment

2020 is going on by quickly as with any other year. Especially this  year, with the Covid-19 announced as a pandemic. The world went into a global communism, shutting off the doors everywhere quickly. It feels like Industrial Revolution version 0.0 but yet you have technology that kind of connects you with the rest of the world as well. What makes it different is that some industry do well, some medium, some would benefit in the longer term. Irrelevant businesses would eventually shut down while new ideas continue to grow in the market.

Looking back there have been some hits and misses and while things didn’t shape up nicely. The year ended off with a small little cheer that can light up our faces.

There are some segments I would like to focus on in review. That would help me to understand what I have done right, do better or not to do at all. This very blog started on the basis of money matters and personal finance – This shall be the basis of the review. Christmas and the New Year is coming and so I would also like to wish everyone a Happy Holidays. I am for once looking forward to the coming year and for a great 2021!

Thank you everyone who reads my blog or thinks that it is worth looking at. I am humbled by anyone who actually stumble or read what I have penned down online. Hopefully, the coming year would see some interesting moments for my blog or perhaps even more interesting concepts.

Money Decision

The Good

  • The decision to enter the market during the market dips in March 2020.
  • The decision to divest funds into StashAway, Endowus, Syfe, MoneyOwl and Autowealth. This has proven to be an asset for the long term.
  • Full contribution to the SA account for both Tax Rebate and Retirement Fund in CPF.
  • Usual contribution to SRS account which supplements the Retirement Funds.

The Bad

  • Didn’t save as much as I wanted due to a lot expenses. Staying at home also meant that there were more expenses for food deliveries.
  • Celebrations were a little more elaborate due to the covid. More shopping and gifting at home since there wasn’t any travelling that can be done in the next year or so. Which I kind of miss and it has been taken granted for.
  • Not too sure if it is actually is a good or bad thing that Covid hits the business. We are actually pretty resilient to the situation.

Mental Health

The Good

  • It has been pretty refreshing to work from home. After 3 months of working from home, things have been turning rather boring but it is family bonding indeed.
  • It is actually better to avoid a lot of negativity in some offices. Luckily for me, I don’t have that issue but it kind of helped for the family mentally.
  • Work has more flexibility and there isn’t that much of a rush so it helps me generally.

The Bad

  • It became kind of stressful with the wife and kids and in laws.
  • Working from Home became both good and bad because it has become rather boring where I miss the hustle and bustle of communicating with colleagues and networking with new friends.
  • There are no limits to when working hours end so I can keep on working throughout which isn’t that great. My place of relax now becomes a place where I need to focus and work.

Fitness

The Good

  • Definitely more time to do more crunches and jogs.
  • A change in lifestyle and a change in diet.
  • Exercising is actually an individual sport. Group exercising are sometimes counter intuitive.

The Bad

  • The diet and exercising kind of slowly died off and I see myself seeking more new ideas to be more active.
  • The holiday weight doesn’t help so I need to work harder to stay focus.
  • Group games are pretty impossible now so less options to stay in better shape.

Summary

The Good

  • Finally, after procrastination for years. I decided to put in the effort to pen down and build a personal finance blog. How far will I go? I don’t know but due to the Covid situation, I took some time during the wee-hours of the morning when I could not sleep to build in some hosting, webpage, WordPress setup and finally writing articles which I think people might like to read about.
  • I would like to thank those readers who picked up my codes for the services that I use. Hopefully, these services will bring the same level of expectation that I already have since I have been using them for a while now.

The Bad

  • I am still deciding whether I should attempt to write a book. A simple and funny one. It’s just to figure new projects to work out on.
  • A long-term objective is to explore alternative income/passive income
  • I’m still in the infant stage of this personal finance blog. The growth rate isn’t quite what i expected but hey I’m still learning and exploring so I’ll keep trying.

