And it's a wrap! - Wedding Celebration Done (and some other minor updates)

Hey all! It's been quite a while since my last update, hope everyone's doing well!

Wedding Celebration
I'm pleased to announce our traditional wedding and the wedding banquet is finally completed. Better yet, I am thankful we broke even. Being the main person to manage our finances, that was my biggest source of stress and worry for the past several months.

Our families on both side, as well as our groomsmen and bridesmaid, also did a huge part in making the event a successful one, and I am really thankful for that.

Wifey also did exceptionally marvelous in supporting to keep our expenditure down, with her bargain hunting on Taobao for the wedding clothing, traditional accessories, as well as engagement of Emcee, Singer/Musician, Photographer/Videographer and hiring of groom car.

To that end, we have decided to share their contacts  If you are planning to "ala carte" on freelancing services instead of packages, you can consider engaging their services.


Emcee/Musician-Singer - PUDGY

• Facebook Page
• Rate Card

Photographer/Videographer/Groom car

• Frank (HP: 88136030, Whatsapp/Wechat)

Makeup Artist

• Olivia (HP: 83637866, Wechat)

(No I'm not getting paid for this, haha - but these freelancers seriously deserve a shoutout as we were pleased with their services).

Outside of our wedding celebration, and aside from my investing journey, life's been busy but good.

• We had spent some days taking care of wifey's families and relatives while they flew here to attend the wedding and enjoying a vacation.
• It has been 6 months after joining my new company, and I have just been confirmed in my new job! So far, I am pleased with my experience here. There are plenty of things to learn, opportunities to develop, and colleagues are nice and down-to-earth. I hope to grow fast and be able to do outstanding stuff for my current organisation in my career.

What's next

Maybe Baby?
Generally, I don't wish to have one so soon. Having kids is going to be the ultimate commitment and I want to be adequately ready to provide for my family in addition to having the means to continue investing and adding position at a reasonable rate into the market.

But just how long more? Ideally, say, start trying in a couple of years to save up on an emergency fund as well as having a decent-sized capital to invest with.

And here's the dilemma - it is also is a race against time, being torn between wife's age (wifey prefers to have one sooner) and overall readiness - at minimal financial readiness. At the very least, I wish to save up 30K in emergency funds ("minimum savings target" for the remainder of this post), but I am having thoughts of extending the goal further to a larger amount - gonna say due to a couple of fellow bloggers' posts.

Mr & Mrs Budget - We Need To Save Up S$46,000 Before Having Our Baby! That’s A Bit Too Much.

Heartland Boy - My Cost Of Raising A Baby In Her First Year

I mean OMG, >$40K in the first year? We're so, so not ready.

Anyways, back to the savings goal. $30K is a more conservative sum aimed at surviving at least 6 months of expenditure (food, shelter, necessities and insurances) paid solely in cash. This sum do not take into account having access to CPF-OA to pay for HDB mortgage loan.

Assuming no unplanned expenditure, I should be able to expedite hitting the minimum savings target by end of year 2020.

Vacation/Honeymoon
Beyond our yearly trip back to wifey's hometown, we do have some vacation plans.

Wifey and I have plans to check out Japan at the start of 2021 - it's been on our bucket list for quite some time and we are well on our way to making it happen. Saving up for this trip will not affect saving for my minimum savings target.

But wait, where does that leave our honeymoon?

While we do want to have a honeymoon (in my mind, it will be a longer and more exotic trip to several countries in a continent), I imagine this then won't be anytime soon for again, monetary reasons, and we probably want to get this done before having a baby either.

Investing Front
Previously I have mentioned plans to write a dedicated post on Alita Resources (formerly Alliance Minerals / Tawana Resources) in here. While the planned contents have largely changed, and it has been past said several weeks, I have not forgotten about it.

In addition, I intend to write on or reflect on a investment recovery plan moving forward. With the wedding celebration out of the way, I finally will be able to have the energy to pen down my thoughts.

As with all failed investment, one has to write it off or cut losses (in my case, expecting to get nothing in return although we will have to see how things turns out), but behind every failures is a valuable lesson. I have plans for this to be a long detailed post and want to take it slow. Could even be likely it come after 4th Quarter Portfolio Update.

I suppose I should also be thankful for starting to add REITs at a time when I needed more diversification than only holding a significant position in Alita Resources.

Expect some new updates in the coming weeks. Wishing everyone a Merry Christmas and Happy New Year in advance!

Thanks for reading.

How In-Camp Trainings can help you financially

 Update 30-09-19 - Made some minor amendments for my misinformation in blue.

This one is dedicated to the boys!

A lot of guys who went through their 2 years in full-time National Service (NSF) have to go through In-Camp Training (ICT) for reservist after ORD - I am no exception.

