Life and Finance

It has been a little over 2 years ago that I started reading into stocks and bought a few stocks. As a university student now, I lack the financial capital as before and priorities are now different. As such, I don't find myself trying to read as much as before, but I'm glad the habit of reading the posts on thefinance.sg has stuck with me.  So these are my current stocks:  Stock Shares Current Market Value  (19/10/2017)  Return (dividends and capital gains/loss)  CDL Hospitality Trusts 800 $1296.00 +$255.30  CapitaMall Trust 400 $820.00 +$75.44 Singtel 600 $2250.00 +$26.00 Nikko AM STI ETF 686 $2369.03 +$342.32 $6735.03 $699.06 Individual Stocks So long as I felt that the new growth engines were reasonable, a PB ratio that was lower than 1 and the companies could afford to pay or reservice debt, I bought it. An e...

About 1.5 years ago, I signed up for Japanese language classes. Due to NS, I could only commit weekly classes but I was always looking forward to the class on the weekend.  In April this year, I went to Japan. No, you don't have to actually learn Japanese to get around in Japan. That was not my real purpose in learning Japanese. Instead, I wanted to learn something new and exciting to get over the mundane routine in NS. I also viewed it as building resilience as attitude to learning is always the biggest factor.  Some Japanese was still necessary if you do not want to use Google Translate, especially in the suburbs of Kyoto. In an unfortunate situation, I did use it when my friend lost his wallet but I couldn't catch up with the native speaker's speed. The wallet was found eventually and every single yen was accounted. There had been very honest and upright staff. Kudos!  In July, I took the most basic proficiency exam (JLPT N5) and while it was a very easy c...

When we were asked what we look forward to in the new year, all of us (NSFs) in the unit replied in unison, "ORD!".  The first month is coming to an end soon. It's been also a year since I started this blog and tracked my finances. In that process, one observation was clear.  Your career is the single most important source of building wealth We are told by our parents to study hard and get a degree. Nobody says getting a degree guarantees will give you high income, but nobody is going to deny the fact that working for $1000 isn't a lot and not going to bring you much savings, let alone to do investments.  While I have been saving diligently from the NS allowance I'm getting now, it does feel painfully slow relying on just one, small stream of income. My friend crafted leather goods, puts it up for sale and it is now another stream of income other than the NS allowance. That will boost his savings and give him more money for investments, provided he does ...