Conclusion

I decided against looking at winners and losers in the equity markets as time and again I have traded, won and lost. At least 3 or 4 cycles it happened. Using the right services to not let my emotions go wild or make irrational decision only to regret it later on. The focus of investing money should not just be money but also investing in yourself. There should also be time taken to upgrade ourselves, improve our own health and find out what matters to every individual.

Disclaimer

This is not a sponsored post. This is purely my own opinion after using their service and/or products. If you like what you are seeing, do remember to check they out and do your diligence. There is no one size fits all investment strategy.

If you like what I am sharing or if it resonates with you, do use my referral codes here at https://atomic-temporary-178675883.wpcomstaging.com/contact/ for the services.

The pictures were taken from the websites for this article.

Human Nature and Psychology

On By RistrettzIn Personal Finance Series, Psychology, Wealth & HealthLeave a comment

Humans are interesting. Technically and Fundamentally. There has been a lot of discussion around behavioural finance but I tend to see that as behavioural psychology. For the human mind, there is a sense/emotion that triggers a good feel or bad feel and that triggers almost every decision we make. I’m no exception but it very strange. How does this affect us? I believe it affect our decision to buy a company, invest a counter, sell a counter, buy a long-term product or even purchase a new gadget even though we don’t need one.

Needs versus Wants

The most old school human nature is the needs and wants. I kind of feel that this is forgotten after being used so extensively for so long. We are forgetful creatures so we have to be constantly reminded into the basics. As defined:

Needs – They are necessities and compulsory. These should be our main focus when living life to the greatest. As I have always said, there has to be a balance as well. Sometimes, it is good to take a step back and don’t follow the sense or what seem logical to be doing. It takes routine out of norm momentarily.

Wants – They are good to have and not mandatory. However, they are stuffs that has an alluring sense to being able to own it. It does not happen all the time but these are mostly things we want to own.

More often than not, we make our goals in order to achieve our wants. Those stuff are not sustainable. They make one feel good or even give a great sense of achievement.

Herd Theory

This is probably an ingrained set of behaviour that has always been affecting human being. If we win, we win together and if we lose, we all lose together so it isn’t that bad. But com’on, that isn’t really correct technically. Herd doesn’t give you immunity to anything. No one gains from the same damaging impact (If the end result is negative) but on the flip side the herd tends to celebrate when there is a success during the end goal.

It also doesn’t mean that by following analysts call, it is always the right call. How much of those really do impact your decision. I would like to think that most people decide to delegate the job of choosing a counter to the “experts”. However, it just means to always do your due diligence. If it matters to someone, you will take that extra effort to do so.

Investor Psychology

These days the market doesn’t just pick up everything from one big investor call. Geopolitical tensions and psychology plays a huge part in everything as well. The talk about the famous words Warren Buffett once said that it is wise for investors to be “fearful when others are greedy, and greedy when others are fearful.” This is a little overused but it makes absolute sense. However, this need to be taken into context as well. Is this the typical trader or the long term portfolio building strategy? We can’t typically pull a rabbit out of the hat and apply this to every scenario.

To date, I still find too many irrelevant quotes applied to conditions that are simply not apt for the scenarios. Even when the scenario seems apt, it may not be because of the situation every individual is in. Which is why, time and again I emphasize that there is no one size fits all strategy but building and learning from each other.

The $1 million investable asset versus the $100k versus the $10k versus the $0 can really learn from one another. It is never too late to do so but by not doing anything, that’s not doing yourself the favour to plan ahead.

Disclaimer

If you like what you are seeing, do remember to check they out and do your diligence. There is no one size fits all investment strategy.

If you like what I am sharing or if it resonates with you, do use my referral codes here at https://atomic-temporary-178675883.wpcomstaging.com/contact/ for the services.

Let me know what kind of articles resonates with you and what you would like to see or hear. I’ll try to make those more frequently. After all, the main objective is to create a community of sharing and learning from each other. The end goal is to be financially free.

Term or Participating Life Plans?

