As an independent financial adviser, I would like to suggest you take stock of what you have first. How much insurance protection do you have now? When was the last time you sat down with your financial adviser to review your current situation? If you have not done so, please set a date as soon as possible given your tight work schedule.

Next, you should find out from your wife, how much money they are spending now at the present lifestyle. Knowing how much they need is important as this will determine how much insurance you need to buy. Your independent financial adviser wll help you calculate the exact amount. Just imagine you are going to work overseas till your last child is gainfully employed and you need to give your wife a sum of money as their expenses…

Did you buy home insurance, mortgage insurance for your home purchase? You need home insurance to pay for expenses incurred should a fire burn through your home or your neighbour’s home, for example. Talk to a general insurance specialist if your financial adviser is unable or not keen to do business in this area. Having a mortgage insurance will ensure your property will be fully paid upon your unfortunate demise. Your family will have a shelter fully paid without any worries to pay the monthly housing loan installments.

As you are flying 10 times a year, you should buy travel insurance on an annual basis. It is cheaper to buy it this way. Besides your company’s travel insurance you should have your own as the your family will be paid directly by the insurance company. You will not only avoid the hassle of buying it just before you fly, you will also be minimising the chance of forgetting to buy it too. Once in the air, it will be too late to buy travel insurance.

Please consult your independent financial advisor and do a full fact find so that he or she will be able to do a proper financial plan that covers your needs well. If you don’t have one, I will be happy to meet you to discuss your plans.

In financial planning, I separate the best from the rest.

A key issue for anyone who intends to buy a business insurance plan is to make sure that you have compensation from the insurance company in the event that you are forbidden to return to your work premises by the authorities. You may be prevented from returning to your work premises if a fire occured in the building but not necessarily from your unit. The fire may be from your neighbour’s unit but the fire authorities decided that no one can enter the building for safety reasons.

This happened quite recently when a lawyer’s office on the sixth floor of theAfro Asia Building along Robinson Road was set on fire. Even though the fire was on the sixth floor, everyone was not allowed to return to the building for a week! If your office was in that building, you would not be able to access your work and may suffer financial loss.

If you had a business insurance that pays you for each day that you cannot return into the building, you would have been paid by the insurance company. An insurance company I know pays $250 per day of denial of access to the building, through no fault of yours.

Do contact your independent financial adviser for more information on “Denial Of Access”

I am also able to address this concern if you want to speak to me.

In financial planning, I separate the best from the rest!!!

Dear friends,

Today is a different day. It had been raining since this morning and the sky was gloomy and dark even during midday. I had just returned home from a comfortable lunch with a close friend and ate some delicious durians and drank bubble tea after lunch. I had even bought 3 packets of durian for my family.  I had just spent more than S$20 in less than 4 hours. I felt good and wanted to rest at home when I read an email from a church friend who had started a fund raising campaign to help buy drilling trucks to get fresh clean drinking water for millions of people.

Immediately I donated USD21 to her cause as an encouragement to her. But somehow I felt a tug in me heart that I should also start a campaign  too. With faith in God’s providence, I decided to start “Focus On The Water” to raise USD5000 within 3 months.

Please help the poor people get their supply of clean fresh water. This project aims to raise enough money to buy drilling machines to dig deep into the ground to extract good clean drinking water for the Ethopians. I am just doing  my small part to help them.

Singaporeans take for granted the clean water that flows out of our taps. Many waste water without even blinking an eye when they hosed water on their cars when they washed their cars…

Don’t just complain, do something. Donate USD21 or more if you can afford it. Sell away the old stuff in your store room to Cash Converters and use the money to help these poor souls. You will feel a sense of achievement in your life which no medals or awards can bring to you. You are saving precious lives. The lives of people who drink dirty muddy water. Help them, please.

Please visit my website at http://mycharitywater.org/p/campaign/?campaign_id=19036 to donate and better still, start your own campaign. I don’t get a single cent from doing this. Just a sense of gratitude and thankfulness that I am able to help these poor souls.

Reach out to all your contacts in your Facebook to ask them to help. Don’t just play games, post photos or chat on FB. Do a good deed, ask for donations.

I thank God for you. Have a great day, my friends.

Let’s begin with the end in mind.

Let’s say you are in your mid 30s, you are married and you have 2 toddlers age 3 and 5, both are girls. You live in a private condominium and you have big dreams for you and your family. You intend to retire at age 55, another 20 years to work. Your wife, who is the same age, also intends to stop work at age 55 so that both of you can travel the world together without any financial worries. By then your two girls would have been out of school, working and independent. Your house would have been fully paid and no more debts to pay. Isn’t that great?

Now, an independent financial advisor rep will sit down with both of you to get to know both of you better and have a clearer idea of what you really want at age 55. Getting the hard facts is easy, putting numbers down on papaer is easy too. What really matters, I believe, is that are you telling the truth and do you really believe that this is what you really desire and you are going all out to make this dream become a reality?

