Blog

Contributed by Grace Ang,  Financial Advisory Manager, Financial Alliance Pte Ltd
(The contributor can be contacted at graceang@fapl.sg)

The research report on “What older people need in Singapore: A household budgets study” was released in May 2019. It has derived a budget of $1,379 per month for a single elderly to meet the basic standard of living. This generated much interest and discussions, especially on whether $1,379 per month is sufficient for one to live on during retirement.

I would like to share some of my thoughts.

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Any money-savvy individual would appreciate a good professional opinion when it comes to their finances. Obtaining advice from a financial advisory professional can be extremely helpful to those looking to grow one’s wealth, make wise investment choices and save for one’s future. In these cases, engaging a financial adviser representative who offer a wide suite of financial consulting services for you can be the best option.

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Contributed by Kenny Loh
Senior Consultant, Financial Alliance Pte Ltd
(The contributor can be contacted at kennyloh@fapl.sg)
To learn more about him and read his articles, visit his blog 

There is nothing wrong with investing in dividend stocks to generate passive income for your retirement planning. However, it will cause a huge dent in your retirement portfolio if you are investing wrongly. The following are the 3 dividend traps that you have to avoid.

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Contributed by Kenny Loh
Senior Consultant, Financial Alliance Pte Ltd
(The contributor can be contacted at kennyloh@fapl.sg)
To learn more about him and read his articles, visit his blog 

Many retail investors are drawn to the hype of investing in cryptocurrencies as they believe this asset class, which is aggressively marketed as a phenomenal wealth creation tool, fulfils “get rich quick” dreams.

Bitcoin is the best known and largest of the 1,600-odd cryptocurrencies. The US$140 billion market capitalisation of Bitcoin is even bigger than the famous McDonald’s (Ticker: MCD) of US$129 billion.  The meteoric rise of Bitcoin has drawn many investors, with some believing that the underlying blockchain technology could become one of the most powerful tools in the future financial world. No doubt cryptocurrencies may change the financial world in future, but this asset class may not be suitable to everyone due to the underlying risks. The following are the 3 No-No reasons if you are investing in cryptocurrencies for your retirement planning.

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Contributed by Kenny Loh
Senior Consultant, Financial Alliance Pte Ltd
(The contributor can be contacted at kennyloh@fapl.sg)
To learn more about him and read his articles, visit his blog 

Most investors are attracted by the high yield and passive income REITs offer. However, there are 3 important points to take note of when investing in REITs.
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Contributed by Kenny Loh
Senior Consultant, Financial Alliance Pte Ltd
(The contributor can be contacted at kennyloh@fapl.sg)
To learn more about him and read his articles, visit his blog 

One of the most common questions I am asked in my seminars is, “What types of asset classes are suitable in our retirement  portfolios? Endowment, annuity, universal life, bonds, equities, physical properties, land banking, hedge funds, etc?”

Physical properties are one of the most sought-after asset classes when it comes to investing in Singapore. However, there are some disadvantages relating to investing in physical properties when we are approaching our retirement age. We could instead consider investing in REITs.

REIT stands for Real Estate Investment Trust, and can serve as an alternative to investing  in physical properties. I will share 5 reasons to include REITs as alternatives to physical real estate in your retirement portfolio.

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Contributed by Kenny Loh
Senior Consultant, Financial Alliance Pte Ltd
(The contributor can be contacted at kennyloh@fapl.sg)
To learn more about him and read his articles, visit his blog 

It was a very unfortunate event that investors lost their hard-earned money and retirement funds with Six Capital (Read the story here: Angry investors file police reports against FinTech firm Six Capital).

I am rather concerned with this statement in the Straits Times article on Six Capital: A few retirees indicated that they had poured in significant retirement sums. One lady was the age of my mother. She said that she was going to the temple to pray.

What can we learn – as retail investors – from this incident?

Let’s use the SABO model to analyse this incident. By the way, this SABO is NOT the Singlish word for “sabotage”.

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Contributed by: Estelle Heng
Intern from Gerontological Management Studies, School of Humanities and Social Sciences, Temasek Polytechnic.

‘I’m too young to think about this’ is probably the most common excuse not to start financial planning in Singapore. However, if we think twice, we’re never too young. Parents buy insurance for their babies as soon as they are born, some before they even take their first breaths. What’s so important about insurance that it is this urgent? The reality is that unexpected things happen. And when they do, you can’t afford to give up your future because of piled-up debts from hospitals or leaving your dependents to pay them off. So really, insurance is more than just protecting yourself, it includes supporting your loved ones as well.

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Contributed by: Shawn Low Wei Xuan
Intern from Gerontological Management Studies, School of Humanities and Social Sciences, Temasek Polytechnic.

We often worry about whether our savings are sufficient to last us throughout our retirement period as we have to consider a lot of unpredictable factors like our desired lifestyle, our dependents’ needs, inflation, longevity, accidents and poor health. All these factors serve as critical risk factors that can potentially stop us from enjoying our golden years if we use up our retirement savings prematurely.

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In our earlier blog post, some factors to be considered by entrepreneurs when planning for their retirement were discussed, so this blog post will dive straight into a few retirement planning tips that entrepreneurs in Singapore may find useful.
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Regardless of whether one is an employee or entrepreneur, it’s natural for one to aim to have the best possible retirement plan in place so that one can enjoy his/her golden years with peace of mind. However, as an entrepreneur, retirement planning could be a little less straightforward and is subject to different considerations from those for an employee. Here are a few factors an entrepreneur needs to take into account when planning for retirement:

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While everyone wishes to put in place the best retirement plans, it ought to be noted that starting to build a retirement plan at a younger age has irreplaceable benefits. The longer the time horizon, the better an investment portfolio can capitalise on the compounding effect on retirement fund value. It is, therefore, unsurprising to hear that on average, Singaporeans start planning for their retirement when they are 27 years old.

Below are three tips that you could take into consideration when you set out to create what might be the best retirement plan for yourself.

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