I actually just finished an ICT this week, and it was a good opportunity to catch up with existing camp-mates or get to know new ones.

The boys come from all walks of life. Naturally, you will have some camp-mates who does investment, trading, or otherwise have very useful snippets of information to share with you to give you a different way to look at things. I overheard people discussing about blockchain or bitcoins while queuing to get essential items in the eMart. There are such opportunities even during one's NSF days, but I believe these are much rarer given the age demographics.

Okay, so how does ICT actually benefits you financially? We look at these through 2 areas - networking and incentives (IPPT, Marksmanship, NS Excellence Award).

Note: Context for investment in this article goes beyond equities - it can cover career related ones as well.

Networking
I get to talk to fellow camp-mates who invests or trades and hear out their point of views on market sentiment, their way of managing their investment, as well as their analyses on various investments.

Beyond that, I get to learn more of non-investment knowledge that can be applied to how one analyse businesses - and consequently, can be applied to analysis of the business of stocks.

#1 - Camp-mate involved in marketing field
I have a camp-mate who is in the marketing field and shared how smaller companies can be more aggressive than bigger companies, and is generally more agile to capture market shares in their line of business.

Basically, smaller companies need not pay so much heed to being politically correct with their marketing efforts, while bigger established companies has an image to uphold and cannot do likewise, needing to appeal to social justice warriors.

He also went on to link the effect of marketing onto the business and share signs of how to tell if, for example, a fast food restaurant is doing well in a mall.

From time to time, you may notice how popular fast food restaurants are doing very well and consistently packed suddenly undergo renovation. When they are done, they may feature more seating. Conversely, if the fast-food business is not doing well enough, they probably do not undergo renovation for a looooong time. Or worse, go poof.

This could probably relate to analysing how well a mall that is under a retail REIT is doing, given that retail REITs are essentially landlords of shopping malls under their brand.

#2 - Engineer Camp-mate
I also have another camp-mate who is an engineer and we shared engineering knowledge with each other. Besides that, he has a goal to develop intellectual properties (IP) and applying for a patent in the future. Patents are potentially another source of income via royalties. He shared the process and the cost of applying for a patent.

For engineers, engineering knowledge is an asset that is their lifeblood and is one that needs to continually be accumulated. Such moments could potentially give you opportunities to do a joint venture or work on a patent and work on something groundbreaking or cutting edge as a team.

Update - My bad - this is misinformation on my end. Patents are for defending your IP.

Beyond
Beyond all that, who knows, maybe an employment opportunity via a camp-mate's recommendation may be onto you (or vice-versa, an opportunity to do good, giving your peers an employment opportunity at your company)?

Well, so on as you are on good terms with them and do not sabo your camp-mates lah.



IPPT
If you are taking your IPPT during ICT (although this is applicable to non-ICT IPPT as well), that is an opportunity to get incentives for keeping yourself IPPT-ready, and these can be used to offset your expenses or pump into your investments.

Sit up tight, let's run some numbers and then pump them into a quick calculation (forgive the puns - I had to):

I'll go with the following assumptions:

• ORD at age 22
• Start first ICT at age 23
• Consistently clear ICT annually.
• Can continue to maintain your gold in IPPT (that's $500 each) during your 10 years (7 high-keys / 3 low-keys) and then MR at age 33.
• Reinvests annually with consistent annual returns of 6% - before compounding.

(1) The principal sum adds up to $5000
(2) When you MR, you would have $6691 - That's a total returns of almost 34%.
(3) Thereafter, for the next 12 years, you continue to reinvest consistently and get consistent annual returns of 6% before compounding, be it reinvesting dividends, getting scrips or recycling your funds, your returns after MR will be approximately doubled - your investment will be worth $13460 (that's +169% total returns from the initial sum of $5000).

Note - of course investment is not that straightforward and your returns is subject to what you invest in and prevailing market conditions. But I need to express it with a simplified example mah.

Marksmanship
At times, you may need to do live firing and there are live firing activities which are potentially opportunities to get a little bit of cash. Again, these can be used to offset expenses or pump into investments.

NS Excellence Award
If you are amongst the top performer in your unit, you can get credits which can redeem freebies and again, these can potentially offset your expenses. At worst, these can give you free treats. These probably may not mean much when you are in your early 20s.

But when you are married and have a family? Every cent matters for a run-of-the-mill working-class guy or his family. Probably?

TL;DR - ICT can be a fantastic opportunity to benefit you financially directly or indirectly, via incentives or networking, be it in career, opportunities to do joint venture, investment or trading. If you are going for ICT, may as well make the most of it, you know?

Status Quo Bias in investing?

Recently I had done some reflections about my investing journey, which you can find under the Reflections tab on my blog. It prompted me to think about the influence of Status Quo bias in our investing journey.