Financial Independence (FI)  simply put, is having a house fully paid with financial assets that can pay for your living expenses for the rest of your life. FI means different things to different people. I suggest you take a short weekend getaway with your spouse to really think about your future. It may take two or three getaways before you get it all down on paper.

Once you have a clear picture of what BOTH of you really want, you can now discuss with your independent financial advisor or call me for a meeting. Now, we can start putting the numbers down and start creating the plan to realise your dreams.

So, what can an independent financial advsior rep do for you?

Nothing, really. Until you have made up your mind to be financially free. I look forward to see both of you one day.

Many people are aware that they must buy life insurance plans which pay on death, total & permanent disability (TPD) or upon diagnosis of a critical illness but many are not aware that there are insurance plans that pay upon a disbility that prevents them from going to work. It can be due to illness or accident but it is not severe enough to be classified under critical illness or TPD.

In such an unfortunate event, without a disability income insurance, one would be unable to go to work and yet have to continue paying all the bills including the insurance policies premiums! Isn’t that a “living hell” situation? Your savings will be depleted and sooner or later you will also terminate your other insurance policies to withdraw cash from them, if any.

If you had bought a disability income insurance plan, you would have been able to claim up to 75% of your monthly income should you be unable to work. This amount should be sufficient to meet all your monthly expenses even if you are unable to work till your retirement age. At the same time, you can continue saving for your retirement with this disability payout.

You may ask, “What kind of illness or accident will prevent me from working? “.  You can find that out when  you discuss this plan when you meet your independent financial adviser. I am just creating an awareness for the general public. Alternatively, I can discuss this with you.

Do not confuse this disability income insurance with the “Hospital Income” plans. Hospital Income plans pay a daily amount (e.g. $100) according to the number of days you stay in the hospital. For example if you are warded in the hospital for 7 days, you will receive $700 plus some plans will pay you a daily amount (e.g. $50/day) for each hospitalisation leave you take. For example, you are given 5 days MC, then you will receive  additional $350. And please remember that these are mostly accident hospital income plan, which pays you only if you are warded due to an accident. If you are warded due to an illness, you will not be paid a single cent. Sorry…

Disability Income Insurance is a necessary part of any wealth protection planning, so do not neglect to include it in your insurance portfolio. If not, you may live to regret it…

In financial planning, I separate the best from the rest.

Every Singaporean with a CPF account should have made a CPF Nomination. You can download this CPF Nomination Form here. Having done so, you may think that all your CPF monies and investments will be taken care of upon your demise. NOT TRUE!

Please be aware that the following will not be covered by your CPF Nomination.

1) Cash and Investments held under the CPF Investment Scheme – Ordinary Account (CPFIS-OA). These monies will form part of your estate and will be settled using your valid will.

2) Investments held under the CPF Investment Scheme – Special Account (CPFIS-SA). These monies will form part of your estate and will be settled using your valid will.

3) Dependent Protection Scheme (DPS) claims proceeds. The insurance companies, NTUC Income or Great Eastern Life, will pay the claims using their revocable nomination forms (Form 4). You can download the NTUC INCOME nomination form here and the Great Eastern Life nomination form here.

4) Properties bought with your CPF Savings. These will be distributed according to whether it is Tenancy in Common or in Joint Tenancy manner of holding.

The CPF Nomination form covers only the savings in the Ordinary, Special, Medisave and Retirement Accounts plus the discounted SingTel (ST) Shares.

Please read the CPF Nomination Form Inportant Notes for other issues relating to your CPF nomination.

If you are unsure what to do with your CPF monies, you may want to visit one of  the CPF Service Centres or talk to your trusted independent financial advisor today.

After my mum’s operation to replace her broken femur bone after a fall last month, she had to stay in a community hospital to recuperate and get rehab to help her walk again. The cost of staying at this community hospital was $127 a day without any subsidy. We could not apply for a financial subsidy because she was an owner of a private house with an annual value of more than $11,000.

Many people have relied on their company’s group insurance program for their personal  life insurance plans. A very common reason is that there is a duplication in the insurance or even too much insurance if they bought their own insurance. Furthermore they don’t have to spend a cent for the insurance. This is a false sense of security.

Let me ask you two very simple and logical questions.

1) Can you guarantee that you will be employed in this company for the rest of your life? Will you leave for another company if you are offered better prospects, will you leave if you ever got into a major dispute with your immediate superior, will you leave if you disagree with a newly appointed management after a merger, will you leave if you have to take over the jobs of two colleagues who left and the company did not replace them forcing you to work overtime every day, even on weekends just to complete the present work load.

2) With rising business operating costs in Singapore, will your company remain in Singapore? Will the company reduce it’s operations and move the bulk of it’s operations to China or India? Will your company sell it’s entire stake to an Investment Company where it’s only aim is to get maximum returns for it’s stakeholders?

