On occupations.

So, someone said that I should introduce myself more. Well, I am a product of a local business school and was schooled in pretty decent schools along the way. I enrolled into the school and fell in love with Finance. But finance whiz-kid, I’m not. Instead, I am the girl who struggles to do her every assignments and no matter how much she studies, always clams up during exams. But exams are a thing of the past.

I am looking forward to start work and weighing my options on job offers. I can’t decide what I want to do and which job will be right for me.

As I said, I am a product of a local University and in my school, almost everyone is obsessed with entering a bank. It’s scary, sad and I say this with no judgements. I don’t know if this is part of becoming an adult but whatever happened to dreams and passion?

I have a friend who gave me this fantastic piece of advice and till today, I think it still is the best piece of career advice I have heard. “Doesn’t matter what you do, just make sure you like it. As long as you’re the top 5% of your profession, you have it made.”

 

On CPF contribution and personal taxes

I just thought about this, while checking up on CPF and personal tax.

Imagine you are earning 3,000 a month, so that’s about 36,000 per annum.

You have to make a contribution of 600 per month to CPF, 7200 annually. At 2.5% interest rate (the bank rate for Singapore), at the end of the year, your balance is about 7380.

Then, you have to pay your taxes. First 30,000 is taxed at a gross rate of $350. The next 6,000 is taxed at 5.5%, which means your personal tax expense is $680 per annum. So that’s roughly about 1.89% of your income.

Considering that you have no other savings, your CPF contribution yields roughly… 0.61%? That’s quite miserable isn’t it? In case you cannot see the percentage figure in decimals, it’s 0.0061.

I admit that this reasoning has many flaws and loopholes. For example, you can actually get a higher return of 4.5% if you lock your money into your SA account, instead of OA. (Capped at the first $60,000, i think. Need to research more.) But If your money is in SA account, it’ll be locked and you can’t use it for property.

The point is… this makes me realise how important it is to invest your money and get a decent amount of return.

What do you think? I’m on my way to getting more opinions from fellow friends that I respect

Introduction to the blog.

Why, hello!

I am not sure who will actually read this but I doubt anyone will. Let’s start the introduction. I was previously blogging in 2 other blogs before I become disconcerted at how voyeuristic people are and how a lot of people think they know me just because i blog. But that’s life and the trappings of having a blog.

For this one, I want a fresh start. This blog aims to be more serious, more mature and will relate my life after ending my university education. It’s time to be responsible because I had lived in regret for the way I lived the past few years. It’s now time to make amends and start planning early.

This blog attempts to showcase my thoughts on financial planning, on investing, on making your money work for you and on planning. Plan now, save now and earn big. Y’know, the works? But more importantly, this blog hopes to be a reminder to myself on the financial goals I want to achieve, so that I won’t succumb to emotional spending and extravangace – the trappings of credit and instant gratification.

So, I have some ideas that I will like to share and maybe they will be more relevant to the female pysche. Emotional spending, shopping sprees, compounding, plans and being dependent without a man.

To sum up, I do not aim to be an analyst or a superior voice in Finance and the works but I want to make the theories simple for everyday use and for the average person (aka, myself). Personally, this is my diary to remind me of the financial milestones I had set for myself. =)