Investment

If you have been working for some years, you should have a rather significant amount of money in your CPF Special Account.
The savings in your CPF SA currently still earn a 4% interest rate, totally risk free. There’s also an additional 1% interest paid to the first $60k of OA+SA.
The interest is high enough to [...]

Congrats on your new condo purchase. It’s a significant milestone in your investment journey.
You diligently studied the property market and got in at what you think is the right time.
And now, all that’s left to do is to find a tenant. Yes, you’re renting out your spanking new private apartment, fully furnished.
As a person who’s [...]

When I posted about graduate couples having no problems saving $1 million, I used an investment return of 3% in my calculations.
If you can consistently generate a 3% return every year, you will turn $100,000 into $103,000 in 1 year, and then make that $103,000 become $106,090 in 1 more year. With such compounding, your [...]

We can reasonably expect Singapore to plunge back into recession at the end of this quarter. If it does, we will be the first country in Asia, and possibly the world, to experience a double dip recession in the aftermath of the global financial crisis.
Our economy first dipped into a technical recession in Q3 2008.
Advance [...]

If you and your spouse are working professionals making median salaries, it’s not hard for both of you to accumulate $1 million before you reach 45 years old.
Suppose both of you started working at age 25, and always save and invest one-third of your income. If your savings and investments earn just a 3% rate [...]

Much has been mentioned about the “transparency” of Sibor-pegged mortgage loans. But there are TWO risks associated with such loans.
First is of course the possibility that the Sibor rate may go up. And it may shoot up dramatically.
Just 3 years ago, Sibor was hovering around 3.5%. If your bank charges you Sibor + 1.5%, you [...]

The STI index closed today at a year-high of 2,712.15, up more than 80% from its bottom just 7 months ago.
About a month before the market hit the bottom, I talked about exploiting the recession. STI was around 1,700 then.
And about a month after the market hit bottom, I talked about market cycle investing and [...]

According to the Straits Times (Sep 19), median home prices in 2008 were about 16.3 times the median annual income that year.
The article never mentioned if 16.3x is a bearable or even realistic figure for individual households.
Using ST’s median figures for 2008, if a household making $59,400/year were to buy a $970,000 condo, it would [...]

Frank sharing and valuable insights from a guest (thanks!) in our Salary.sg Forums, in response to a list of questions I posed in an old article on how to get rich:
- How did you make your first million?
“Made my first million i think around 30 or 31 years old. Graduated from uni in 1999, started [...]

This recession is perhaps the most “prosperous” recession we have ever seen, thanks to all the liquidity injected into the global monetary system and our government’s pump priming of the local economy with infrastructure projects, jobs credit and low interest rates.
The STI index closed today at a 10-month high of 2,533.43.
And URA reported a better-than-estimated [...]