Five Cents Ten Cents

Flickr image "Change We Can Believe In Tour, Muscatine, IA 11/7/07" by Barrack Obama

The journey towards financial freedom is a journey towards understanding oneself. In living the principles of living within my means, saving and investing as well as growing and protecting my means, I learn more about myself as I take each tiny step towards the ambitious goal of not having to “work” for a living.

One key lesson I continue to learn is to embrace change. Just as the President of the United States Barrack Obama came up with his slogans for CHANGE and YES WE CAN. I believe change is the inevitable part of learning and growing as a person.

While we may still be the same person in our physical skins, mentally, as we learn about new knowledge, skills and abilities, we change. And as we trade our youth and years for experience and wisdom, we emerge a slightly different person. We see things from a different perspective. We examine our past with better insights about the stupid things we used to do. We look forward to the future with growing confidence that, YES WE CAN adapt to the changes that will continually challenge us in our journey towards financial freedom.

Continue reading Change We Can

Flickr! Image Grasmere in The Lake District, Cumbria UK by floato

Now that the end of 2009 is in sight, Panzer is in a contemplative mood because the Christmas muzak played all over Singapore is interfering with his brain waves resulting in the following Panzerian “predictions” for 2010.

These trends are all related to what he sees for the Singapore stock market and key trends going on from his Panzer street view. These predictions are made purely for entertainment value and because Panzer is trying to write blog posts more often. He now averages one every other week which isn’t very helpful to those who want to read more about financial freedom and his occasional quirky anecdotes about the not-so-secret diary of a CPA.

Continue reading Panzer’s Predictions for 2010

Flickr image Planet - Jones Valley Urban Farm by Southern Pixel

Those of you who are readers of science fiction author Douglas Adams would know that the title of my post is taken from one of his book titles.

It’s a useful title because it can be used for more philosophical posts which touch on many topics and come back to the key theme of my blog, i.e. achieving financial freedom and the reasons we pursue financial freedom. Continue reading Life, the Universe and Everything

Flickr image AZO AUTOZONE 010209.png by Doc Trader

Panzer is no Warren Buffet, as some Channelnewsasia Market Talk forummer commented, there are a lot of Warren Bluffets around, people who make predictions about equity prices going up or down depending on whether they are taking a long or short view of the market.

What Panzer realises from investing his own monies since 2003 till date is that the returns on cash have been quite poor especially in the last 2 years or so.

Interest rates are so low that local banks are giving 0.1% or so for savings deposits. What this means is that your money when left in the bank is actually depreciating in purchasing power when inflation is minimally 1-2% annually. It was as high as 5-6% last year prior to the global financial crisis that wiped out much of equity values as well as destroyed economic activity throughout the entire world. Continue reading Panzer’s Equity Portfolio as at 20 Nov 2009