Rainbow on FI

好看的不一定实用，但往往价格昂贵。 昂贵的不一定实用，实用的不一定贵。 买（昂贵）东西前的3大考量： 1. 这是不是个必须品？ （如果没有这个， 有其他更好或更便宜的代替品） 2. 这东西实用和耐用吗？ 3. 这东西我会每周使用吗？ *** "福生于清俭，德生于卑退“

My premonition of STI breaking support  in June turned out to be true, just that I didn't anticipate the big plunge. :( STI is on average down 25.1% from it's all time high this year. 8 counters have gone down 30% or more from their all time high. All counters suffer price decline with the only exception of SATS. I did not go digging up each business's net profit/loss. Interested to go blue chip shopping yet? Then you could perhaps look up on the business profit/loss and maybe the dividend yields for those that interest you. And once again the advice here is - don't catch a falling knife. *Correction: STI was down 26.2% when CapitaLand is factored in instead of Singapore Exchange (repeated lines). 

Read also:  My thoughts on Financial freedom . Financial freedom is defined as having the passive income so that you do not have to work or can choose to work to sustain your current needs and lifestyle. The key word is PASSIVE. This is usually the case when one invest sufficiently in businesses and have enough savings to generate a hefty sum of interest from bank or whichever source (ok... 'hefty' is pretty subjective here). As I thought about financial freedom, I have these questions popping into my head: Is it possible to achieve financial freedom in Singapore on retirement by relying on our good o' CPF and good o' HDB flats? Aiyo... retirement age is getting older and older. Resale HDB lease expiry getting nearer and nearer. At least the minimum sum in CPF is getting higher and higher.  Let's bang on the high interest rate there shall we? Provided our daddy doesn't change policy... Can we really achieve financial freedom through investing?  Then w...

[Update year 2020: This fund has been closed by Nikko AM and is no longer available for subscription.] This is the very first fund I bought just to dip my toes into funds about 3 years ago. No RSP is subscribed. I shall do a quick review on how it's doing. When started: Year 2012 Price: $1.05 per unit Received dividend payout ONLY twice (3c per unit) from purchase to date. Thereafter, I was told by Nikko AM that the dividend is being reinvested into the fund after I feedback to POSB on the lack of dividend payout when the fund annual report says there's dividend (why does it seem like coins dropping into an endless depth with no echo at all...). Current price: $1.13 per unit (highest $1.31) Annualized return: 0.2% (huh?) Those bluechips that make up the fund are all dividend yielding, but the fund unit price growth is far from the yields. What does this mean? As we all know bond prices fluctuates very little and the stability comes in getting the yield. There's ...

When we can't fill our stomach, substitute time for money . When our basic needs are fulfilled, then we should  substitute money for ME TIME  - go for a holiday, go shopping, gaming, upgrade your skills, read on self-improvement, investments etc. In life we always need to find  balance. (We can talk about  Maslow's hierarchy of needs  in another post.) When we find ourselves selling ourselves, our souls and our precious time to money, Pause. Take a break and think.  ☕ ***

Ordered 'The five rules for Successful Stock Investing' by Pat Dorsey on 17 Aug. I saw that this book was highly recommended by a few finance bloggers and have personally borrowed it from NLB previously. The book was sent out 19 Aug (BD will email saying that item is on the way) and I received it on 3 Sep. The book came nicely packaged in a carton box-like parcel. Quite happy with the purchase experience overall except the late delivery (website says to SG is 5-9 working days but I have waited beyond that duration). There's no delivery charge, so what you see on the website is what you pay. No hassle at all. Price wise is reasonable too and may be cheaper than what we could get at local sg bookshops. (I couldn't find this Pat Dorsey book anywhere in the local mall bookshops and I saw Kinokuniya is selling at a higher price than BD.) Shall find time soon to read it again in more detail and dig out more 'gems' from it. ***