Well to me, this issue is not new. Human beings are designed to hear things that they are interested in and as a result, they will buy what they are keen on. So therefore as a financial doctor to them, one has to find the ‘hot’ button in them and spur their needs out. In fact, i have this 10 reasons for people to buy insurance and i truly stand by it.

Top 10 reasons why insurance is a MUST-BUY products

1) It provides your family member IMMEDIATE financial relief.

2) It generates real assets for you to pay off the debts/bills while leaving your saving for your loved ones.

3) If you stay put throughout the plan, you will be the biggest winner

4) In the event of disability, its able to provide you with one lump sum of money for a person to adjust to new lifestyle

5) If you dont buy when you are healthy and young, it will just get more and more expensive and worse still, you cant even buy.

6) Unless you can guarantee that you wont die or suffer from illness, you must buy insurance

7) One thing that is guaranteed in life, that is DEATH.

If you think you can really plan your life well then why isnt buying insurance part of your plan?

9) Insurance payout is not meant for yourself at times. Its for those who depends alot on you.

10) Unless you have one lump sum of money set aside for death expenses or major illness expenses, if not i dont see what’s wrong with covering these risks  in advance via monthly installement

Well as you are reading these, please dont judge me and say that because of my occupation i said all of the above. Even if i am not in this trade, i am sure that your parents or friends who have went through certain difficult stage of their life would be telling you the same thing. For my job, i am just putting it into certain perspective for you to understand.

The above reasons may or may not appeal to you but it doesn’t matter because different folks different stroke. Hence that is as much as i can do to share but the final decision still lies on you =)

When it comes to planning, i am a strong believer of trusting the person who is supposed to be an expert in the industry it’s in. When there is enough trust, alot of work can be lessen off and things can move fast. However due to human kind, some of us tend to abuse this trust and as a result, there are many others who had bad experience.

I would highly recommend that you as a consumer, need to assess your consultant inside out when it comes to financial planning for yourself. Make sure that this person is not out to earn a commision from you and what he say, he must do it himself too. If you meet an agent selling you ILP, do ask for proof of himself buying the plan too. I’m sure you dont want to buy from an agent who is insufficiently covered or worse still, doesnt even own this policy himself.

Ask him what are the type of planning he has done for himself? If he takes a second to think and tell you, it can only show that he/she is not sure of their planning and thinking of a good excuse to tell you.

Do you have a consultant who only sells you saving plan or recommend that you should start saving since young? Well not that the theory of saving since young is wrong but it’s just that if one commits too much into saving initially without fufilling the insurance coverage, the end result will only be one thing: Lapsed policy.

By lapsing, the customer is the biggest loser so that’s why i always advice my clients to tell their friends not to buy saving plan. Despite all that has been said, there are still many young people falling into the saving plan trap. Rich consultants are the one that selling you saving plan because they earn the most out of it. You hardly see them selling you term or limited pay plan because of the minimum commission.

In short i just hope to highlight to readers that trust is to be earned and not to be given so easily to your financial planer. Make sure that they are really keeping track of your insurance portfolio as a whole rather than always going for saving for long term approach.

It’s been almost one whole month since i blogged to share with you about the recent happenings in my life. Where should i start? Let’s start with my renovations of my home then =)

Since the start of 2nd of May, my house has officially started renovation but then due to some delay, the hacking and demolition of walls can only be started in 9th May. Well it was really a tiring but fruitful two months before the whole thing kick starts. After this, i realised that doing up planning for the whole house was a very interesting things to be done between couples. Every single weekend was spent either with contractors or at furniture shops looking around for ideas and good deals.

Indeed you will get to see and discover your partner in a different light. It can be good or bad but i guess the most important thing is to compromise. Never insist on your idea onto something that both cannot see eye to eye. Jasmine and me made a good pair because she is quite easy going and she lets me to make most of the decisions. Seriously this solves many problems. Can you just imagine if you and your wife both wants to make decision on the type of dining table to buy, i can assured you that it will never end. Of course there are areas that i do according to what she likes =)

Currently into the last three weeks of the renovations and i am left with plastering, aircon piping, electricity, painting and carpentary works. I’m also done with all the furnitures, lighting and aircon. I pray that all things will go smoothly and no big issue will come out of the picture.

