Peter The Planner

Hello my friends!

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!

More and more people are aware of the NEED TO BUY INSURANCE first! =) I’m so happy to be always meeting people who likes to put their priority as protecting their wealth rather than accumulating. This makes my job really much easier and more meaningful.

So what are the top few concerns that most people have? Below are my own findings so please don’t judge me =)

1) Hospitalisation Bill
2) Major Illness coverage
3) Accidental Death
4) Death
5) Disability

As you can see, most people are very much concerned with regards to the medical costs in Spore and the kind of medical treatment they will receive if they are diagnosed with one of the 30 major illness. With such a simple statistic. i can happily conclude that it does not required a whole lot of money to address all the top 3 concerns for most people. As a matter of fact, i would think that a few plans of less than $100/mth would be able to comfortably address the top 3 issues facing some of the singaporeans.  So stop buying plans from agent who keep pushing saving plan to you and tell you all sort of ‘reasons’ to buy them. 

Start small and cover at least $100,000 for major illness, accident death and hospital. Any upgrade, you can always do it at a much later part.

When you have a newborn at home, i’m sure you are very happy and getting busy the whole day trying to make sure your baby don’t cry. So when everythings are settled down, suddenly you realised and become worried about the upcoming bills that may fall upon you because of this lovely child.

Are you totally prepared for it? Have you as a parent, gotten enough coverage for yourself first? Are you concerned about saving up for your kid’s education plan? Do you have enough saving to endure you through the initial period?

Many parents that i have met experiened one thing or another as mentioned above and most of the time, i need to sit down to spend quality time with them to do some re-adjustment of their portfolio. One of the few mistakes that i realised adults made was that they committed too much into saving for their retirement during their age when they have not enough gotten themselves insured enough.

In Singapore we were taught that we should SAVE. Therefore many insurance sales-person out there will try to make sure of this point to sell to many fresh graduates the idea of saving when young. Yes, it is true that we should be saving BUT not with any insurance company per se. They need to save up for their emergency fund first then get themselves insured and when everything are settled then they look into saving for retirement.

Think about this: one young man went to buy a 25yr saving plan when he just started working as fresh grad and he committed $200 because he is able to save $1000 per month. His salary was $1800 during then. A few years have passed and he realised that he needed protection so he approached his consultant to buy a life insurance. He was asked to buy a life insurance that costs $150. So at this point of time, he would be committing $350 out of his $1800 salary and this works out to 19% of his income! Slowly he got married and have two lovely kids. Then suddenly he passed away due to a car accident! His wife called up his agent and asked how much he was covered. Guess what! The agent said ‘Auntie, i’m sorry he did not have accident plan with us and his total coverage only $130,000″

Imagine you are the wife, how would you feel? $130,000 only! Goodness, how long can you survive for only this small amount of money with your two kids?

In the above example, if he was sold a term plan of $150k for $30/mth and a participating life plan of $150 covering $100k for death and accident, his wife will be receiving $400k in total and he was only paying $180/mth using only 10% of his salary!

Let me tell you the honest truth: This is what is happening out there to many people who commits a saving plan first and realised they may not have enough money to buy life insurance when they really need it. Their agent may not also sell them term policies or accident plan because it is firstly hard for consumer to buy the idea of life insurance and secondly commission are low for them plus the overall production the consultant brings in will be considered low.

 Therefore the next time people approach you for saving plan, tell them stop being a sales consultant, be a financial planner and i will buy from you.

What is blind faith to you?

Yesterday someone mentioned to me that i used to have lots of blind faith when i decided to start out as an entrepreneur to do own business and she questioned me on why am i having lesser of such faith despite the fact that i know that the path i am going to take is the correct one?

That question was considered quite provoking to me because it has really made me asked myself ‘Why’. She is right! When i first started out in this business 6 years ago, i came out with nothing and simply just believed in myself that i will do my best here. It’s nothing but blind faith.

However when 6 years have passed, i’m currently now in much better state compared to last time and by right, I AM SUPPOSED to have more faith in myself BUT the issue is that i seem to hesitate more often than not. Such attitude is just like a typical gambler.

A gambler will always be afraid to win more but not afraid to lose more. They will bet more when they lose and bet lesser when they are winning. No wonder the balance sheet of Casino has been getting better and better.

Right now, i just need to have more blind faith in the things that i need to do or else i will ‘die’ off soon. Nobody knows what is it for tommorrow except God.  Seek HIM first and i am sure i won’t go wrong.

I was chatting with one of my friend who used to be a ‘bookie’  last time. During then, he was living such a luxury life, being able to buy a few rolex watches for himself and parents and also indulged in spa and nice cars. However all good things came to an end and when it happened, it came to him as a total shock! He was unprepared for it.

So during the conversation, i asked him this question: ‘Bro, if given a second chance would you go back to your old life style compared to the hardship that you are going through now’  Guess what was his reply?

His reply was: ‘ I rather live a simple life as you’

His reply struck me because i was always thinking that the kind of luxury lifestyle is always what people are chasing after but i guess after this, it has confirmed to my current belief that no amount of money can buy happiness and happiness comes within ourselves. We must be contented with what we have before we experience long term happiness.

