Insurance Today

Breaking news: This is probably the only time you'll ever see Budget Babe promote and invest into a Ponzi Scheme. The horror!!!!!!!! So I just came across one of the most impressive and smartest crypto projects I've ever seen. In fact, the entire scheme is so full of genius - if people buy, you get dividends; if people sell, the price lowers until people buy again, which gives you MORE dividends. You literally can almost not lose as long as you have iron hands and not sell. It is a joke of a crypto project and an outright, self-confessed Ponzi Scheme, but I've put my money in and thought this was too golden a joke not to share. Before I get all irresponsible and go into details of this ponzi, let me first do a responsible Public Service Announcement: There's no end to scams and ponzi schemes in the crypto world , and so many people are being cheated of their money because they're just chasing crypto gains without having the slightest clue about stuff like how to p...

Did 4 separate local influencers suddenly wake up this week and decided they wanted to post a (glowing) review of Lancome's Ultra Wear Foundation, or did they conveniently decided they'll sneak an ad on us without disclosing that they were sponsored? I would have ( almost...or not ) believed it was an organic review and they genuinely all just happened to want to rave about how amazing Lancome's foundation is. That is, until you see how glaringly similar all the messages are: The Ultra Wear Foundation by Lancome Matte / like a second skin / flawless Provides a link to Lancome's page for followers to claim a free sample to try (Note: I do not own any credits for any of the photos below. All screenshots taken from the named Instagram profiles.) As a consumer on Instagram, I absolutely HATE being lied to. And when someone try to pass off a sponsored review as an organic opinion of their own, that's definitely lying as I see it. Whether or not this was a paid post or th...

"Biggest ICO project of 2018"! "1 coin is predicted to reach $70 by March 2018!" Someone tried shilling a new ICO (initial coin offering) to me recently and after just 15 minutes, I was so convinced and believe this to be another outright scam, so I'm documenting this here for us all to come back in March 2018 to see what happens. A little intro into Legitcoin: they claim to be: The "biggest ICO project of 2018"  Legitcoin "will be one of the fastest blockchains ever made" Will be listed on Bittrex and HiBTC (I think they mean HitBTC, LOL!) Registered users are "entitled to free Legitcard for ATM cash withdrawal of Legitcoin or any cryptocurrency worldwide" Moreover, they promise that Legitcoin will be "accepted online by merchants in an increasing number of countries" Let's delve a little deeper into each of these claims. 1. Biggest ICO project of 2018? Really? Who described them as so? Why did I not see this bold cl...

Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me. Round One Earlier last year, I had warned readers about various scams in the Bitcoin space - including Bitcoin mining, Bitconnect, and even local scammers trying to cheat you of your money by hopping onto the Bitcoin hype train. I did this through various social media channels - at events, through the mailing list, on Facebook and even IG stories. I slammed Bitconnect for being a downright Ponzi scheme, but obviously my words were drowned out by all the Youtubers and other famous social media influencers who had only good things to say about it. Among them were CryptoNick and Cryptochick (also how I first came to know of Bitconnect), who have over 200,000 subscribers between them. It was already clear by November that these guys had a vested interest to promote Bitconnect even though so many of us were calling it a downright Ponzi scheme, and made a killing by promoting their Bitconnect referrals to their clueless fans and followe...

For those of you who attended my sharing at the CPF Talk on 22 Oct, I mentioned that I have no intention to use my CPF to pay for my new house. Naturally, this raised quite a few eyebrows, because 8 in 10 Singaporeans pay for their house using their CPF Ordinary Account (OA) savings. But you heard me right. What I feel my CPF is for Now, before you go bat crazy on me, please hear me out first. In my view, my CPF forms my “untouchable” pot of retirement gold. It is my social security net when I am old and too tired to work for an income. When viewed as part of my entire financial portfolio, the CPF component contributes to the “bond” aspect – low risk with reasonably high interest rates. With an interest rate of up to 3.5% per annum on my Ordinary Account savings, and up to 5% per annum on my Special Account and Medisave savings*,   I get to enjoy interest that no high-yield bank account can offer. You can jump through as many hoops as you can on those accounts, but you’re unlikely ...

Not many of us are fortunate enough to be able to pay for our vehicle in full using cash. As a result, we usually have to resort to taking out a loan in order to finance our purchase. A few of you have asked me to write about our own thought process when we got our car last month, so here’s me  continuing this as Part 2 of my previous post here. The first thing you’ll want to do before you decide to even go ahead and get that car, is to first check your finances to ensure you don’t end up stretching yourself too thin with loan repayments later on. Liquidity vs. loan interests – What can I afford? Depending on the Open Market Value (OMV) of your car, you can get maximum financing of up to 60% or 70% of the OMV. If the OMV of the car is below S$20,000, then you can get financing up to 70% and cars with OMV of S$20,000; above that is up to 60%. But this doesn’t mean that you absolutely have to take the maximum financing offered to you! If you have cash to spare, there are two options...