Insurance Today

One of the biggest rewards from maintaining this financial blog is when readers write to me to share their own success stories, and recently I received a story so touching that I couldn't not share it. After all, there's no greater joy than the knowledge that yet another person has managed to overcome their cashflow issues and is on their way to financial freedom. This reader agreed to let me share her story here, and went another step further to detail the tips she adopted to go from debt-ridden to debt free and happy. If we could do it, so can you! ----------------------- Dear Dawn, I chanced on your famous " How I Saved $20,000 in a Year " post in 2015. At that time, I just had a second baby and we were cash-strapped due to pregnancy complications and a C-section. The only infant-care that would take my baby cost me $900 a month, and my elder kid who is in primary school needs a lot of help in Maths, so I had to spend hundreds on tuition because teaching her was st...

Is the stock market picking up? In just two weeks, we've seen 3 IPOs on SGX - usually a sign of a bullish market sentiment. And while I prefer to sell during such times, I don't usually rule out spending on IPOs especially if their valuations are cheap or decent enough for me. Unfortunately I wasn't allocated any shares of Sanli Group last week when the results were announced (sorry for not blogging about them - I literally finished my analysis 12 hours before the IPO application deadline and didn't have enough time to churn out a blog post!). So I'm starting earlier on World Class Global and HRnetGroup this time. Details :  - 136 million shares are being offered at $0.26 each, with 3.98m public tranche - Deadline to apply is by 12 noon on 13 June Business: WCG is a real estate company newly incorporated in 2013 with little history on its books. It is being spun out from its parent group - jeweller Aspial Corporation. (Remember  my piece dissecting Aspial's bond...

Can we really trust analyst reports when it comes to stock recommendations? My answer is no. I've never trusted analyst reports. While I do read them, I don't rely on them to decide whether or not to buy a certain stock. Sometimes when the opportunity is right, I'll even go in the opposite direction of what these reports tell us to do. When they're all saying "Buy", I'll sell. When they say "Sell", I'll wait a few more weeks and then start buying in. The sections I always have the biggest issue with are the valuations and target prices. If you're one of those who have always taken analyst reports to be the gospel truth, perhaps this will make you think twice. The above screenshots are taken from The Edge. In summary, what happened was: Former banker Yeo Jiawei  asked his remisier friend Kelvin Ang Wee Keng to help find analysts able to produce a report to justify the US$ 2.4 billion valuation of PetroSaudi Oil Services (PSOSL). The clien...

If you're holding a grand wedding to impress your guests, then you've gotten it all wrong. A wedding is about YOU and your partner, and NOT your guests. They're the sidekicks, the spectators, the audience there to celebrate what is possibly the most important milestone of your life. 10 years ago, the average cost of a hotel table was less than $1000 but now, the rates have escalated to $1500 - $2000 on average.  Isn't that scary? The inflation rate for weddings is about 10% every year (that hotel / photographer / makeup artist your friend used for her wedding 2 years ago might just charge you a lot more for yours next year), and so big grand weddings are no longer in fashion anymore. My generation just can't afford to keep up with the rising costs, period. The costs have spiralled a lot faster than our wages can keep up with. We're young and broke, but yet also crave for those Instagram or Pinterest-worthy weddings for our own. Well, there's a price to pay f...