Simply put, once you leave the company or the company leaves Singapore, you will be totally exposed to risk where you will suffer severe financial difficulties should you fall very sick or die. Your dependents will suffer with you because you did not plan well.

Get your own personal life insurance plans!

They belong to you and if you are blessed with good health to a ripe old age, you can surrender your life insurance policies for a tidy sum of money and it becomes part of your retirement funding or give it to chairty as a legacy in your name! It is better than leaving your money in the fixed deposits and life insurance gives you a huge payout when there is a claim but the bank just returns your money with a miserable interest rate of less than 1% p.a. Life Insurance policies returns anything from 2 to 4% p.a. returns, depending on the features of the plan.

Get into action now, call your independent financial adviser now and review your life insurance plans and your retirement plans. It is never too late to start.

Recently I realised that many old people in Singapore have problems with their knee caps and joints like Osteoarthritis. Osteoarthritis is caused by ‘wear and tear’ on a joint. It occurs when cartilage in your joints wears down over time.

My 81 years old mother was bearing the pain quietly until last Friday when she was overwhelmed with pain in her left knee when she twisted her knee while wearing her trousers. She also felt a muscle was pulled which resulted in an excruciating pain in and behind her knee. In her own words, she felt that she had just “sprained” her left knee.

I brought her to see her regular doctor at Toa Payoh and we were told that she was suffering from Osteoarthritis and she needed to go for surgery to replace her knee caps.  We were mentally prepared that he would say that. We decided to go to the Toa Payoh Poly clinic so that we could get subsidised treatment at a restructured hospital.

After buying her pain killer pills and a tube of pain killer paste, we headed for the Polyclinic at Toa Payoh Lorong 8 at about 3 pm. She saw a doctor there in less than 30 minutes and had an X-ray done on both knees. The X-ray confirmed that her knee joints showed signs of ”moderately severe degeneration”.

The doctor advised us that the earliest date to see the bone specialist at Khoo Teck Puat Hospital will be on 29 June 2011. If we were to see a bone specialist at SGH or Tan Tock Seng Hospital, we will have to wait till July or August 2011. There was a long queue to see the bone specialists.

Finally we decided to see the bone specialist at KTP Hospital because that’s the earliest date we could get.

What did I learn from this experience?

As an independent financial advisor, I have been advising my clients to buy hospital and surgical insurance for their parents and if they did not, the full burden of the hospital bill will fall on them at the worst time of their lives. Why? Imagine with me, if your parents are 80 years old, how old will you be, how old will your children be? For me, I am 48 years old and my children are 16 and 18 years of age. One of them will be going for tertiary education next year. Tution fees at the University alone will cost around $10K a year.

The knee cap replacement surgery is expected to cost more than $10K per knee at restructured hospital while it will cost more than $20K per knee at a private hospital here in Singapore.

My mum has insurance to pay for her hospital bills in a restructured hospital so we cannot send her to a private hospital which can do the operation within a week!

So don’t delay anymore, get that hospital & surgical plan for your mum and dad if you have not done so. It will cost you dearly in future if you don’t start planning now.

Call your trusted independent financial adviser to get the best plan that suits your budget. He will be able to get one that you will be most comfortable with. Shop with the best financial advisor or you can always call me at 90011082 for my recommendation.

In financial planning, I separate the best from the rest!!!

One day, we might end up losing our minds due to illnesses or accidents. It is terrible to lose our minds but it is worse when we have dependents who are minors and cannot make any decisions for us legally. What will happen to your personal affairs if you got into a coma state for months and years after a serious illness or accident? You may have to remove a tumour from your brain and there is a 50/50 chance of never waking up from the operation. Have you prepared your next of kin on how to attend to your personal affairs if you become a “living dead” person?

Just tell them verbally? Not good enough!!!

 I believe that many Singaporeans are not aware that we can appoint one or more trustworthy person to act on our behalf when we lose our mental capacity in the event of getting Dementia, for example. Now we can get this done legally by writing our “Lasting Power of Attorney” (LPA).

Not convinced yet? Watch this short video and this video…

A LPA is a legal document that allows you (the donor) to appoint one or more persons ( the donee/s ) to make legal decisions on your behalf when you are unable to do so when you lose your mental capacity. You can authorise your donee/s to make decisions concerning your personal welfare and/or your property and affairs including financial matters.

How can you make a LPA? Click here http://www.publicguardian.gov.sg/PrePlan/HowCanIMakeaLastingPowerofAttorney.aspx

To download this FREE document. please go to http://www.publicguardian.gov.sg/LPAFormMaker.aspx

Visit Office Of The Public Guardian for full details.

As an independent financial adviser, I would love to meet up with you to discuss with you on how to use a LPA in your financial planning. I can be contacted at 90011082.

Alternatively, please consult your trusted independent financial advisor before you decide to get the LPA done…

Have a merry weekend with your loved ones!