All the excitements came from the luxury lifestyle are all short term. It is like a bubble. The day when it burst, you need to blow another new one.

Lately i have been asked many questions on whether term insurance or investment link plan is better. I seriously have no concrete answer for them because it really depends on a couple of factors in my personal opinion.

Types of factors that need to be taken into consideration:
1) Will you be able to achieve 6-8% returns on your own?
2) Are you disciplined enough to keep invested for long term?
3) Are you able to handle the art (emotional) side when you are buying term?
4) How old are you when you are choosing to buy life insurance?
5) Are you willing to pump your money into a plan that yields no return for you if nothing happens?

I am sure that at this point of time many people would have disagreed with some of the pointers that i mentioned above but like i said, it’s purely my own opinion and i am not asking anyone to follow.

Buying ILP will simply solve many problems of a person who doesnt know how to invest but yet would like to do some form of small investments via insurance. But one thing for sure is that the age that you are buying the plan really plays an important part simply because of the mortality charges that you may be incurring. For someone who is 40 years and above, ILP is not suitable and he is better off buying a term insurance for itself. But for someone who is in the early 20s, ILP may not be a bad choice for them compared to term because of the long term approach that we are looking at. I have just done a comparison of a $100k coverage for death, disability and critical illness for ILP and term. What i found out was that in the long run, say 40 years, the different amount payable for the two plans are not really alot ($15k). However if at the point of time the person were to take out some money for his old age, he/she will still have either $37k (5% return) or $169k(9% return) from his/her ILP as compared to nothing from her term insurance.

Therefore looking at the example, one would prefer to get a ILP instead of term. However please take note that such cases differs from cases to cases so please don’t take it personally and think that it will suit you the most.

Another point that i want to emphasize is that for a person to buy term and invest the rest, they need to really master the science and art of investment. They need not only need to know how to pick the right funds but also to handle their emotionals during crisis. One mistake can cost them quite a bomb. We as a logical person, will also have problems convincing ourselves to buy a plan that may cost a $100/mth and there will be no cash value after 40 years. Example: Do you think a person will ever keep renting a house for his rest of whole life? I can tell you that after sometime, this person will still want to buy a house that can still contain some value after he grows old.

As for myself, i have a mixture of limited pay life insurance, term and ILP.  The purpose of having these policies is so that i can still be insured against death, disability and major illness even if i outlive myself and not working next time because i have already fully paid for my limited life insurance. When i grow old and not working anymore, i plan to cancel out my term and surrender my ILP for my retirement needs.

Therefore the morale of this article is to tell you that people’s needs are different and please do engage a committed and honest consultant to do a fact-finding with you and discover your strength and weakness and be able to plan out a bright future for you!

Yesterday was 14th Feb and as most of us know, it’s a day where you are supposed to show your special love to your partner. Previously when i was younger, i tend to place alot of emphasize on this day because it was when you can try to tell a girl that you are interested in her..haha!

As i grow older, i’m starting to feel that Vday is just another day and everywhere is getting over-commercialise and starting to sell things at a ridiculous price just for the day. No doubt everyone may know that but we all still falls for it.

Was talking to friend about the type of pressie we received for Vday and i realised that by receiving an expensive pressie from your partner is actually quite stressful thing because social expectation of us was that we need to give more or equal amount back next time! It makes me wonder is that how we measure love? Does it mean that if we give lesser we are not loving that person? How can monetary gift be measured against the love you have for someone?

Seriously love is something shared between two persons and it must be kept special. Don’t ever let society expectation weight you down. Be truthful to your partner and that is the best thing that you can give to your partner =)

Quoted from bible: 1 Corinthians 13:4 about love:
- Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.

Hi guys!

Wishing everyone who is reading this blog a happy and blessed chinese new year! May you be prosperous in this coming Rabbit year and wishing everyone to have good health!

The “Year of the [Metal] Rabbit”, fourth in the zodiac cycle according to Chinese astrology, will be celebrated on February 3, 2011.

Also known as the “Chinese New Year”, “Spring Festival”, or “Lunar New Year”, it is the longest and most important festivity which has been celebrated for thousands of years.

This light-hearted lens is devoted to all things funny bunny, hilariously hare-brained, or perhaps just a bit rambunctiously rabbit .

Always remember although work is important but family ties are even more important!  Have a work-life balance =)

GONG XI FA CAI! Huat Huat Huat!

In my recent badminton session, my friend was asking me on how come i’m so serious in playing badminton and keen on practising to be the best i can even at this age. It is not as if i am playing for competition anyway.

This has brought me to ponder upon why there is a limitation being imposed on ourselves when it comes to being the best. No one can ever tell you if you can be successful in life, not even your parents. Whether you can make it big in life, it’s all within yourself. If you think you can, you will!

Nevertheless i felt that other than mindset, discipline is very crucial in making sure if you become the best. It ensures that you keep up with the actions being done and follow through all the necessary training that was needed. Be it in studies or work, having self-disciplined is sometimes the step in differentiating a winner and loser!