Understand Yourself Before Starting Saving/Investment Journey

Hi Everyone!

Today's topic is about understanding yourself before you start your investment/saving journey. This is important because it can greatly affect your portfolio and the returns that you can generate.

These are some of the questions that you can asked yourself or make sure that you know about yourself before getting started.

1. Is Your Determination Strong Enough To Complete Every Task?

This question is important because financial saving/investment requires determination before you can reach that financial goal of yours. The reason is because in order to reach the financial goal via saving/investment, you would need to give up some of the excessive lifestyle that you are currently enjoying in order to save up some money to build your first pot of gold.

Initially, you might be able to have some determination to work towards that, but maybe few months down the road, you might think otherwise. You will feel that you are tired of saving money, tracking your own expenses and etc, which eventually goes back to your normal lifestyle where you spend or overspend the money that you earn for each month.

So determination is very important so to ensure that you won't give up half way. Personally, I have been through that stage before whereby I was too lazy to keep track of my own expenses for about 2 months, and after which when I resume on tracking my expenses (without any changes in my daily spending), I actually spend more than what I should have. So I quickly set myself a target, goal and expenses tracking website to ensure that such things will not happen. 

2. Risk Appetite

There are tons of investment/saving tools out in the market whereby you can make your money work for you to earn more returns. So you will have to asked yourself, what is your risk appetite. 

For low risk, you can go for banks with high saving interest like OCBC 360, UOB One or BOC, together with SSB, STI ETF, CPF Top Up and probably fixed deposit.

For high risk, you can go for tradings, invest in shares, FX and etc. 

So it really depend on your risk appetite. However, if you are new to investment, do not go all in at the very first time, set some amount that you can lose and try it out first before increasing the limit of your money. If not, you might lose all your money at one shot.

3. Lazy or Hardworking

Depends on whether you are hardworking or lazy. If you are hardworking, it would be best for yourself to manage your own portfolio. However, if you are lazy, then it would be best to get one agent, middleman or fund manager to handle your money for you. 

The reason is because monitoring your portfolio can take up a lot of your time which makes you have lesser time to slack around in the house, even during your weekends. So if you do not have such time for monitoring, it would be best to ask a middle man to manage it for you (by paying them some commission or price - depending on what you buy, could be insurance saving plan, STI EFT and etc.)

So these are the three things I find that it is important to asked yourself before you start your saving/investment journey. So what is your view about this? Do comment below!

Should teenager in Singapore have credit cards?

Hi Everyone!

I have come across a blog post by the famous dividend warrior, where he post about whether should teenagers in Singapore have credit cards : Should Teenager in Singapore have credit card?, the actual post can be found on Should Teenager in Singapore have credit cards? - SingSaver - I have no affiliation to SingSaver or whatsoever, just posting my own personal view

So after reading the post, it kept me thinking, whether should a teenager carries credit card for their daily usage. Personally, there are pros and cons when it comes to a teenager carries a credit card. I will start with the pros, follow by cons then lastly my personally view on whether if I will let my future kids carries credit card.

Pros of having credit card in early age:

• Convenience - because due to the emerging market of e-commerce, buying things online will be cheaper than buying things in the mall. With a credit card, teenagers can purchase their stuff at a cheaper price.
• Rebates - There are tons of rebates when using credit cards, like dinning, shopping online and etc.
• Limitation - With credit card, parents can set limitation on how much they can use so that they won't overspend during that month.

Cons of having credit card in early age:

• Overspend - Even if there is a limitation on how much to spend within a month, there might be a case whereby the teenager might hit the credit card limit within the first 2 weeks of the month. This will cause them to suffer for the rest of the month. Knowing this situation, parent might/might not increase the credit limit. If the parent increase the credit limit, it will just go loose. However, if not, the teenager might do something else to earn money for the rest of the weeks (be it legal or illegal means)
• Affecting studies - the overspending issue will flow over to this point whereby, if teenager tries to earn money for their daily expenses by working or other stuff, they might not be able to concentrate on their studies and eventually affect their studies. 

My Personal View

For me, if I have a kid, I won't let them have credit card unless that start working (full time). Many might say I am too conservative and somethings require to buy online but without credit card, it will be hard for the teenagers to buy. 

Of course, I am not restricting that, my kids can use my credit card to buy things online. Of course, it seems like there are too many restrictions but if you think about it carefully, if they rely on credit card too much, this might affect their financial thinking in their adulthood. They might think that it's okay to use future money for the things that they want it now.   

Of course, you might say that it is to train them to control their finances, but controlling their finances can come in any form, like weekly allowance and etc. I believe many of the readers here did not have credit card in your teens, and you are living quite alright. But when you see the news whereby adult are over spending with their credit card, this makes you feel scared to even owned a credit card (even for me, but luckily I am not a huge spender and only hit the minimum limit to gain bank interest).

Personally, I don't encourage teenagers to have credit card when they are still young. I would rather try to make them focus on saving money with weekly allowance. Because with the weekly allowance concept, they can slowly save bit by bit and they can control their finances better (My view)

So what is your view on this subject?

Candlesticks

Hi Everyone,

During the previous post, I have post about understanding the market direction. For today's topic, it will be about candlesticks. I have heard a lot of people talking about reading candlestick as the gauge to understand whether is it a right time to go in or a right time to sell in order to gain profit/reduce loss.

Certainly, as a long term trader, it's no harm for me to understand a bit on candlestick to ensure that I am not purchasing as a unfavorable price in the market. Thus, I decided to check out on some video tutorial on candlesticks. On youtube, I have found one rather clear and concise video about how to read candlesticks for beginners. Certainly there are more to learn as it is no an easy feat to learn candlestick in just one video.

The below is the video that I have come across

Certainly, if you have come across any interesting video about candlestick do drop me a comment because I am curious to learn how to pick up this skill.

Thank You!:D

Learn about market direction

Hi Everyone!

As a newbie like me, we are still learning how to grasp the market movement to ensure that we understand the movement/trend of the market. There are a lot of learning materials that we can obtain to understand these terms. I have found a very nice video on Youtube which provide a clear explanation on how to read the market trend. 

The video are as follows:
Part 1

Part 2

Not sure whether this is a good video to start with but I do understand some technical terms on reading market movement/trends

Understanding REITs

Hi Everyone!

REITs has one of the highest dividend yield as compare to other stocks which is favorable to dividend warrior like me. However, not all REITs have high dividend because it all depend on the risk that each REITs hold. 

Certainly, there are lots of REITs to look out for and I have come across a website about REITs and this enables me to understand the characteristics of REITs. The website that I have come across is Understand REITs. 

Do take a look at the website and read more about REITs characteristics, however, you can not solely depending on the information on this website to do your decision as there are other factors that you need to take into consideration.

Five Key Dates Every Shareholder Should Know

Hi Everyone!

I have come across a video as a preparation and also understanding on how the dividend works, especially on the date on Ex-Div, payment date and etc.