For my wife - just in case something happens to me.. Choy choy!

So I was talking to my wife about how to manage my portfolio if in the event I do get into an accident or pass away suddenly (touch wood). She was not very interested to listen as usual as she's not interested to know how to manage finances and stuff.

But I was telling her that she should at least know how to manage it so that in the event something does happen to me, she can at least devote her time to our son (and other children if any) with the insurance payout that she would receive rather than still spend her time worrying about money and work.

So, instead of listening to me nag, she said:

Aiya then you post it on your blog la, if ever needed I will go to your blog and see how you manage our money - you see I so good give you inspiration for your blog

Thus, post today courtesy of my wife.

So dear wife (or kid/s), long story short, if I ever were to pass on, please use take the insurance money and pump it into the following investments:

30% into Vanguard FTSE All-World UCITS ETF (VWRD) on the London/Ireland Stock Exchange
30% into SPDR Straits Times Index ETF (ES3.SI)
40% into ABF Singapore Bond Index Fund (A35)

Once you have done the above, make sure that you re-balance the portfolio annually, meaning look at the value of all 3 funds and make the percentages into 30/30/40 again. 

In the event you really have no clue about how to do the above, please pump your money into Autowealth. Not preferred since it will most/all be in USD, but I guess it's better than not doing anything with the money. 

Once money is pumped into the investments, you can spend 4% of the total amount per year and this should last you sufficiently for the rest of your life. Of course, please be prudent and be flexible with the money if markets were to go down, to be safe I would say just use 3% of the total value per year. 

For example, if you were to get $1.5 million from insurance, you can use $60,000 per year if you use 4% and $45,000 if you just take 3%. 

I'm not currently doing exactly as I say above, but this is because we are still in the accumulation stage. If you do get my insurance money, then just go ahead and do the above yea? 

I hope you don't ever have to refer back to this post cause we always said I will need to be healthier than you and be the one to go later. But, we never know right? 

I love you! :) 

Useful Tip to Start Kids on Finance!

I started on Budgets Are $exy not too long ago and one of the posts titled  '9 more Financial Hacks to Put In Your Pocket' led me to this tip/blog post by Matt Spillar which I found very interesting and potentially very useful in future when I do have to teach my kids about money!

Long story short - The writer will be incentivised by his father whenever he reads Finance/Investment books and subsequently give a review/report on the book, this was to get him interested in the topic of personal finance.

Me thinks that this is a really cool idea and I wish I had a similar figure do this for me when I was younger! I always wanted to read on Finance, Investing when I was younger however whenever I got into the first few chapters (sometimes its pages..) my interest would have waned. I don't think my WANT for it back then was strong enough to sustain me throughout the whole book and such an incentive could have (maybe?) pushed me through!

At a certain age, I think most of us are just cruising through life and do not know what really interests us or will be important to us and thus we just go with the flow - doing whatever our peers are doing and spending on. I'll be really glad if my kids grow up and have a good grasp of their personal finances much like SleepyDevil at his age of just 19 years old.

Another point in the article by Matt Spillar was that he will not pay for his kids' education even if he could afford it and that falls in line with my own thinking as well.

I had to pay for my own polytechnic and degree tuition fees.

I started work immediately after I finished my national service, worked and studied for my degree at the same time though I was lucky that my elder brothers (thank you 哥哥s :D) loaned me my tuition fee thus it was a 0% interest loan. I was very envious of friends that did not have any school loan to pay off at that time and TBH I was quite bitter about it (I think especially bitter because almost ALL of my close friends had their parents pay their tuition fees for them).

Looking back now, I'm glad that I had to go through that as I believe it was part of my character building and without that I might not have my values of today regarding money.

Thus, to my children.. if you are reading this....

SORRY! PAY YOUR OWN TUITION FEES WHILE MOM AND DAD GO TO THE MALDIVES/ALASKA/(INSERT EXOTIC LOCATION)! BWAHAHAHAHAHAHA!
Ok that was really childish.

What are your thoughts on paying for school tuition for your kids? Interested to know if anyone feels the same!