“We are all screwed for 2017!” says a friend of mine during our Christmas gathering as we were discussing what everyone thinks about the coming year. His probably not the only one, talk to any economist or hedge fund managers and ask what they think of 2017, you will get mixed forecast. Truth be told, no one really knows what the future holds. As regular women (and men), we can only take historical data to give us a sense of how the economy will be. While most sees it a dark picture, I personally sees it as an opportunity. If it crashes...great! Since I am already practicing dollar averaging it just means I get to buy more shares with the same amount of money. If the market goes up, even better! I get the chance to rebalance my portfolio either by selling of the portion that is doing well and reinvesting them to the portfolio that is weaker. I know the above can sound a little technical, I will break it down in my posts to come. Before I address the above, I feel it is important my readers get something right in the New Year – Mindset Let’s do a simple check list, are you:
Super-Awesome-Simple-Fundamentals 1 - Pay yourself first Every month your pay cheque comes in and you pay your bills, mortgage, give allowances to your parents (you get the idea) then finally you use what is left over for your own expenses. Hopefully by the end of the month you have leftovers in the bank to buy yourself that extra something. Let’s swap this around and rewire this concept. THE FIRST PERSON YOU PAY IS YOURSELF. Commit a percentage of your salary from 1st January 2017 towards to your investment chest, 5-10% will be a good start if you feel money is tight at this moment. The simplest way is to set up a Giro account and it auto transfer that 5-10% into a separate account. I started doing this when I made my first job and bit by bit it become 50% (again... I am a little crazy; most people are around the 20-30% range eventually). This was also how after 5 years I accumulated small sum money to start my business and my investment portfolio. This concept came when I started reading ‘Think and Grow Rich’ by Napoleon Hills. I manage to find a free online source for this book (click on the link above) and do encourage you to read this as a start, many successful millionaires swears by this book Super-Awesome-Simple-Fundamentals 2 – Save your wallet, Save the environment Are you one of those that buys 1 cup of Starbucks before going to your office? Or maybe one of the people that buys bottled water because carrying your own bottle is ‘too heavy’ or it is too much of a hassle? Time to kick that habit and here is why: Assuming you buy Starbucks everyday you are working, that’s 260 weekdays. 260 weekdays X $4.90 (Grande Latte) = $1274.00 Or, if you buys 4 X 250ml of bottled drinks daily. 260 weekdays X (4 X $1) = $1040.00 That is alone can take you for a long weekend trip to Thailand or if you are a New Women and invest this amount with 10% interest annually, in 20 years time it will compound to $8570.83 – this is almost 7 times the amount! So the next time you walk into that provision shop or Starbucks, think about how far that dollar can stretch if you made a wiser choice. Let’s just say I started bringing my own water bottle the day I discovered this simple fundamental. Apart from that you might just be doing your part to save the environment, check out a recent article by Channel News Asia on our $134 million bottle water addiction (article link). The amount of pollution from plastic bottles in our world is unprecedented; as New Women, let’s do our part to take care of our planet and our wallets along the way – it’s a straight up win-win situation. There are many other ways to cut back; bringing bottle water or swap your Starbucks for a substitute is the simplest way to get started. The idea is to cut down in small things you are spending on without you noticing. Super-Awesome-Simple- Fundamentals 3 – Track you expenses I briefly mentioned this in our previous post about tracking your expenses. This is important as the report tells you where your money if going to and where you can increase or decrease your spending. The chart below is a report by Dollar and Sense; it highlights the average income spending of a Singapore house hold (the average household size is 3.3 people per household) That is about $1,431.51 a person; think about where you can save if this is your household/ individual spending.
Here it is! Start 2017 with 3 good habits:
0 Comments
|
Author"Earn more, spend less, invest the difference." Archives
February 2017
Categories |