Welcome to my Blog!

Recently I’ve stop posting stuff about my monthly income and expenses and stuff, as I have been diverted by the fact that I got a recent promotion. Not very surprised by this, just that with more funds I can do more now. In fact I shall be more careful.

Here’s how I allocate my cash… my money, assets, whatever you call it.

• Cash (No risk) 16.18%
• Low Int. Savings 20.39%
• Insurance and policies 7.77%
• Equities & Securities 33.01%
• Long Term Income 22.65%
• Total 100.00%

Cash - amount here with little to no interest at all. It is here usually for paying bills and noting else.
Low Interest Savings - saving accounts which has a slightly higher interest than normal cash account, and the cash can be withdrawn instantly.
Insurance and Policies - Insurance protect my wealth by insuring in case of any mishaps or medical bills.
Equities - refers to Stocks markets, derivatives, and any other instruments to grow cash by risk and rewards
Long Term Income - Any instruments or products that guarantees a monthly income of about 5-20% returns consistencely.

Currently I am pushign for more % into the insurance part, so with a growth portfolio, I am to balance out the allocation and grow my cash slowly and steadily. So in summary, I am maintaining a total networth of what I have now after expenses, and then putting the right amount of cash into the each different “baskets”.

I wrote one of my expenses to be the X mini speakers. Guess what. I applied for this HSBC credit card, and it actually offered me a free gift. And its another X mini speakers! The same model.

Without hesitation, I immediately took it to my office and sold it off at half the price, by just being friendly. If only I had waited, I could have save that $36. Anyway, it had passed already. This HSBC card indeed gave me what it mentioned; with 3 transactions a month, you get a $5 cash rebates.

My aunt too gave me a $100 voucher for a bookstore, Kinokuniya. I ended up buying $200 worth of books. Well, books are knowledge, and I can read them at a later date, since these information don’t go outdated. (I bought all books related to stocks investment etc)

Here’s this month’s breakdown:
Savings and Earnings

$500/month Citibank Step up Account
$150 - Profit from US stocks trades

Expenses
$100 Kinokuniya books!
$20 Some Audio CDs. Korean ver - Boys over flowers
$12 A couple of bubble teas. They cost $3 per cup.

August seemed to run so fast, as I am a little late on my summary post here.

This month, I saw a cheap offer for toothpaste, offered by Watson’s a pharmacy. It also sell lots of other daily needs. Armed with a credit card that offers 3% rebates on total amount purchase, I bought some of the usual toiletries and save about 30% on Oral-B toothpastes. Its 33% of savings in total.

And just when I thought I am starting to save more, I actually made a mistake on my internet bills. My dad accidentally threw away the internet bills, so I had to pay a 2 months bill, making it higher this month.

Here’s this month’s breakdown:
Savings and Earnings

$500/month Citibank Step up Account

Expenses
$80 internet bills
$36 X mini Speakers (cool speakers, but I don’t need em actually..)
$50 A treat to my relatives on Ice cream buffets

It isn’t that bad, I track my expenses closely. But sometimes these are stuff that must be spent on

In the previous posts I mentioned having a change in life with how I handle and mange money. Other than working my sweat out to earn that keep just for bills, we have, or should I say, our financial system allows us to do something called investment. (after all banks, financial firms, insurance, all ultimately goes to trading onto business and credit interests to earn, and we should too.)

Without going into details, I’ll just redirect you to my trading and investment blog called

http://www.managemoneyonline.com.

It blogs down some of the winning and losing trades, as well as what really happen to my initial capital of 1xxxxx dollars.
*Warning, its pure hardcore posts in terms of stocks and market trading, on the NYSE and NASDAQ.

Here’s this month’s breakdown:
Savings and Earnings

$500/month Citibank Step up Account

Expenses

Lots of >$20 lunch while I was making $50-$100 on average trading daily.
And a terrible terrible lost in a single trade, that left me saving even my toothpaste for brushing. (Look to my trading blog for more details! http://www.managemoneyonline.com )

I didn’t really track this money as money went flying around my bank account, to my POSB account, then to through my EPS to my POEMS trading account.

I wrote this post because this month there were some huge changes in my life, in terms of my financial health. Some of the things that happen this month were:

- I started trading (actually I started learning how to trade near Feburary)
- I am now using all the financial knowledge I’ve acquired in 2008
- I have close my account from POSB MySavings
- I have withdraw a huge amount of $ from my Citibank Savings Account
- I have started trading daily (nightly) on the NYSE, NASDAQ and AMEX stock exchanges

And so, my advise is if you want to get rich quick but not that quick (with some efforts) you should do something by converting your cash into assets, and let it grow.

Picture a game of Monopoly and play the game. If you have $5000, would you buy pieces of lands and train stations or would you keep your cash in your pockets ? You would most probably run out of cash after a few rounds if your opponents own those other assets, build houses and hotels, and you hitting their spots.

I would also take this opportunity to introduce my new website (other than my music, gaming and golf site), my NYSE and NASDAQ trading daily blogs. Here in this blog I talk about some tips I’ve discovered, some other tips by other experts, some buy and sell recommendations and my daily blogs of stocks I purchase and sell.

It shouldn’t serve as ad advice, for I am not an expert yet, but it would be interesting to see my progress (for me as a blog) and well, I just got to admit my mistakes if I didn’t perform well on this very very dangerous, volatile and face paced stocks exchange.

Finally I’ll have a big update near July on my monthly money management stuff !

“If you love money, forget about the job. If you love the job, forget about the money.”

I thought of this quote while I was thinking if I had a job that I love. A job that I have passion in, a job that is stressless, and one that I enjoy doing (probably because I have a pretty colleague)

Well but that’s not the case because I love money more than anything. Or should I say I need it more than anything else. Hmm in that case I am prepared to work any job that gives me the highest income, be it being employee, self employed or an employer.

