Restarting this blog with a slightly different focus

I have not been blogging actively for about 3 years plus I think. That was when I was at my late twenties and approaching the thirties.

Since then, some of the people who known me have asked me to continue blogging my financial journey. I have not done it due to a variety of excuses and reasons, including the reason that there are now many excellent financial blogs on the individual stocks.

Now, being in my early thirties, been just married, with a HDB, I think it will be interesting to chronicle the financial struggles, and growth of a newly married couple, both at 32 years old as of today.

The aim of this journey is to grow our retirement nest, yet not scrooging on the little comforts in life like I have been doing for the early part of my financial journey. As my wife always says, money is meant to be spent and enjoyed. It doesn't mean excessive spending, but it doesn't mean excessive scrooging either.

Simple Update on STI

Recently I sold 2/3 of my holdings of SGX at a price of 8.72.

My simple and quick analysis on the chart of STI still looks valid.
I did a zoom in of the past few months to see if the conclusion coincides.

Based on the assumption that the current wave is a motive wave (Elliott Wave Theory), it seems that my target for a correction around 3rd quarter of 2015 will still stand.

The horizontal line is about 3650. It comes from a interim top just before the top of 2007.

The first wave is about 210 in height. If the 5th wave is about the same as the first wave, which it normally is, then we should get about 3636, pretty near to the 3650 target.

I will still play cautious for now.

Simple Chart Fortune Telling For STI (Nov 2014)

Haven't been doing fortune telling for STI for some time. This is a simple charting of STI, diagram taken from Yahoo Finance and edited.

Taking the 2007 peaks as reference, it seems like that will be a peak in 3rd quarter 2015 or 4th quarter 2017.

Adopting a long term view, I think 2017 would be a nice date to fit a 10 year cycle for markets to reach the peak.

Even if so, it meant a maximum upside gain of 15% over 3 years, or 5% a year. Risks probably not that worth taking anymore.

Personally continue adopting wait and see approach while learning how to deploy and move cash to build business systems.

Retirement -- Think of building business systems

This post is inspired by a friend's blog post, which you can find at http://bullythebear.blogspot.sg/2014/09/retirement-thoughts.html#.VAyDrFahgds

I guess it is easy for us to calculate. Let's say we manage to save $4k a month for the next 30 years, that would net us $1.44 mil.

Sounds good.

But that's 30 years later.


Then we read about news like Zopim being acquired for $37mil SGD, leaving their founders as multi-millionaires while below 30 years old.

What's the difference?

I have come to realise that starting our own businesses is among the best way to propel our wealth. But... the caveat is that lots of hard work is needed, much more than being just self-employed. Worst is, the hard work may not even pay off in the end. Of course, such probabilities could be improved with more knowledge and learning. And that is what I have been doing/studying the past 2 months.

The greatest realisation came after I chanced upon this quote which I like to share:

"Organize around business functions, not people. Build systems within each business function. Let systems run the business and people run the systems. People come and go but the systems remain constant" -- Michael Gerber