Perth For Retirement

  Is Perth a good place for retirement?

IMHO it is great at least six months of the year, autumn and winter time.

Temperature is 10-20°C which is VERY NOICE.

So it’s about whether I’ve got a nice place to stay while I’m here.

Buying a property incurs large sums and many say it is a waste of if I don’t rent it out and collect rent to pay for my taxes and other miscellaneous upkeep costs.

Renting might be an option.

Hmm.

Also I think the AUD is waaaaaaay undervalued against the SGD. Right now at 1 AUD buys only 0.83 SGD. So everything I spend here is at an almost 20% discount. Yummy!

Slowly becoming a fan of Australia as a potential home away from home.

My Kids Keep Me Honest About My Finances

 Having a lot of deeper conversations with my kids recently especially about them growing up, what they should study, what they should aspire to work as, what their life goals are.

Yet the way I see it, it is their curiosity towards how I have succeeded in my career and my own learnings and mistakes, that help keep myself honest about my finances.

I want to earn more money to live up to their expectations of how rich I am.

I want to invest well enough so I have something to leave for them, and gift to them.

I want to invest in enough stocks so I can talk to them about what they will ultimately inherit from me.

I want to earn so much money that I have the liberty to pay for their school fees, even when they qualify for overseas schooling.

I want to earn so much money that I can realistically walk them through large investments I make and they get to experience these processes first hand through me.

I want to earn so much money that I can gift them investment accounts that they can invest themselves and see the pitfalls themselves.

I want to lose less money so I do not feel the aches of losing money that could’ve gone towards my goals for them stated above.

I want to lose less money so I do not label myself a compulsive gambler.

These are the things that keep me honest with my finances and investments.

I really want to do and be better for them both.

A Taste Of Retirement

 In any case wanted to mention my taste of retirement.

This week is the school holidays so I took a whole week off.

We travelled to Ipoh which I’ll blog about later but came back on a Wednesday.

Then yesterday I took to exercising the whole morning to burn off that 2-3kg of awesome Ipoh food. By noon the kids had come home and I just nuahed around and napped from 3-5pm.

By evening we had a dinner and then I binged on Netflix this new Korean drama called Dr Slump.

Could this be my early taste of retirement?

My Saxo Colleague

Maria is a close colleague working with me.

She got featured in the Sunday Times a couple weeks ago.

Could be my turn soon but I’m a little hesitant.

Anyway this is a great read.

Another Mention In The Papers

 Was quoted again in the papers.

This time it was the Sunday Times.

SaxoWealthCare Launch Event

 We had our SaxoWealthCare launch event in the office.

I was one of the speakers. 

I remember how anxious I was, having to struggle with my gout recovery, and not feeling very prepared to host the event, nor talk through my presentation piece.

In the end it all came through pretty okay. Definitely not my best moment, but nothing so terrible that people really complained about (maybe they were just being nice!)

Here're some shots of me talking in front of a large audience.

Saxo Launches SaxoWealthCare

 Saxo Markets in Singapore recently launched the latest robo-advisory wealth management solution, called SaxoWealthCare.

This is touted as the 5th generation of robo-advisors, with state-of-the-art algorithmic automation in construction and rebalancing of your portfolios.

The main draws of SaxoWealthCare are as follows:

1) Entirely personalized and bespoke, based on your individual goals.

Users basically select their journey and input their regular or one-off contributions, and the portfolio engine does the rest of the work! Thereafter, you put in your individual goals, and the rebalancing algorithms then factor these goals in to rebalance accordingly so you attain your financial goals in the most realistic ways possible!

2) Active rebalancing

The use of the word Active cannot be said enough. SaxoWealthCare portfolios are rebalanced daily, while most others are done only half yearly or yearly. This means your asset allocation will always be in line with your risk tolerance.

3) Portfolio protection

For the more risk averse, an added option is the use of Portfolio Protector. This is an advanced balancing mechanism that constantly monitors your risk tolerance and rebalances between equity v fixed income to ensure you do not lose more than what you can tolerate.

Hence, compared to many other robo-advisors out there, SaxoWealthCare stands out as one of the most advanced of its kind. It is really one of the most complete robo-advisors for retirement planning.

Costs are very competitive, with no added fees for the ultra frequent rebalancing mechanism.

In this current poor stock market environment, now is a great chance to pursue a dollar cost averaging strategy using SaxoWealthCare, as you would be capturing the market prices low and, as you constantly make manageable regular contributions, will continue to capture the market performance through out this volatile period. By the time the market heads up again, you’d be in a great position to realize your goals.

Here are some recent public reviews of SaxoWealthCare:

MoneySmart

Seedly 

Financial Horse

  Been a long time since I last posted.

Just been too lazy.

We actually travelled in mid-March to Germany and Switzerland. Mainly Switzerland really, and boy what an enjoyable trip that was. With the kids in tow too!

Then after returning, I just became too lazy to blog, consumed by crazy workloads, and renewed retirement aspirations. Even on weekends I look through my phone pictures and promise myself I’d update the blog, and still that comes up to nought.

I’ll try to update those thoughts about my retirement plans hopefully soon!

Using this post to start a new category about Retirement!