This question has been asked many many times throughout working adults. Just how much should we save ? This is also a popular topic among financial advisor or wealth management agents.

Unlike the US financial advisors, who are really advisors, Asia’s financial advisor are slightly different. Insted of really advise you on how to manage your wealth, they actually look at your income and assets status, and then try to sell you a product. It may be insurance or wealth linked, but that’s not the point. I guess 9 out of 10 advisor does that.

This is real bad for us, as we don’t already have enough money to be in the comfort zone. Besides, there aren’t many people who can manage wealth very well. That is why we need to learn how to do our own money planning. (Hate to use this “wealth” word, because not many are rich enough to be wealthy.)

Like they say, a general rule of thumb is to save 10% of what you earn. I do reckon that this is adequate, but do we have the discipline ? A simple way is to treat that 10% as a kind of expense, and pay it to somewhere else.

Trick your mind to accept the fact that it is always necessary to first pay yourself, park it somewhere. With that in mind, then we are able to move on to where to park that 10% of your income. You might think that 10% is very little, but if let’s say you earn between 3-5k a month, that will amount to 300-500 a month, which is enough as a form of disciplined saving.

In summary (% of your income):

Single:

20% - Normal Savings
10% - For short-mid term goals
5-10% - Insurance

Not Single:

10%-20% - Normal Savings
10% - For short-mid term goals
Above 10% - Insurance for you and your family

 
As for me, I prefer a higher percentage, roughly 20-40% of your savings, if you are aged between 20-28 or so. In other words, if you are a graduate who just came out to work, and you don’t have a family yet. In some of my money management posts, I have posted a $500 monthly savings to Citibank savings account, and a $300 to a local bank savings account. That is between the range of 20-40%.

But, depending on situations, saving your money in banks won’t make you wealthy. It is always better to put the money into good use instead of earning low interest from the bank. Still the bare minimum is 10%, and we should always practise that.

This month is a little bit interesting because I lost the chance in investing in the stocks and shares. A look over the mid week of March sees a bearish market, or the bottom low. Ahh… but anyway its over. Poems trading account was setup with US Stocks exchange trading.

As you guys know I bought a Google Android HTC Dream phone, so that will cost me around $488 SGD. Plus some increase in my phone bills, about doubling my existing hand phone plans. Nevermind, for the access of mobile internet…

This month I saw two annual fee paid to my Citibank’s Credit card. Ouch, because I had it on Giro auto deduction, it was a bad choice. I plan to cancel one of the Citibank Master Platinum, because its useless. So its I’ve spend $300 on some stupid annual fees, and waived it off. Now it is credit I have to spend it off. Great.

Here’s this month’s breakdown:
Savings and Earnings

$500/month Citibank Step up Account (I guess this is the highest paying account currently)
POSB Mysavings Cancelled !

Expenses

Google Android HTC Dream - $488
2 x Citibank Credit Card Annual Fees (Waived!)- $300 &!@%*#
UOB One card Annual fees (Waived!) - $60

After reading the halfway through this book “Make money, Be happy”, I came out with my own simple logic about money health mentality of people around us. I think we think this way, and this is quite powerful to motivate me to go further on my finances.

There are 3 ways of how people think about managing their money.

I am poor, born to be poor, and I will never be rich

For this type of people, for every $1 they receive, will find ways to spent their $1 off, and ends up with $0.

Before doing anything, since they have determined that they live poor, they will spent that $1 away by wasting it on some stupid stuff, and end up with no money.

I am spendthrift, very careful in spending, and I save everything I have for the future

This type of people, for every $1 they receive, will find ways to save their $1, and ends up with $1.

This is typically us. We tend to save everything we have, Though we do spend, we save after spending. It is better than not saving, but in this state of mentality, we try to save as much as we can and hopefully “save” a pile of fortune. Which… sadly we know it doesn’t work.

I am rich, and I think rich. I will be rich if I keep trying it.

For this type of people, for every $1 they receive, will find ways to invest their $1 to get higher returns, and ends up with $1.

This is the kind of mentality that very few of us adopt. Only the rich people will think of it, because that is how they ended up there. For this group of people, they will try ways to invest their $1, into getting back $1.10, or even $2. This kind of thinking allows us to keep pushing the limit into finding ways to increase our assets.

In March, I am just trying to save whatever I can. Having seen the un-stability in all financial markets, nothing is safe and sound. The banks might crumble anytime, but let’s hope the recession doesn’t affect us that bad.

And since the POSB MySavings interest rates has fallen to 0.4%, its time I pull the savings out, bit by bit first. (I was told by the bank teller my interest rates will fall if I withdraw, but hey its already so low, who cares?) On another note, I was thinking to increase my savings to Citibank, since it has a not-so-bad interest rate.

Around the corner on the last day of March, I got a performance bonus from the company I worked in, roughly $2000. Not much, but its very good its times of crisis, and since it is a “reward” for my performance in WY 2008.

I’ve just gotten an account from POEMS, an online internet trading platform for buying shares, funds, unit trusts, and options etc… In 2 weeks time I should be able to buy shares online. That would make a better and meaningful experience to write down here.

Nothing much on my expenses list, there isn’t really a need to spend this month. Just a Life insurance premium to Manulife.

Here’s this month’s breakdown:
Savings and Earnings

$2000 Employee Bonus
$500/month Citibank Step up Account (I guess this is the highest paying account currently)
$300/month POSB MySavings (this is just temporary hmm…)

Expenses
Insurance - $600
Some clothes - $100
A new Pillow and pillow case - $100