Flickr! image by isdky
Dear friends
A quarter of the year 2009 is about to come and go and I’ve decided to do a quarterly update on what’s happening in terms of my major projects in financial freedom.
I reviewed, back in 2008, what I had achieved as a means to reflect on the lessons learnt. I also stuck my neck out a little to offer my plans for 2009. Continue reading
Flickr! image by creatingkoan
You have seen how project management can help you start your journey towards financial freedom. My earlier post talked how we can begin phase 1. Let’s recap what are the 4 phases in project management:
Four Phases of Project Management
1. Definition Phase
2. Planning Phase
3. Execution Phase
4. Closing Phase Continue reading
Flickr! image by Geodog
I’ve just completed a two-day course on Project Management and realised that the bits and pieces are starting to fall into place.
My journey towards financial freedom has been to pursue my objective, which is to be financially free where passive income generated from investments exceed my living expenses. When I have achieved that I will consider myself financially free.
My book, “Panzer’s Guide to Financial Freedom” has been requested by more than two hundred people since I first launched it in November 2008. I realise there is a need for people to have a step-by-step guide to embark on their financial freedom journey.
I’ve created this series to show how you can initiate your own “Financial Freedom Project”. It uses a simplified but formal project management approach and shares how you can implement processes and structures to help you become financially free. Continue reading
[This post was first published on 20 March 2008 on Five Cents Ten Cents]
One of the pillars of financial freedom is to grow your means. You can do that in many ways. The most obvious way that occurs to you would be to hunker down, work hard and work smart to get ahead in your career or business.
Growing your means, a paradigm shift…
Get that promotion. Gain that increment. Grab that career move that pumps up your income and earnings. That is one way to grow your means.
The other way that is increasingly evident in our globalised economy that is Singapore Inc. is to seek alternate sources of income. Investment income is one such way. In generally, Singapore’s tax laws are laid out such that interest is not taxed. Dividends from stocks and shares for certain exempt sectors are also free from tax. Even for dividends from companies taxed at 18%, you get a tax credit to offset the taxes on your dividends that result in you only paying tax on dividends at your effective personal tax rates.
Internet income is starting to become a reality. I can’t quit my day job but AdSense revenue is paying for my web hosting for this blog. Hence, my blogging efforts are able to generate enough money to make my blog more professional with its own domain name as well as paid web hosting. The new paradigm in our ever changing value-chain is to diversify your income sources. Relying on your job for 100% of your financial security gets riskier with age and with winds of change blowing through the business landscape.
Growing your means, taking action!
My own foray into growing my means has been really using AdSense and blogging to explore how you can make some additional sources of income from non-traditional activities of trading time for money. Don’t get me wrong, AdSense requires still some trade-off but it gives you some flexibility in working on your blogs when you have time and at your own schedule.
Based on what I’ve read, unless the main stream media picks up on my blog and gives me free publicity to a few hundred thousand people, my humble blog would be challenged to generate anything close to even my investment income. I realise I need to either sell my own product or services through my websites where I’ve build up a small audience. That is the way to go. This revamp of Five Cents Ten Cents seeks to make my blog more adaptable to change as the look and feel can move very quickly using WordPress templates. In addition, I can also add functionality that exceeds what Blogspot can do for me.
To grow our means is to be open to opportunities and to try. Almost one year ago, I started out Five Cents Ten Cents as an experiment. What this experiment has proven is that it can generate real dollars and cents and it has also allowed me to get re-aquainted with Web 2.0 technologies and to marry my skills in writing, personal finance, information technology as well as some dabbling with designs and photography. Increasingly you will note that Five Cents Ten Cents uses photos from my own Flickr! albums that were taken on my trips overseas as well as my activities in toastmastering, kidsREAD and others.
How are you growing your means? What concrete steps, however small, have you taken to grow your means. In our current low returns from fixed deposits and treasury bills, even if you can generate $10 a mth from whatever alternate source, it represents $12,000 that you would have needed to set aside at 1% (Fairprice Plus savings rate) to get the same returns. So don’t underestimate the power of this alternate income source.
Be well and prosper!
