Your Best Investment is in Yourself

Spent some time reading the article "What's the best investment asset class? It is ourselves" (25 Oct) in the Invest section of the Straits Times today. If you want, you can read the article here as well. It talks about buying insurance and diversifying your investments to suit your job as well. Anyway, my post is not on exactly the same topic, but the article did give me ideas for this post on investing in yourself.

Tricks to Avoid when Shopping

There are many tricks that companies use to encourage us to shop more and to spend more. Maybe it's time that we should start learning about some of these tricks and trying to spot them on our next shopping trip.

What type of Wealth Accumulator are you?

In The Millionaire Next Door, Thomas Stanley and William Danko classfied people into 3 different types of wealth accumulators: The Under Accumulator of Wealth (UAW), the Prodigious Accumulator of Wealth (PAW) and the Average Accumulator of Wealth (AAW).

(Image source: amazon.com)

How to Allocate Your Portfolio

I did a guest post on the topic at moneydigest.sg, the link to the post is here: How to Allocate Your Portfolio

(Image source: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Investing_money.jpg)

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3 (More) Bad Money Habits and How You Can Break Them

This is going to be my second post on the topic of bad money habits, the first post on this topic can be seen at 3 Bad Money Habits and How You Can Break Them, where I covered keeping a balance on your credit card, not tracking your spending and impulse spending. I'll cover 3 more bad money habits in this post

(Image source: http://www.womansday.com/life/work-money/tips/a6793/bad-money-habits/)

3 Board Games that Help Increase Your Financial Literacy

The national day long weekend is finally here :) In this post I'll be covering 3 board games that you can look at and maybe play with your family and friends over this national day long weekend which can help increase your financial literacy while playing them.

Hobbies Can Make or Break You

I think that one important that can make or break you, at least financially, are your hobbies. There are many types of hobbies, some of which range from the expensive, for example traveling, to free ones such as jogging, reading or blogging. There are also some hobbies that can even help us make money by using some of the information acquired with our interest in the topic, for example investing.

Is Retiring a Millionaire Just a Dream?

Is being a millionaire an almost impossible dream? In reality, most of us are going to need at least that magical seven digits in order to retire comfortably. It's a self-fulfilling prophecy at times, thinking at it is too large a sum basically convinces us not to even try. But then, is it really that hard to reach the seven-digits? I'll break down the numbers in this post into annual, monthly and daily savings that we will have to start in order to reach it, to prove that it's not so impossible for most of us.

Saving as a Student

Happy (belated) Youth Day to my younger readers!

I'm not really sure of the number of younger readers that I have, but I'll be sharing some numbers on saving money as a student, the importance of doing so as well as some tips on saving money as a student. Saving is a habit that should start from young and hope to encourage younger readers to adopt this good habit as well.

(Image source: http://timobrienhomesblog.com/2010/07/09/summer-energy-saving-tips/)

4 Quadrants of Money Management

I was thinking about Stephen Covey's 4 quadrants of time management, which I read in his book 7 Habits of Highly Effective People. I think that this is not only applicable to managing our time but can also be used in managing our money as well.

(Image source: http://czarto.com/2012/04/24/four-quadrants-of-time/)

3 Bad Money Habits and How You Can Break Them

Going to start this chain of blog posts where I start to include some of the money habits which I think are unnecessary and completely within our control to break. I may add more habits as I go along and encounter some of them, but here are the first 3 that I've been working on. While I hope they don't apply to you, I hope that you may find some of them useful.

(Image source: http://www.womansday.com/life/work-money/tips/a6793/bad-money-habits/)

5 Ways to Start Building your Emergency Fund

This is a continuation from my first post on What is an Emergency Fund and Why You Should Have One. This post is going to show you some tips and ideas on how you can start to build your emergency fund if you have yet to do so

(Image source: http://www.inc.com/magazine/201405/alexa-von-tobel/need-for-freedom-fund-savings-living-expenses.html)

What is an Emergency Fund and Why You Should Have One

What is an emergency fund? It is cash that you have saved up just to settle some unexpected events or accidents that life hands to you. How much should you have in an emergency fund? That depends more on your current situation, such as being self-employed or employed in a high turnover industry, but one guideline that I like to follow is around 8 months of expenses, which I got from Suze Orman. More on why and what an emergency fund should be made of will be covered in this blog post.

(Image source: http://www.inc.com/magazine/201405/alexa-von-tobel/need-for-freedom-fund-savings-living-expenses.html)

Difference Between Being Frugal and Plain Cheap

Found some of these points on the difference between being frugal and cheap interesting and may also help us in our lives by knowing where to draw the line between being frugal and just cheap, which would help us in managing our own daily expenses.

(Image source:http://www.pennilessparenting.com/2010/06/frugal-vs-stingy.html)

What is your Time Value of Money?

Was thinking about this question as different people would place a different time value on their money. Some would be willing to give up high potential returns in exchange for instant gratification while other would be more willing to save and invest the money and let it grow so they have more in the future.

How Much Do You Need to Save for Retirement?

This blog post is just to show the amount of money that we should be saving for our retirement. Most of this would just be some of the numbers that I have calculated to show the amount that we should be saving to ensure that we will be able to build up a sufficient nest egg for our retirement. If you want to learn more about saving up for retirement, you can read my post on it here: Ways to Begin Saving for Retirement

(Image source: http://www.bankingsense.com/how-saving-slowly-over-time-builds-your-retirement-portfolio/)

Do The Rich Think Differently?

Going to use this blog post to share some of the knowledge I have gleaned from books such as "Rich Dad's Retire Young Retire Rich" by Robert T. Kiyosaki and "The Millionaire Next Door" by Thomas J. Stanley and William D. Danko as well as articles online and some of my own observations of how the rich think and why are it is different from the middle-class thinking.

Advice on Spending Your Money in Your 20s-30s

Just an observation from Google Analytics, most of my viewers are between the ages of 25-34 (>40%) based on the over 50% of session recorded (and also predominantly, >75%, male, but that's beside the point). So, I've decided to write a post on some ideas and advice by others on how to spend your money in your 20s and 30s, hope this will be helpful to you.

Better Way to Grow your CPF Monies

Just giving some suggestions and ideas with regard to your CPF monies instead of leaving them there earning 2.5-4% interest rates. I'm not exactly sure of the CPF interest rates, they keep changing until I get confused, but anyway, from what I understand, you get 2.5% (or the major local banks from Feb to Apr of that year, whichever is higher) interest rate on money in your Ordinary Account (OA) and 4% on money in your Special Account (SA), Medisave Account and Retirement Account. There is an additional 1% on the first $60,000 of our savings, $20,000 of which can come from OA.

Key to Growing Wealth

Many people will go all their life asking "What is the key to growing an enormous fortune?" There are many answers, earning a high salary, striking the lottery, setting up a successful enterprise. But there is one method that will allow you to grow your wealth to what may now be an unimaginable level. I'm not in the business of five-minute quick fixes and what-not, but compounding is a magic touch which can allow your portfolio to grow exponentially. But of course, as things go, compounding takes time to work its magic and good things come to those who wait.