I’m also very thankful for my best friend, Daniel, for putting up with me over at their place. It was very nice of them to let me stay during this period of time. My other friend, Simon, was also very nice to me by allowing me to put my furnitures at his newly BTO flat without charging me a rental fee! I am really quite blessed =)

Despite all the busy schedules at home, i am still able to meet up my clients and new referrals to review thier plans and most of them have also gone ahead to upgrade their coverage after seeing thier shortfall. Though there are times that i fall short but they are still very understanding towards me. Some of them have also encouraged me by saying that my service to them has been very well and i am not pushy about my products to them. Hearing all these indeed makes me believe that quality business will only comes in when quality advice and service are being provided.

One more important updates was that i had already proposed to my gf who is now considered my fiancee =) Hahaha..i am still not used to use such term at times but i guess i am also getting used to it as days go by. Everything went well during the proposal and it was just a simple and sincere proposal. No nice roses or dinner as expected though =) We are now in the midst of praying for a good time to get married and hopefully we have an answer soon!

I’m approaching the second half of the year with much excitment and joy because there are just so many good things to be happy about and feel blessed. I have good friends with me, good career, good clients, good fiancee, good health and family relationship. I can’t help but feel that God is very nice to me and i will continue to grow deeper in relationship with HIM so that i can lead even a better life in future.

I believed all the readers will find this question very familiar. Either we have been asking ourselves every other day or by our family members who want us to get married and set up a family.

The important question is that in this current fast pacing society, can we still save? Is it easy to save?

I guess the answer to this is really a ‘Yes’. Personally i have two brothers and one likes to save and while the other likes to spend. Both have two children. I also have a sister who is a full time mother with one child and survives based on single income.

From them, i really learnt alot on how to stay happy even though income is not high. The secret to saving is not so much on how much you bring home but rather how you view money. To my sister, having able to save a couple of hundreds can be a great joy for her and she has great plans on how to spend wisely with it. However as compared to my brother, the excitment or joy is not as much. So you can see that with the same amount of dollars, different people react differently.

Therefore the moral of this sharing is to tell you that by simply changing your view towards the dollar notes can change the way you are feeling every day. Take one more example that is myself.

i derived joy from being able to save on cab/car by taking mrt even though i own a car now. Each day as i travel for apppointments by mrt, i feel happy because i have no worries towards ERP and CBD parking. Most importantly petrol costs. I enjoy eating simple food that doesnt need me to pay for GST and service charge. I love to shop when i travel to places like bangkok or malaysia because the things are so cheap and it serves the same purpose. 

Maybe some of you may find that is it worthwhile saving that small amount of money or is it neccesary to be so ‘poor’ when you can well afford luxury items? To me, it is worthwhile because i hold on to this belief: The only thing in this world that will make you happy is FREE! Eg: Happiness, Air or appreciation of what we have. The person that tells you that buying the most expensive item will make you happy is bluffing you!

Isn’t it true? When we purchase a car, we will get concerned if we need to service or pay for all the expensive erp charges. When we purchase an ideal condo, are we not worried about the maintenances of the monthly instalment? When you buy your favourite LV bag, are you only happy when people notice? Please don’t tell me you feel happy to just own it and not want people to see or appreciate. If there is really the case, you should consider hugging it to sleep. At least it serves some purposes than collecting dust at home.

Therefore i hope that after reading this, you can start to change how you see money and from there, you will slowly find joy in saving money. It is never too late to save because at whatever age you are(as long as you are still working) , you have the rest of your life to save up! =)

Happy Saving!

Happy New Year to all who are reading =) It’s been one month since i last blogged and one of my new year resolution is to spend more time blogging and contribute more articles to CPF board.

I wondered how has 2010 been for some of you but personally last year had been a great year for me in most aspect of my life. Maybe i will do a short recap of what had happened:

- Started my year by visiting Korea for free due to incentives given by my company (Jan)
- Met a wonderful and prayful girl who agreed to be my girlfriend (March)
- Went for incentive trip to Perth (April)
- Pass my driving licence (June)
- Went for usual holiday trip with my childhood brothers (July)
- Meeting great people and bringing in good sales (July to Oct)
- Finally found a cell group to attend (Sept)
- Got myself a 2nd Mitsubishi Colt Plus (End Oct)
- Spent more time with family members (Nov-Dec)
- In-camp training (Dec)
- Celebrated the new year over at Shenzhen with girlfriend (31st Dec)

That should be all for me in 2010 =) Haha.. from the way i looked at it, it seem like i have taken more holiday breaks than working. BUT that is not true! In fact i do have my fair share of hardwork in my work but i am someone who believe in work-life balance. Never get yourself too burnt out or else you be out of the game real soon.

I really thank God for all the blessing he had given to me all these while and in 2011, i hope i can do more to know HIM better and to have more breakthrough in my life. Anyway as i was talking to my friend yesterday, i realised i am approaching 30 years old in one more year time!

