Money and the Big Picture of your Life

An email from a reader, J Singh:

Dear Mr Wang,

Having been an avid reader of your blog for over 2 years now, I feel somewhat inclined to write in to you to ask for your advice. While it is common knowledge that you are in the finance industry and have made a successful life for your family and yourself, it would not have happened without sound financial planning. It is on this subject that I would like to seek your thoughts on, if you can spare the time.

As a fresh graduate, I find it hard to reconcile the fact that there is close to nothing in our education system that touches on how to prepare oneself financially for the years ahead. Now that I am out facing the world on my own, my lack of preparedness is telling especially since I have taken an issue like this for granted. It seems that the onus is upon the individual to read, source out elders and common media to seek their advice on what insurance policies to purchase, how much should one save and where should one invest one's savings, what does one do with the CPF accounts(invest, insurance?) and how is one ever going to afford a HDB flat (among other pertinent questions).

These questions are mind boggling and daunting for someone trying to make a mark in this world. My peers in the US, of the same batch not the same age due my NS obligations, are way ahead in this respect as the literature suggests that one should start such planning around the age of 22 to ensure success in the long run. Perhaps, I digress by sharing my fears with you and you would rather I come straight to the point.

My point is, what do I do? Where do I start? What do I need to know to make the S'porean system work for me to ensure that my future will be a comfortable one? I have financial advisers bombarding me with tons of insurance policies and insurance-savings plans while others are recommending unit trusts, stocks and other instruments. I have turned every single one of them away as I fear committing to something I can't grapple with. I don't think you will have the time to tell me in detail what needs to be done but I would appreciate if you could point me in the right direction. Admittedly, depending on an individual's preference, background and risk appetite, the advice doled out would be different but I am certain there are some basic tenets of financial planning that everyone should do or know about. Your thoughts .....?

Well, it's not as complicated as that. Or maybe I should put it this way - you don't need to know everything there is to know about money, in order to manage your own finances with reasonable soundness.

You could start by listing your own financial goals and needs, and identifying which ones are most important. Then work out a plan for your most important goal/need, and put the plan into action. Repeat with the next most important goal/need.

People have different goals and needs (because their circumstances are different) and what's important to one person may not be important to you at all. For example, life insurance is important to the average parent with young kids, but it's not terribly important to a young adult with no dependents.

Also your goals and needs will change over time, so you need to review and adjust your plans periodically. Don't look for a magic formula to the question of how to manage your money. There really isn't any. Money issues are intimately linked to almost every part of your life (for example, your home, your career and your family's needs) and basically, life is too complicated to be reducible to a single magic formula.

You will need some long-term strategy, but the fact is that as the years pass, you'll probably end up revising and changing it beyond recognition. Nobody really knows what will happen, in 30 or 40 years time (to you, Singapore or the world). That doesn't mean that you shouldn't plan for retirement. It does mean that you'll keep changing your plans many times as the years pass.

In other words, life is complex and uncertain. And you just have to get comfortable with that.

A Slow Death for Diaries and Other Old-Fashioned Things

ST Dec 14, 2009
Corporate diaries harder to come by
Such year-end gifts are drying up as firms cut back on costs or go green

THE wave of corporate diaries and calendars that usually washes over workplaces this time of the year has dried up, with 2010 looming as the year people will just have to buy their own.

Banks and manufacturing companies - noted for corporate gift-giving - are handing out fewer goodies, which means firms that make these freebies are hurting, with their sales down by as much as 50 per cent.

Mr Frankie Chia, president of the Gifts Association of Singapore, said: 'Sales of corporate diaries and gifts are generally much worse this year as corporate customers cut back on their budgets.'

Retiree Tammy Leong is feeling the pinch as well. December is usually her favourite month, with corporate diaries, calendars and Christmas hampers flowing in from her bankers and insurance agents.

I think that it's not so much to do with the economy, but the fact that many people don't use paper-based diaries and calendars anymore.

They would rather use some electronic tool to achieve the same purposes. For example, you could use your handphone or PDA or Blackberry; or the calendar and to-do functions on your Microsoft Outlook or Lotus Notes; or some free online application such as Google Calendar.

I am a bit of a dinosaur. For my personal matters, I still use a paper-based filofax (remember those?). But at work I use the calendar and to-do functions on Lotus Notes to keep track of my appointments, meetings and tasks.

I still remember how the legal profession was like, when I first graduated (and that wasn't so long ago, just a decade or so). Senior lawyers would invariably advise a junior lawyer about the importance of maintaining, building and updating his own collection of "precedents".

What does that mean? Well, as time went on and you worked on different types of legal matters, you would photocopy useful legal documents and organise them nicely into thick ring files, for your own future reference. Effectively, your personal collection of legal precedents represented the sum total of your legal knowledge and experience, and was a valuable professional asset to be guarded carefully. A senior lawyer would easily have dozens of precious precedent files lining his shelves.

That was then. Now I have everything I need, on one thumb drive.

December Shopping in Myanmar

I've said it before - my poems have a tendency to travel to slightly odd places. Now see what we have here:

It's a page from a fashion magazine in Myanmar. Most of the text is in Burmese, but notice the words in English - "Gilbert Koh" and "December Shopping". Yes, one of my poems got translated and is now circulating in a Myanmese magazine called Crown.

