Extracted from Today's newspaper on 8th March. Might be useful for some who did not read it.
1) Budget for monthly living expenses according to your lifestyle needs. Spend within the budget.
2) Put aside at least three months' worth of savings for a rainy day.
3) Buy insurance while premiums are low for your age band. Paying premiums annually is actually cheaper than paying monthly.
4) Start a regular savings plan by investing. Leaving the money in the bank yields just 0.25% currently, meaning inflation itself will wipe out the already measly gains.
Instead, set aside a percentage of your monthly salary, say 10% for a long term investment and then watch the power of compounding unfold.
The money may come in handy later for big-ticket items such as wedding expenses or a new home.
5) If you want to buy a stock, research the company's fundamentals first. don't buy purely on sentiment or gut feel.
Sunday, March 9, 2008
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7 comments:
You may have beautiful plans but not long an insurance agent comes along to screw it up for you.
You may have a prejudice against insurance agents,not suprising though, but be bold enough to state your reasons.It's fairly easy and equally destructive to make such a comment.
Otherwise,you fall under these categories,those who don't know and those who don't know they don't know.
Haha. Plans being screwed is half truth. The other half will prevent you from being screwed.
No matter what, there are bound to be some screwed up agents who are there to screw peoples up. The keyword is "Some".
To anonymous march 10,2008 11.30pm
I don't have prejudice. When it is a fact that insurance agents screw up people's financial plan, is it prejudice? It is a fact.
Reasons? Let me make this statement ,loud and clear. Not some but at least 95% of the current insurance agents know fxxxall about life insurance.All they know is selling and to sell some useless products to enrich themselves and leave the customers swirling and not knowing what hit them.
Today, Singaporean are grossly under insured. You know why? because they are sold products with high commission by agents who do not bother whether their customers die enough for dependents or live with enough money for themselves.
If you are an insurance agent you fall into the category you set for yourself, ie. you don't even know that you don't know no nothing about insurance. Shore up your skill and competence or ship out from this industry before you hurt more people financially.
If you have a self destruct device, pull it now.
What a debate going around here.
I wonder which professions are both Mr Anonymous from. Both of you prefer to keep anonymous and fight within my blog.
If the 1st Anonymous is from the Financial Industry, then you must be very good in giving the proper advice by saying that over 95% of advisers are no good. I will hope to see more useful and constructive comments in my blog in future so that more people can learn from you.
If you are not from the Financial Industry, how are you so sure its not your personal opinion that 2 standard deviations of Advisors do not care for their customers?
Should remisers be fully blamed for people losing in the stock market? Should advisers be fully blamed for Singaporeans being under insured? There are many factors that causes this to happen. I hope we can broaden our minds a bit more. A narrow opinion may not be fair.
Stock brokers are to be blamed too.They are not supposed to give tips, but they do, to create liquidity? nono, no to create commission for themselves. Similarly, insurance agents create imaginary needs to create commission too. These two groups are despicable people becuase of their unethical practices.
Many lives got screwed up becuase of them.
You are right I am 95% sure that all agents from ntuc are screwed up agents. You may fall within the 5% but the rest are better banished for the sake of customers. They have ruined enough lives already.
Terminator(my name)
Terminator,
I welcome your comment but I also feel that you are indeed prejudice towards Insurance people. Quite a number are indeed not doing a proper job, but to say "All" or "Almost all" is a bit too extreme.
I also have no idea why you want to pin-point NTUC Consultants. They are no different from advisor of other insurance companies except that average age is a bit higher.
I will look forward to more constructive comments from you in future. Thanks for visiting my blog.
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