Time really flies and age is catching up. Seriously i have never felt that i am close to 30 given my fun-size body and boylish look. It really hits me when i realised this age issue. But it does help me to reflect more things on myself. The very first question that came to my mind was that ‘have i achieved my goals i set for myself when i am 30′?

FYI: I set out to have 3 passive businesses when i am 30 and as of 2010, i have only one. But it’s ok because i have decided to do something different this year so that i can have at least 2 by 2012 hopefully.  Meanwhile i shall keep it as a secret =)

Lastly if there was one thing for me to take away last year, i would say that it is to put our plans to God and submit to HIM. Do according to his way and not ours. Human can only plan so much and if there is not what HE wants for you, it won’t work out. Live simply and humble in 2011!

Well as a matter of fact, I have to agree to disagree because it really doesn’t matter whether have I went through the experience to be able to provide genuine and useful advice. A coach doesn’t necessarily need to be the number one player to be teaching someone to be number one because it is a total different game plan. If you don’t believe it, go google Tiger Wood’s coach’s biography, and you’ll too see that his golfing skills probably doesn’t supercede Tiger Wood’s.

I have always prided myself to be my client’s financial coach whereby I do my best to provide the best advice to them so as to maximize their benefits with minimum resources. I know that there are many consultants out there providing advice that is more beneficial to themselves more than their clients therefore I hope to be able to rectify this problem through the people I meet. I will always do a restructuring of my client’s insurance portfolio if needed especially when I discover that they have in fact purchased many ‘pointless’ policies. Those policies are usually sold either through roadshow agents or by their friends who asked them to ‘support’ them. Well, I am not saying that it is wrong to support your friend but it is often the case where the so-called friend actually sells the plan based on his interest and not the client’s.

Back to the issue of money management between couples, many couples face a lot of issues relating to bad money management during their early years of marriage. Some even related it as early as during their courtship times. Seriously, during the serious courtship years (Abt 1-2 years before marriage), it is the right time to start saving and planning for your futures. During this phase of your lives, you have to be completely honest with each other about your financial situations and visions. You need to decide who is going to be the financial controller and how your future decisions regarding money is going to be decided. You also have to start allocating a certain percentage of your income for different purposes and that includes insurance.

Ideally two people are supposed to be savers but in reality if you happen to have one saver and one spender in a relationship, I think it is already quite wonderful because can you imagine two of them are spenders? Two of them will not have a sense of responsibility towards money and will splurge the money in whatever way they like. Over time, I can assure you that they will divorce one day because of money issues. Personally I can relate well in this area because of my family background. There are 3 couples in my family which I used to do a study and see which one is the best for me to model after (shall not reveal too much personal stuffs.)

Yet there are people who tell me that planning too much will not work due to the fact that it takes too long and is too troublesome to maintain. Allow me to ask you this question: “ Would you rather take time to plan out before marriage or take time to rough out all the money issues ahead of you after marriage when you are both only in the mid 20s” I’m sure different folks have different strokes and we all take responsibilities for our decisions. Hence at the end of the day, it’s the couple that bears the consequences.

To sum it up, do allow me to share with you on the things that are within a couple’s decision to plan for. Below are the things that I gathered based on my personal observations and other’s experiences:

-          Decide whether it is important to hold a hotel wedding dinner as compared to a simple lunch ceremony.

-          Set aside a budget for the whole wedding inclusive of shoots and gowns and start saving 1-2yr before.

-          Also put aside small amount of money for renovation loans

-          Make sure your CPFOA has enough funds to settle the initial down-payment of the flat.

-          Have a joint account mainly for household expenses (% allocation is negotiable between couple)

-          Set aside 5-10% of monthly income for luxury stuffs for couple. It can be used to buy branded stuffs or mainly for holiday trips. Not only will it motivate couples to save, it will also build stronger bonds when going for trips and cut down on unnecessary quarrels.

-          Decide on the type of insurance plans to buy and find a good consultant that is in the business for long.

-          If you need to buy a family car, decide on the type of car you need and budget. I often advise not more than 35% of family income should go into buying a car. This includes considerations of petrol, road tax, insurance and car maintenance. 

I really hope that my sharing can benefit the couples out there who spend time to read my post. It may not be easy to implement nor work through but I am very sure it is something that is worth practicing to have a happy and blissful marriage.

It’s been such a wonderful opportunity and blessing to be able to live and born here in such a peaceful country. May the country continue to prosperous and strive to be even better!