First of all, what is Status Quo Bias?

From Wikipedia,

Status quo bias is an emotional bias; a preference for the current state of affairs. The current baseline (or status quo) is taken as a reference point, and any change from that baseline is perceived as a loss. Status quo bias should be distinguished from a rational preference for the status quo ante, as when the current state of affairs is objectively superior to the available alternatives, or when imperfect information is a significant problem. A large body of evidence, however, shows that status quo bias frequently affects human decision-making

So how could Status Quo Bias limit or influence your returns?

- Continuing to hold a stock you are vested in when you have an option to cash out and reinvest the returns elsewhere.
- Continuing with a similar strategy you are more familiar with in scenarios when you are certain you can make more money investing into other areas
- Holding onto loss-making investments instead of cutting loss.

Status Quo in my investment journey thus far

I feel I myself am guilty of this to some extent. One example would be demonstrated here, where I had opportunity to sell Capitamall Trust at a high and reinvest but gave it a miss. I felt comfortable holding onto it for continued distribution. 

Having said that, there are moments where it could be a better option to maintain status quo. For example, I continued to hold onto Alliance Minerals when it dropped to a low of 0.21. A part of that has got to do with my entry price, with the remainder being my confidence that the future is bright for the company in spite of the ex-CEO saga for various reasons (bright outlook for Lithium, strong management on Tawana's end, secured dealings with Burwill).

A successful trader with similar outlook as I do towards Alliance Minerals may be able to maximise his gains by exiting on a high and re-entry at the low, but alas I have yet to develop the confidence, competency and consistency to do this, so the next best option in my opinion is to hold. :P

So what's the difference between the two scenario painted above?

That's right, negative and positive practice of status quo respectively, with the positive practice being a more rational decision. 

In closing,
- It's perfectly normal to have status quo bias, but overcoming status quo bias to make better decisions is one way improve your returns in investing and to develop yourself as a successful investor.
- Maintaining the status quo should be validated by solid reasoning. It is, to some extent, also part of a discipline to be more logical and to further isolate emotions in investing.

The Process of Marriage and applying for Long-Term Visit Pass for my wife (non-citizen spouse)

My wife has finally gotten her Long-Term Visit Pass (LTVP)! :) I feel so happy for ourselves that this day has finally come.

My motivation for writing this article is to aid other couples who experiences similar cases to us - we hope this information will help you, and if there is any way we can further improve the information given in this post, please let us know, and well wishes to the other similar couples out there! :)



The process is broken down into the following stages:
1) Permission to Marry*
2) Pre-Marriage Assessment for LTVP*
3) Marriage
4) Formal Application of LTVP after marriage
5) Appointment 

* Permission to Marry and Pre-Marriage Assessment for LTVP can be done concurrently,

Permission To Marry
Due to her being a Work Pass holder, we had to request from Controller of Work Passes (Ministry of Manpower) permission to marry.

As given on MOM website (link):

If you are a current or former Work Permit holder who wishes to marry a Singapore citizen or permanent resident (PR), you must seek approval from MOM.

However, you do not have to apply for approval if you:

• Do not hold a Work Permit (e.g. you are an S Pass or Employment Pass holder).
• Are a former Work Permit holder whose last held work pass was upgraded to Employment Pass or S Pass.
• Are a former Work Permit holder who is now a Singapore citizen or Singapore PR.

Download the form here and follow the instructions given.

We received our letter of approval after 3 weeks.

Pre-marriage Assessment of LVTP
It was advised to us that doing the pre-approval would help us expedite our waiting period. With this done, the approval of LTVP will be up to 6 weeks. If application for LTVP was done without completing this step, the approval will take up to 6 months instead. Successful application will result in a Letter of LTVP Eligibility (LLE) given. Link to the portal here.


It took 3 weeks overall before the letter was sent to us. Do note that this letter is valid for 1 year.

Marriage
We then proceeded to plan and make arrangements for our marriage after permission to marry was granted.

This is broken down into these steps (link here for steps in ROM website):
- Deciding on our solemnisation date/time/venue*
- Reaching and getting a licensed solemniser (If you are planning to have your solemnisation outside ROM, we recommend Mr Pua, HP: 9634 4085).
- File for Notice of Marriage (to be done no later than 21 days in advance. Can be up to 3 months in advance)*
- Document Verification a few days before our marriage
- Solemnisation

* If you plan to have your solemnisation at ROM, please note it can only be done on weekdays during their opening hours, and the slots tend to be fully booked for up to 2 months!

We kept the event simple and gave our solemniser a $138 ang pow for his service.

Formal Application of LTVP
On the evening of the day we got married, I immediately get to work in applying for the LTVP (link to the e-application portal here). It prompted us to enter the reference no. for our approved Pre-marriage Assessment for Long-Term Visit Pass.