The translator is Zaw Myo Nyunt, a Burmese national and Singapore PR. Zaw comes from a rather literary family - his father is a publisher; his mother is a novelist; his brother is a journalist and his sister runs a bookstore. Zaw had read my poems, he enjoyed them and he wanted to try his hand at doing a translation. So that's how my poem December Shopping ended up in Crown.


A Burmese fashion magazine seems to be an odd place for Singaporean poetry to appear. Zaw's explanation is that many Myanmese people are very interested in all things Singapore. They want to come here for work, education, medical treatment and yes, for the shopping. So that's the excuse for December Shopping to appear in Crown.

Anyway, here's the English language version of the poem. It's really about the materialistic and consumerist side of the modern world:

December Shopping

Here comes Christmas. Take it, strip it down
wash it clean, then doll it up, prettify,
package, add a ribbon. Now offer it up for sale,
an orchard road product made new again.
See the santa claus reindeer at centrepoint,
touch the gold-dusted wings of angel
mannequis, feel the softness, the warmth
of cotton-wool snow, meltproof against
the little coloured blinking bulbs.
Do you not rejoice, would you not sing
along in a fa-la-la-la-la sort of way?
Meet baby jesus and holy mother,
starring as takashimaya decorations,
the three wise men as props.
The crowds are awful, the roads too long,
for roads that lead nowhere,
but the lights are bright and the sales -
oh, the wonderful sales! - are truly
a shopper's paradise. What you buy is
what you are, and what you are is here,
on display, for sale, at a discount,
very, very cheap. What joy! What happiness!
What a birthday bash! Give thanks
for the power of visa, the size
of your December bonus, for this
great offering of material things.
Let us eat, let us feast like gluttons,
swarm like flies, drown in proverbial milk
and honey - it's christmas, after all,
Singapore's greatest shopping season.

Little Pieces of the Past

Another year draws to a close. Soon we'll be saying goodbye to our home, moving away and lugging ourselves to a new life elsewhere. This is as good a time as any, to start discarding the old and making space for the new. I've been tossing out all sorts of items, from clothes to books to electrical appliances. It's a kind of cleansing process.

Today I'm tossing out my chess trophies as well. I had to deliberate somewhat, before arriving at this decision. Felt a little sentimental about them. I decided to take a photo, before they all go into the bin. There:


I still have another collection of trophies in my parents' home. Left them there, after I got married and moved out.

These are just silly pieces of metal, wood and plastic, but I have some fond memories attached to them. I used to represent my secondary school, junior college, university and constituency. As a teenager, I also used to go around to different community centres (or clubs, as they're now known) to take part in chess competitions.

Among other things, I've been the SJI individual champion; the VJC individual champion; and the NUS men's individual champion. In team competitions, we've won the National Inter-Clubs first division several times. From secondary two up to junior college, I won a medal in the National Junior Individuals' Chess Championships every year. I even competed overseas a few times.

But also I enjoyed chess, because it brought me into contact with many quirky, interesting people whom I otherwise would not have met. And many of them became my good friends.

I think I gained a lot from this game. It taught me to be comfortable with complexity and uncertainty (and that's often how life is, complex and uncertain). I also learned to stay cool and think sharp under pressure, an attribute which has helped me in exam halls, courtrooms and corporate boardrooms. Another lesson I learned was to neither underestimate nor overestimate people, based on their appearances. Because appearances can be very deceptive ....

There's a fairly recent book by ex-world chess champion Garry Kasparov. It's entitled How Life Imitates Chess. I've not really read the book, but only browsed through different chapters at a bookstore.

It's not your usual "How to Play the Sicilian Defence" or "How to Play Rook Endgames" chess book focusing on some technical aspect of the game. Instead it's a book where Garry uses analogies and examples drawn from the game of chess, to discuss strategies for business, personal life and politics. (Note that after Kasparov retired from chess, he ventured into politics, and in fact, was a candidate for President of Russia in 2008).

I found it interesting to browse through Kasparov's book. Like many other serious chessplayers, I had realised long ago that many chess strategies are also applicable in real life. However, Kasparov's book is the first which really attempts to discuss how lessons learned at the chessboard can also be valuable elsewhere.

But in the end, I didn't buy the book. Because by the time I came across the book, I had already stopped playing chess for years. Much as I used to love this game, it's now a thing of the past for me.

And that's why I'm throwing out my chess trophies too.

Virtual Realities, Roller Coasters and Casino Gambling

Just back from our holiday in Japan. Among other things, we gorged on a feast of theme parks, spending a day each at Universal Studios, Disneyland and Disneysea. Roller coasters, 4D reality, Spiderman, haunted houses and all the rest of it.

It was really fun. Not just for the kids, but for me as well (however Mrs Wang got somewhat terrified by the Tower of Terror).

Now I'm looking forward to Singapore's own integrated resorts on Sentosa, especially the Universal Studios that will form part of the Resorts World IR.

At the same time, my Japan trip somewhat reinforces in my mind the drawbacks of Singapore's approach. Because of the casino element, we're inevitably going to face a host of social ills, such as prostitution, loansharking and gambling addiction.

In contrast, Disneyland, Disneysea and Universal Studios in Japan offer clean, wholesome, family-friendly fun. They are also huge attractions in their own right, drawing an endless stream of tourists and visitors all year round. Nothing sleazy about it.

Why did Singapore have to choose the sleazy route? Ah well, too late to ask now.