Today’s Sunday Times featured forex trader Mario Sant Singh, 35, the chief executive of FX1 Academy:
Q: What property do you own?
In 2006, I bought a flat in Singapore's first Design, Build and Sell Scheme (DBSS) project, The Premiere@Tampines, for $371,000. The 1,200 sq ft five-room flat is now worth almost $700,000.
Q: Home is now...
My DBSS flat at The Premiere@Tampines.
Q: I drive...
A black BMW 5.23i.
My comment: I am not impressed by his money management.
He buys an asset (his home) and it nearly doubles in value by Year 6. He just got lucky.
He also buys a fast-depreciating four-wheeler, the BMW 523i (which now costs more than $220,000), and it goes down in value by more than 70% by Year 6.
It doesn’t make sense for him to buy such an expensive car. Typically, people in his line of work (ie, all those who need to impress clients) tend to do this. It's a serious job hazard .....
He has foregone a lot of wealth by buying such a car. That includes the interest cost of paying for a bigger car loan.
btw, the interest cost of car loans is one of the highest among personal loans as the rate is an effective 6-7% a year.
He either doesn't really know it or he (his ego) can't help it.
My eyes went rolling when I read that forex guy saying his game plan is to make 100% a year. Unless you are really wet behind yr ears, you would call that 'Bullshit". Nobody makes 100% a year consistently.
In contrast, this guy Jim Chuong is a real, genuine story > [url=http://www.nextinsight.net
/story-archive-mainmenu-60/916-2012/4978-jim-chuong-my-lazy-way-to-getting-rich]JIM CHUONG: My lazy way to getting rich (Part 1)[/url]
Today’s Me & My Money story started with this >>>
When Ms Vanessa Tan, 32, got married two years ago, she and her husband rented a place instead of buying one as they did not want to chase the fast-rising property market. I thought to myself: Oh-oh. They didn’t want to chase the property market – ok, it’s not a wrong investment principle. However, the reality is, the damn market has run up too much in the past 2 years for the couple to catch up easily.
The investment lesson to learn from them is…. The market has a mind of its own, which can defy supply & demand dynamics.
Even in the stock market, stocks can rise to PE multiples of 20 and then go on to 30 and 40 and even 50. At the other extreme, they can also move from 8 to 5 to 3 to ….. even 2X PE. From some postings in the forum, I note an example -- Yongnam, now PE of only 5X, the stock cannot move over the years, even when the net profit has risen to record high for the 6th consecutive year!
Q: Home is now...
A 1,600 sq ft, three-bedroom apartment along River Valley Close. The rent is $4,100 a month but my husband and I pay only $200 a month plus utilities.
I went for a property seminar by my mentor Wendy Kuek and picked up this tip of letting others help pay the rent. So I have two housemates who pay the bulk of the rent.
Previously, we rented a two-bedroom flat and sub-let one room, which helped to cover only half the rent.
Today’s ST article featured Canadian teacher Andrew Hallam. Quite a good stock investor who has around $2 m in stocks – and also good at sounding clever.
Q: What property do you own?
I don't own any property. I like the thought of buying property when it 'isn't performing well'. For this reason, I wouldn't buy property in Singapore today.
I bought an acre of oceanfront land on Vancouver Island in Canada, during a mini recession in 2002. Property prices hadn't moved much in a decade, so I bought it.
Then when people started piling into property, prices soared and I sold it for three times what I paid, in 2007. It cost just $147,000. I sold it for $484,000.
Well, if he had bought SG property when it was languishing (not performing well) from 2002 to 2006…… he would have doubled his money. The URA resi property index was around 100-120 at that time-- now it’s above 220.
He would have made lots of money, far more than 100%, because property investment is a leveraged investment. Actually, many angmohs (who are not at the CEO level) don’t buy SG property because they can’t afford to. In the case of the teacher, he can afford to but he has not adjusted to the relatively high prices of property in SG (as compared to Canada). Ditto for cars. On top of that, being non-citizens, they are uncertain about how long their employment would be in SG, so they won’t commit to a mega purchase.
These are the deeper reasons, instead of the clever-sounding reasons given in media interviews.
Half of Americans die with almost no money
By Andrea Coombes
SAN FRANCISCO (MarketWatch)âAlmost half of U.S. retirees die with savings of $10,000 or less, but that grim finding doesnât fully describe the variability and uncertainty that characterize retirement in America, according to a recent study.
While some retirees struggle profoundly, living at or below the poverty line, others enjoy wealth and healthâin fact, the two are strongly linkedâwhile still others have little in savings but enjoy a decent income, according to the report, based on a survey that tracked retirees from 1993 through 2008.
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