AlogicalogicSG

I am pretty much a private person but yet I am that kind of person that has all my feelings written on my face. As I reaped the benefits of investing slowly, I started becoming relatively vocal about feeling triumphant from this small success of mine. My mum being the typical risk averse person, or maybe someone she knew got burnt from stocks, warned me about the potential hazards of the stock market. To which I fully agreed. Though I had never really gone through much of a loss at that point in time, I knew fully well that the stock market is a dangerous place. I always had the mindset that to not lose in the stock market alone was already a plus, much less to say earn money from it. But I assured her that the stocks I was buying were relative safe and defensive. My aunt who had been staying with us for a while would hear about my stories once in a while over the various meals we had. Structured Deposit   ≠  Fixed Deposit I remembered there was this one day when my aunt summoned me in

As much as I hate to admit it, the above topic is very much close to my heart I would say. However, my struggle used to be at the other extreme compared to most people. Allow me to explain. Instant Gratification You see, in my opinion, most people typically struggle with overspending when it comes to instant gratification. You want a 5 dollar bubble tea because you have a "craving" and it is rationalised as "I am working hard every day so technically I should deserve to have anything I supposedly crave for my effort" and eventually you get that bubble tea. Substitute the amount and the item and the formula should still be applicable to almost everything one can buy. However, my struggle was at the other end of the spectrum. It is exactly because I know I want to avoid consumerism I gave too much thought to it and despite all my agony, I cut back on spending which supposedly should make me happy. I remember at the time my thought process was like "You don't

If only  I had that wisdom at that age to take that risk and buy those Telco stocks then. I would have reaped a handsome 5-7% dividend a year with room for capital appreciation as stock prices were heavily depressed due to the financial crisis. But no. I chose to tag along with my uncle to buy some random penny stock which I did almost zero homework on. And that my friends, I liken it to driving without a license. Things basically get dangerous when you do not know what you are doing. The good part is you live on, but the bad part, with lesser money. That's why I remind myself if I do have a kid in future, I will personally make sure he learns to be financially savvy on top of schoolwork. First love with Telcos Ultimately when I did get in to Telco stocks it was in University. Remember the good old days of our Nokias/Motorola sliding phones which was all the hype back in the day. And we were all on contracts, changing our phones when it was due and showing it off to our friends in

At 19 years of age, I was in the army. To me back then, there were 2 kinds of guys. Clubbers and non-clubbers. I mean logically how could any guy resist? We were in camp 5 days a week training for stuff or doing things that we had the least interest to do but had no choice. It was all about the weekends and how much your pay  allowance can handle. Being on the sidelines when I saw how my clubber peers blew their allowances scared me quite a bit. These people had already spent all their money for the month by mid of the month and were quite literally borrowing money from their closer peers for canteen breaks. At that age, I never really understood why they had to do all that but with time I understood it was all about the ladies and lust. We were guys right? However, in my own world, to me it was never acceptable to have no buffer or what grown-ups call an emergency fund. I attribute it to the fact that my mother taught us really well when we were younger, maybe in primary school.  Inst

I have a lways had this idea of writing a blog after insightful conversations with my friends as we had directly/indirectly benefited from the verbal exchanges. It always just remained as a thought till now. The thought of how these insightful conversations could be written into a form of a blog as a record which could then be utilised to the benefit of anyone who is looking for an additional opinion sounded really appealing to me. For once, I decided to stop worrying if the article would even be read by anyone and just get it done. Honestly, I believe my topics could be very wide ranging considering my own life journey. From developing the habit of saving at a young age to capitalising on higher savings interest rates , learning about investments to car and home buying, my list goes on. So I really hope that my stamina can keep it up and if my articles somehow connect with you and your situation, we could always have a discussion in the comments section.