Tuesday, April 13, 2010

Retirement savings

Read this article,

My view.
It seems that the average amount that most people need for retirement in the USA is $1 million. I suppose that this include the value of the house. A similar amount will be needed in Singapore, i.e. $500,000 as value of house and $500,000 cash for retirement. At 4% yield (hopefully), $500,000 will produce $20,000 a year or $1,600 a month. This is similar to what most people comments in an earlier article in my blog.

However, if I am mistaken and most people expect $1 million cash on top of a fully paid house, then they are looking at monthly expenses of $3,200.

Confidence in leaders

Dear Mr. Tan,
I fully agree with an article on your blog (The future of our country). I have very little confidence in the next generation of leaders. All of them have never contested in a fair and open election, thanks to the grossly unleveled playing field (eg. GRC, ruling party's use of the entire govt machinery against the opposition party cadres, heavily biased and tightly controlled mainstream media).

How can they claim to represent the people if they are not elected by the people? This explains why they don't have any clue what the people feel/think. They just enact policies according to their liking. They think they know best. They don't have the decency to apologise when they are wrong.


This sad state of affairs worries me. I now seriously wonder if I should get PR status in say Australia. Having a team of "strawberry" leaders, who make policies out of an ivory yower, steering this country scares me like hell.

Financial Planning for a young person

Hi Mr Tan,
I am an avid follower of your blog. I like your advice, usually neutral and conservative which suit me.

I would like to ask for some advice from you about purchasing of my first life and health insurance. I recently decided to buy insurance from a friend. He didn't approach me rather it was me who approach him.


I am a 24 year old male. I am healthy I guess without much problem. I want to buy insurance from protecting my family from financial catastrophe.
I have do some reading about insurance but I think its still not enough for me to evaluate any insurance plan well.  After going through my financial, my friend/agent came back to me with 3 plans, one is term insurance, one is saving type insurance, the last is investment linked. (Details of three plans provided)

My question is, am I paying too much premium? Am I covering too much? The CPF portion seems to be taking quite a lot of money away?


REPLY
I suggest that you buy my book, Practical Guide on Financial Planning, to read about the fundamentals of financial planning. It also explains why you should not buy any whole life or investment linked policy - as the distribution cost is too high.

You can buy the book here:
www.easysearch.sg/ishop

You should buy term insurance. The best type is from Aviva (SAF) or NTUC (SAFRA insurance). You can get a comparision of the cost here.
http://www.easysearch.sg/Admin/File.aspx?id=19