Through my entire career, I have had the occasion to warn people about relying too heavily on CPF. CPF Life began to gain popularity amongst personal finance pundits with the introduction of CPF-SA Shielding. This was a concept that largely ran around on Personal Finance blogs like Seedly. It was essentially an effort to protect your Special Account from being taken up by your RA account - since the Special Account provided 4% and the Ordinary Account provided 2.5%, it was a logical choice to try to get 4% while still getting all the benefits of your RA account. The writing was really on the ..read more

I read this article this morning (11 November 2023) from Investmentmoats. Gratitude, My Portfolio, and My Qualification to Advice on F.I. | Investment Moats A month or two back, I did an interview with Ben to the Right - Singapore's #1 coach for Financial Advisors. To my surprise, Singapore's #1 Investment Blogger InvestmentMoats actually watched the whole thing and offered his support. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q-LIMsVqgaQ&t=3258s Purely from my perspective, Kyith and I have had a rocky history. I think we fundamentally disagree on many things when it comes to F.I, Money Management ..read more

Sometimes my readers and clients look at me like I am infallible. This is simply not true - rather, I use my knowledge to help them succeed to the best of their own limits and I also try to help them avoid my mistakes. My mistakes are not small, either, and this is the biggest investment one of all. In 2019, I cleared my Million Dollar Round Table (MDRT) for the first time. This meant that I had made (well) over $115,800 that year. I had invested quite a bit of money already and set up a new regular investment plan as well, yet I had quite a bit of money left in the bank. This left me feeling ..read more

This is the first in a multi-series set of articles that both seek to educate and update on my personal life. I am looking to conduct a set of free webinars on Preventing Loss of Money from Divorce and introduce my trained agents who provide Investment and Estate Planning solutions to the problems listed. I know it's been a super long time since I wrote an article. Actually, that's incorrect. I wrote a whole bunch of articles but never really found the best time to publish them. This blog has always been for my clients and loved ones. I felt it would be best to bring an update into my life and ..read more

This article initially begun drafting Early December and was updated in Early January 2022 As a reader of Financial Blogs for quite a few years, I noticed every blogger does an end of year review. Since I only have two years of investment experience, I will try to catch up and review my 2020 - 2021. I'll be going over each component of my portfolio and whether it went well, and what I could have done better. I hope it will be useful to readers, especially the self-employed. --- Following the last post, I had called my investment consultant Luke while he was in Thailand for my client review. Ha ..read more

A short while back I received an invite-only introduction to an investment: 'A 15% Guaranteed Property Rental Return, Capital Guaranteed'. This is not my first exposure to something like this. About 2 years back, I was also exposed to such an investment during my international exchange. At the time, property interests me more than stocks (maybe even still does, since I have a higher net worth in my property than with my financial advisor) because I think that there's an intrinsic value to property that goes beyond monetary. When I was complaining to Luke a few weeks back about a particularly i ..read more

This article was created after a financial review conducted with Luke Ho, who is the author's Financial Consultant/Investment Specialist. MM: Could you tell us a little about yourself, and how old you are? Luke: My name is Luke, but I was better known as Money Maverick a while back. I'm 29 years old and a servant of my Lord Jesus Christ. Currently I am a Associate Financial Manager at SG Alliance Pte Ltd. I'm better known from my financial publications as an Investment and Critical Illness Specialist, and the writings on the blog Money Maverick. I've been in a long distance relationship with ..read more

TRIGGER WARNING: The following content has descriptions of tragedy, sex, abuse, self-injurious behavior. Read at your own risk. The following Transcript has been translated and edited to be concise. The original interview was a mix of English and Thai and using google translate. Some of the questions have been excluded for continuation of the write-up. Some of the English has been editing for easier reading, but not too much to capture the spirit of what is being expressed. - Tina How Money Maverick Met 'Nana' 'Nana' is a thin looking girl but with a big smile and bright eyes. As she talks to ..read more

TRIGGER WARNING: The following content has descriptions of tragedy, sex, abuse, self-injurious behavior. Read at your own risk. The following Transcript has been translated and edited to be concise. The original interview was a mix of English and Thai and using google translate. Some of the questions have been excluded for continuation of the write-up. Some of the English has been editing for easier reading, but not too much to capture the spirit of what is being expressed. - Tina How Money Maverick Met 'Nana' 'Nana' is a thin looking girl but with a big smile and bright eyes. As she talks to ..read more

In every portfolio we hold a cash element, used for buying investment dips or acting as a buffer for our day-to-day necessities. Cash is a must in every portfolio. We need day to day expenditures, unforeseen emergencies or even deductibles for insurance. But we frequently give up returns on this element, earning way below inflation. Investing our monies into riskier assets with higher market fluctuations are our main hope - that the investments we have will earn WAY above inflation, to make up for the negligible interest made by cash. What if there was a way to earn high yields on cash, WITHOU ..read more