You will find most of the details are furnished from the Pre-marriage Assessment (if you had done it), with details that needs to be updated such as:
- Marriage Status (obviously, hahaha)
- Giving reasons if staying apart
- Any other changes

We were granted her In Principle Approval (IPA) in 2 weeks after applying - much faster than we anticipated. A payment of $90 was done for this process. We then made an e-appointment with ICA and prepared our documents we will need on the day itself (see next section for documents required - this can also be found in your IPA document).

On the day of Appointment... 
We headed to Level 4 of ICA Building and scanned the Approval Letter to get ourselves in queue.

The process required us to visit three counters:
- One for submitting in the required documents
- One for verification of the details and scanning thumbprint
- And finally, one for pass collection

During verification of the details, we had some slight complications with us staying apart, which we had to explain to the staff our circumstances (inconvenience due to lack of my own room at home and her staying at her aunt's place. We then mitigated by mentioning we are in the process of getting our own home.) Thankfully I had my Option-to-Purchase (OTP) with me and I gave her my photocopied document as proof. This made the process smoother.

We had to write a hand-written letter addressed to the ICA officer explaining our circumstances, endorsed with both our name, signature and IC.

After handing in the letter, we waited about a 30 minutes before we collected her new IC and temporary Letter of Consent and then happily make our way home.

Necessary documents to prepare for our case:

General
- LTVP Approval Letter
- Signed copy of Form 14(a)
- Signed copy of Form 14(b)

Applicant
- Work Pass (original and photocopy)
- Passport (Original and Photocopy)
- Letter Of Employment (Original, but bring photocopy just in case) (valid only within 1 month from date of letter)
- Last 6 months Payslip (original and photocopy)
- Medical Report
- Passport Photo taken within the last 3 months

Sponsor (in this case, myself)
- NRIC (original and photocopy)
- Letter Of Employment (Original, but bring photocopy just in case) (valid only within 1 month from date of letter)
- Last 6 months Payslip (original and photocopy)
- Last 12 months CPF Contribution

Additional documents that is useful to have:
- Evidences that you are purchasing a home for your spouse and yourself (In this case, I used my OTP form)
- Where any document we have mentioned only original copy, it will be safer to have a photocopy as well. We did this but was a bit surprised by them taking our original Letter of Employment.

Overall, the whole process took us a total of 4.5 months, but the process can be expedited further for marriage arrangement (the marriage process took 2.5 months).

Other helpful things to note:
- There are plenty of photocopy shops 5 minutes away from the ICA building. If you had forgotten to make any photocopies, don't panic and visit these shop(s). It costs 20 cents a copy.
- Keeping the documents in a ring file with file pockets also helps to keep your documents organised.
- It's said that the age gap of the couple also matters (the closer it is, the faster it will be).

Little advices for preparation of job-hunting

Note: Some parts of this post may apply specifically to the context of Singapore.
Note 2: Noting that this post is particularly popular, I have updated this post as at 15 Feb 2018 ( changes in blue).

So recently, I had the opportunity to look to new employment. Having gone through the job application and interview process, I learnt how some companies practices having some interesting requirements to be prepared for job application and interview... and in the aftermath, my thought were, "People might wanna know these when they are job-hunting."

Here goes:

• Always prepare a few complete sets of your photocopied documents, even if you are not actively job-hunting, then stash it somewhere. Of course, take good care of and don't lose your originals either:
• Your identity card (front and back)
• Your education certificates and transcripts
• Other professional certifications
•  Your testimonials
• Here's the interesting part: some companies do actually request for your last drawn salary payslip and your bonus payslip. I have learnt my lesson with this. Keep your payslips! You never know when you will need it (I'm glad I did just that).
• Resumes should always be tailored to the job requirement as much as possible.
• As a fresh graduate, consider making it concise enough to fit on a single page, unless there are really some significant achievements you want to put in.
• Get yourself a LinkedIn! Not only because companies does job advertising there, but it is common for headhunting to be done there. Even if not, you should furnish your professional profile in there, do some networking, and you can enrich yourself with the wealth of knowledge shared by other professionals! Plenty to be gained there.
• Have an elevator speech prepared - this is how you will introduce yourself in 60 seconds.
• Rehearse and anticipate possible questions (I imagine this will be particularly challenging as a fresh graduate, as you may not be able to give targeted questions and answers throughout the interview)
• Networking is key to success as a professional. Get yourself acquainted with friends, schoolmates, colleagues. Not only does this expands your opportunity to make career moves or start a career, the knowledge sharing adds values as you enrich yourself and it builds up your interaction skills.
• Have confidence in yourself! Everyone has something they are good at!

Any other tips? Please do share here as well!