Tuesday, June 8, 2010

Office position

I am looking for a person to work part or full time in my office for administrative and accounts work. If you are interested, please reply to kinlian@gmail.com.

Do not follow a bad idea

Hi Mr Tan, I found the insurance information listed on your website very informative and useful. I met up with the insurance agent who has come up with the insurance plan. I am not sure whether I am paying a high premium after looking through his proposal.


I find there are quite a few plans that cover disability so I am concerned whether there is any duplication. I am not to keen to put my savings in an investment-linked policy but my friends, brother all purchase the ILP. It could be good to have one. I would like to seek your advise whether there are anything else that I should take note of.


SY

REPLY
The distribution cost is nearly two years of your savings. The effect of deduction is more than 30% of the value of accumulated premium. These are too high. Read my book, Practical Guide on Financial Planning for an explanation of these concepts.

Do not follow your brother and friends into making the same mistake with a high cost investment-linked policy.

World Peace Index - ranking of countries

Hi Mr. Tan,

The latest Global Peace Index by The Institute for Economics and Peace:
http://www.visionofhumanity.org/wp-content/uploads/2010/06/2010-GPI-Results-and-Methodology-Report.pdf

Some rankings:
1) New Zealand
2) Iceland
3) Japan
10)Sweden
18) Switzerland
19) Australia
22) Malaysia
30) Singapore
31) United Kingdom
85) United States of America
HL

A vision for an egalitarian economy

In recent years, Singaporeans have experienced a higher cost of living, widening wage gap, stagnant incomes and insecurity of jobs. This is reflected in a falling birth rate, which has become among the lowest in the world. Something is wrong.

What is the alternative? I read a few articles from the website of the Singapore Democratic Party. Here is a summary of their key proposals. You can read more details in separate articles in their website. I find their proposals to be quite sensible.

Banks cash top-up scheme

Dear Mr Tan,

I am a regular reader of your blog. I have found it informative and helpful. Many have found the space you have provided a very useful forum. Thank you.


I would like to find out whether there are others like me, finding banks "top-up" schemes unfair and tiring. Because only fresh funds can enjoy higher interest rate, you need to transfer funds and for all the trouble you can only enjoy the higher rate for a short period of time. Initially only Standard Chartered Bank has such scheme. Now UOB and other banks follow suit. I find such schemes very meaningless.


I hope that you can raise this problem in your blog so that others who feel the same way can come together to do something.


Liangxin
 
My comments
I agree that banks should treat their existing customers fairly. They should not get the customer to go through a lot of trouble just to enjoy a decent rate of interest that is offered to new customers for their deposits.