On By RistrettzIn Personal Finance Series, Wealth & HealthLeave a comment

Term Insurance or Participating Whole Life Insurance? This is the question that I often ask and discuss with my other half. Typically, people seek value when they buy or invest in something. For insurance, value seekers would prefer a cash value. Cash value is what you have contributed over the insurance tenor. These sum of money, deducting the cost of insurance, the fees, commissions, salary and what nots will be invested by the insurance company Fund Managers (Whether they choose in-house or external fund houses) – In short they are known as participating life insurance.

Term and Whole Life Insurance

Term Insurance are policies that do not have a cash value. They are typically cheaper than Whole Life Plans (Otherwise it wouldn’t make sense to get term insurance). For example, they cost $200 per annum for a coverage of $200K and it depends on your age at point of inception. They may or may not be renewable yearly, meaning that the premiums will increase with age and each individual health condition.

In my personal opinion, I think that a Whole Life Plan is really expensive. You pay premiums and the first three years, there is literally no value to your assets. Then your participating underlying investments are handled by someone else who tries their best to beat benchmark and regardless, they get paid in fees and costs.

Buy Term, Invest the Rest?

There is a famous saying, buy term and invest the rest. Well, I don’t have a view on that. It really depends if you want to leave some legacy behind for your family/kids/relatives or it may even be transitory. For e.g. used to cover debts such as a new house, a new car or assets. In order not to complicate matters, I’ll leave illness out of the equation and discuss solely on the death benefit. Generally, you need to cover your liabilities so that in the event of death, your family members not only are rid of their stress and pressure from the loss of a loved one as well as the financial aspect of it. To a certain extent, I believe in covering at least 2x of your liabilities so that there is comfort in dealing with more financial freedom.

The other stuffs to take note of

For a typical household, i believe that health insurance is the first thing you need to seek coverage on, followed by life plans but everyone’s scenario is different. In finance, there is a phase that all of us has to go through which is also the toughest and it is called wealth building. I’ll leave it for discussion on a separate day but my point is, you buy insurance based on what you can afford and not because it is cheap or time is not on your side.

For me, I take the approach of covering term as well as whole life plans. The hybrid style works for me as I am pretty savvy with financial contracts and insurance. In my own time, I am qualified advisor for insurance and more qualified than many out there but I never once worked for any insurance company. Though finance is my forte but there are too many products and innovation in this field that you cant keep up. So, you need to have someone in there to guide you along. It is annoying to talk to agents so you need to have someone you trust.

Let me just plant some ideas – If it make sense. It isn’t all encompassing but just to point things out.

Term Life:

A. A Substitute for liabilities (Housing loan, car loan, personal loan, student loan)

B. A transition phase which you do not mind protecting until that period is over. As term has no value, it is similar to a no-contract telco plan and you can get rid of it anytime (if the time period is short)

C. Supplement for a shortage of coverage that you have for your whole life.

Whole Life Plan:

A. It’s just for lazy people. Buy/Save and pay the premium for a period of time. Leave it there.

B. Buy at a young age and the premiums stay really really low which is smart. Consider your finances too as you need it to be as affordable until you have served the payment term.

C. If you have a young kid or elderly who are not working. You, are the income holder needs to be insured. When you are gone, the young kid and elderly will not be able to work to give you an income.

Above all, health is of the utmost importance. You will never know when or what hits you. Even then, your state of mind will be in a mess. So, no matter how prepared you are, no one will ever be prepared. All these little steps and conversations must eventually turn into real action. When shit comes, it comes and there is no point saying “I should have”. Don’t just listen to your agent out there. Seek alternative, ask and learn. No will will care more about your money more than you will – These life skills will bring value to your own life and frankly I can’t see a life with no planning and no one should.

Disclaimer

These are just solely opinions of mine. Different people have different needs, requirement, financial situation and views. For me, this is what I would do if I need to deal with buying insurance for myself and my family. There is no one size fits all – different strokes for different folks.

If you like what I am sharing or if it resonates with you, do use my referral codes here at https://atomic-temporary-178675883.wpcomstaging.com/contact/ for the services.

The pictures were taken from the website for this article.