Five Cents Ten Cents

Financial freedom, one realistic step at a time.

Tag Archives: Singapore personal finance

The Stork and The Pension Fund

This entry is part 5 of 5 in the series Retirement

Beach beautiful baby Jackson
The Channelnewsasia article “Singapore Fertility Rate Falls to Record Low,” of 1.16 (2010) from 1.22 (2009) is not telling us anything new. If you look around your colleagues, relatives and friends, the reality is that Singapore faces the population trends prevalent in developed countries, i.e. a declining birthrate. Possibly it is the rate of decline as well as the level of the total fertility rate (TFR) when extrapolated gives rise to concern in the future, i.e. we will have a greying population that will be supported by fewer economically active population.

What does the decline in the TFR have to do with your financial freedom?

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Goodbye 2010, Hello 2011!


Miami New Years Eve 2011 Fireworks 0111

The start of the year is associated with setting resolutions and targets for the year as we say, “goodbye” to 2010 and, “hello” to 2011. If you read enough about New Year’s resolutions, you’d realise that goal setting should be happening all through the year and not only during the beginning of each year. Although for many of us, the start of a year is a good cut-off to review what transpired in our lives in the past 365 days and what we intend to do for the next 365 days.

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Funding Your Child’s University in the Future


I caught this news snippet on Al Jazeera and was blown away by the amounts that US students have to pay for their college (university) tuition, if they are attending a traditional school and not something like an online university. The USD 100,000+ and USD 36,000 plus figures quoted are definitely much higher than tuition in Singapore for the local government funded universities as well as the private ones (e.g. SIM). However, what the US experiences could be what could be a foretaste for us here as I know that a SIM programme with a foreign university that is delivered locally costs close to $9k a year or almost $30k in three years so our costs of university are also creeping up.

Makes you think more about funding your child’s college tuition in the future especially the point made that colleague fee increases outpace inflation.

Value-for-Money in Financial Freedom


A little grocery shopping
As an internal auditor, I frequently use the term “value-for-money” when making recommendations to improve business processes in my organisation that is a public sector entity.

What is value-for-money (VFM) and how does it impact you in your own journey towards financial freedom?

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Spend or Save: Year End Bonuses and Windfall Gains


Money money money

Flickr image "Money Money Money" by Jainaj

One of the challenges of travelling along this journey towards financial freedom is how we manage our decisions to spend or save when it comes to year-end bonuses and windfall gains. It’s the time of year again where most employees would receive their 13th month bonus plus a bit more depending on their organisation remuneration policy. I am fortunate to work in an organisation that pays the 13th month as well as additional variable bonus.

What would you do with the year-end bonus that you receive?

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