JQ's Financial Planning Matters

  So, as promised, here is the sequel to my previous post. As I mentioned in part 1, being a millionaire before reaching the current statutory age of 65 is very difficult with one source of income. Multiple sources are needed, dare I say, required. So, what do we need to prepare for retirement? For this one, I defer to the one and only...Dr Sanjay Tolani!! In one of his Youtube videos, Dr Tolani advised that our retirement portfolio should be split into two categories: Fixed and Variable (Remember my teaser in part 1). Within these two categories, there are six sources of income to prepare for retirement (other than your job salary of course). What you see above is a screenshot of his Youtube video. So what are fixed and what are variable sources of income? In my opinion, sources 1 to 3 could be variable sources, while sources 4 to 6 are more fixed sources. Here's why: Rental yields - More property to rent out, more rental income Dividends and Coupons - Depends on the market Fixed ...

Retirement . A phase of life that every working adult aims for at the end of their careers. Some may reach that goal earlier, others reach later, maybe never (that last part is sad, but real.) There is one question that we all, as working adults, will ask ourselves: Do I have enough financially to retire? In order to answer that question, you really have to break that down into two further questions: 1. What age do I want to retire? 2. How much will my desired monthly expenses be when I retire? In Singapore, the current statutory retirement age as of this post is 65. The retirement lifespan is about 20 years. As for the monthly expenses, for simplistic calculation purposes, I'll put it at $3,000 a month. You can feel free to approach your agent and share with him/her your desired monthly expenses upon retirement. Oh, and inflation rate is about 3% a year. Based on the above data, I would do the financial calculation for my clients (All agents do the same); and the results are reall...

Warm market. Cold market. Every agent that steps foot in this industry has heard these four words before. What are they exactly? For the purposes of disclosure: Warm market - Family, relatives, friends, colleagues etc. Cold market - Complete strangers (Imagine walk-in customers into retail shops) So, the age old question remains: Which market should an agent approach first? Quite honestly, it really depends on how strong your social circle is. That means: Warm Market - Approach if this circle of yours is very supportive of you and will help you in anyway. Cold Market - If your warm market turns a cold shoulder....approach the cold market. You may be thinking too....how do I approach cold market? Before COVID, there used to be events like road shows and seminars for agents to approach strangers and bring them into the events. Now with COVID, digital marketing and leads agencies are the ones creating the awareness for agents.  So if the cold market is your optimal option, no harm t...

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I'm sure everyone out there has a favourite number. Mine is seven. For some, it's eight (especially the chinese), for others, it could be nine, or three or any other number, usually between one and ten. The other numbers outside of ten that could be a favourite number is one hundred, thousand, million etc. For Dr Sanjay Tolani, a near 20-year world famous financial planning guru, his favourite number is way beyond three, even four digits. His favourite number, as he himself will tell you...is... 28,000 ! 28,000? That's a unique number.....but why 28,000? According to Dr Tolani, the average human lifespan is about 28,000 days, which when converted to years is about 77 years. For the purposes of his presentations, he usually rounds up to 80 years. In his 28,000 presentation, Dr Tolani divides the 80 year lifespan into four quadrants: - 0 to 20 - 21 to 40 - 41 to 60 - 61 to 80 In his video, Dr Tolani would summarize what happens in each quadrant, and why holistic insurance cov...

Growing up, I was told that being a financial planner (FP, or insurance agent) was not a feasible job. I don't recall the real reason given. All I remember, maybe even heard was that the job was a, shall we say, shady one. Probably because back in the day, the rules and regulations were not as strict as today. For all chinese folks especially, if an FP approaches you talking about insurance, you would probably think, "Are you trying to curse me to death?" So because of that mindset, among other things, I never thought about being an FP.  That was....until two years ago. I took a serious leap of faith to explore the world of financial planning. How this went down was I went to a job interview (or so I thought), in response to an ad on a job portal. Long story short on the job ad, it promotes making about $10k a month, potentially. I've seen enough of such ads to know it's a recruitment ad from an insurance company. Maybe that's why I didn't bring my CV to t...