I chanced upon this book “The Automatic Millionaire” by Financial guru David Bach more than ten years ago in a public library near my formal home. This is the one of the first few financial books that I came across and that was also the period of time when I started to get more serious…
Jan 2017 -Expenses Update
Kate recently published a post chronicling how we have decided to set a budget of $60,000 for our 2017 expenses. This excludes mortgage (we did not include mortgage as these are deducted from our CPF ). Expenditure levels differ with each household but we came up with this ballpark figure after roughly calculating some initial…
Knowing your real hourly wage
You have a finite number of hours on this earth. Every moment is unique and you can’t turn back the clock. Yet, seldom have we stopped to think about how much time we are spending in exchange for our salary. Some of might say, “We earn $1000 a week, working 40 hours and so I…
Newfound family hobby
As most of our readers would know, we just move to our new place about a month ago and we are still trying to settle down in this new estate. We are exploring our new neighborhood and discovered that there are some very nice scenic park connectors just in front of our door steps (not literally…
How much do you need to “retire”
The hot question that a lot of people might be asking themselves is “How much money do you need to retire?” or “What is the magic number to retirement?”. Basically, it just refers to “How much money you need to not have to work again for the rest of your life“. A lot of financial…
Mortgage
Committing to stupendous long term mortgage is becoming a norm in Singapore. From the outset, Singapore has one of the highest rates of home ownership in the world so it is not exactly surprising that a higher proportion of young and married couples are slapped with mortgage loans. For many of us, mortgage is probably…
Life’s Greatest Gift
Minimalism is not all just about having less, its about having more. Personally for me, it’s having more time to do things that matters to me. One of the first things that comes to my mind is how do I add value to other people’s life. Starting this blog with Kate to share our experience…
Comparison
When we were first born into this world, comparison starts. It starts with the little things, like our weight, length (or height) or even head circumference etc. These comparisons might not be with another person or baby per se, it could be against a chart, an average of some sorts, or a bell curve. But…
Mindless consumption
In a previous article, we discussed the problem with cheap, which was actually, a prime example of mindless consumption. We make purchases without giving much thought, perhaps thinking that we might need it someday (which we probably did not require). What happens though, when they are never consumed? We probably do not realize this –…
The problem with CHEAP
By Dave It is not uncommon to hear things like …… “Why are you taking so long to decide? It is CHEAP so you should just buy it” “You should buy in bulk because it is CHEAPER” “You should buy a few more because it is CHEAP” According to dictionary.com, CHEAP could be defined as…