A new year, a new free ebook! - Investing your first 20k!

I am pretty glad that the Singapore finance blogger community have came up with an ebook on investing your first 20k, which is in the context of Singapore. See link here. This is a compilation of words of wisdom in investing your first 20k.

• Jared, SingaporeManOfLeisure.blogspot.com
• Kyith, InvestmentMoats.com
• Lionel, CheerfulEgg.com
• Kevin, TurtleInvestor.net
• La Papillon, BullyTheBear.blogspot.com
• SGYI, SGYoungInvestment.blogspot.com
• Richard, InvestOpenly.com
• Budget Babe, SGBudgetBabe.blogspot.com
• 15HWW, my15HourWorkWeek.com
• Brian, ForeverFinancialFreedom.blogspot.com
• Derek, TheFinance.sg
• Christopher, TreeOfProsperity.blogspot.com
• Giraffe, GiraffeValue.com

I hope that you would enjoy this book! I know that I did :)

Happy new year 2016!

As we approach the new year 2016, here is wishing everyone a very happy new year! I wish you happiness, good health and be surrounded with positive people all the time! Here is my personal retrospective for the year 2015. It has been a rather good year for me (except on the BGR part.). 

• Spent a full year working in Melbourne. I was in a pretty good project in the beginning of the year. it was mentally taxing but I learnt quite a lot from my peers in the project. They are pretty good technical people! I have also made a few good friends along the way.

• Enjoyed a company trip to Queensland - Bryon Bay. The sun was pretty hot but the activities were pretty fun. We did whale watching, had a company training about creativity and had loads of beer and more beer!

• On the fitness front, I started to run the NIKE 10 km run every week. Its a good fitness training for me, although I am always lagging behind. But I find that it has been a rather good break for me after work.

For 2016: 

• To able to continue with my regular 10 km runs every week. I don't have to be number one but I want to be able to run 10km with good ease. 

• To secure my new rental lease next year. it expires in Jul next year. I hope to be able to renew it as soon as possible so that I can make use of my rental income as much as possible to clear up my mortgage repayments.

What are your objectives for 2016?

Doing all the things.

It has been a long while since I did a post. I decided to setup a a living document after reading what I have seen on http://livingafi.com/doing-all-the-things/. His list is pretty cool. This is my version. I would probably add onto it along the course of my life. I hope to be able to do at least some if not all of the things that I have thought of.

The Thing	Text
Travel	Go to Sydney, New Zealand, Hongkong, USA, Canada, France, Bendigo Catch up with friends who migrated there.
Go to unique places	Iceland, Russia, Sweden, Maldives
Do scary stuff	Paragliding, bungee jump, swing from tree to tree. Skydiving, White water rafting (Done these when i was in Cairns. Glad that I did them)
Complete full marathon	Tried 0.5 marathon but not full yet. Do biathlon and triathlon. (Scary! Can my body take it?)
Media	Watch a whole bunch of shows and movies The walking dead, leverage(does it have season 3), supernatural(new season?), marvel new tv series?, spectre, cantonese drama series?
Media: full anime series	Full metal alchemist
Media	Catch movies which have been nominated for Best Picture
Donate Blood	Squeamish for me. I did this once during army but i should do it regularly for charity
Exercise	Do up hk trails and dandenong 1000 steps
Writing	Want to publish my first kindle book. Not sure how it works yet though
Provide care to parents when needed	Falls under charity and being good son.
Guitar	Get a new guitar and learn new songs to play on guitar. Need to expand list other than churchie related songs. Work on finger-plugging like a pro.
Learn Bass Guitar	Looks pretty easy compared to normal guitar
Write some actual songs	I used to have some nice tunes which suddenly come to me at odd times. Need to hinge on those and make something out of it.
Media: video games	No end to this list of games which keep coming out. Infinity, wow, halo 5, zelda, shovel knight and some Wii2 games. I pretty much enjoyed playing nintendo wii now and then. Its pretty interactive in nature
Media: books	Want to finish up anne rice series which is pretty hard to find. Time to search in libraries to fish them out.
Cooking	Make good pasta, beef soup, yangchow fried rice, pho, fries, good steak. The list goes on. However, I am still not cooking for lunch cos I prefer hot food. I am cooking for dinner at the moment but I need to expand on more dishes.
Tutor	Give good tuition to students who need help.
Lecturer	Part time lecturer at poly or uni
Video game dev	Make my own video game. Maybe my version of flappy bird or something funky
Gardening	Grow my own mint leaves? I tried to grow cactus (which is pretty easy imho and i failed.)
Assorted diy	Make my own stuff to fix residences and property. Can help to keep costs down
Photography	Capture super photos. Can post them on some photohub to earn something out of it.
Get out of house days	Visit boxhill, bendigo, spend a day at the library that i have never been. Go to those old book stores.
Blog	Need to get my arse up to starting up that food blog
Dance	Want to see if i can dance for shit. I cant really seem to get my hands to do when i want it to do. Much less try to get my legs to do what i want it to do too.
Travel: Japan	Still scared of the radiation but i really should check japan out
Travel: Korea	Kimchi land! My mother has been to korea and i havent been. I wanna go and eat kimchi there!
Learning: coursera	Whole bunch of courses to do at coursera. Would be good to start up some new courses and clear up my PMP certification requirements
Travel:	Clear the 7 wonders of the world. Only saw the pyramids and great wall but i never checked out the others
Person: piggyback mum	Eat new stuff together and reminisce good times like the curry laksa and turtle soup
Useless but awesome skills	Juggling, unicycling, balloon animals, magic tricks
More cooking	Baking a cake. Be a barista. Make laksa. Make lasagna

Happy cny everyone!

This post is a day late. But better late then never!

Here is wishing everyone a very prosperous goat year and good health. All the best! :)

The real measure of your wealth.

Even as we continue to build up our assets and financial foundations, we must always remember the following quote which i came across at tiny buddha.

The real measure of your wealth is how much you’d be worth if you lost all your money.” ~Unknown

You can read more about the article here.

Our life's worth must not only just be our net worth. What do you think?

Happy new year 2015

All the best folks for the new year 2015. Many finance bloggers have listed their resolutions and "systems" for the new year and I wish you all the best in your endeavours!

Huat ah!

Build your own utopia!

I don't know about you but I have been pondering about life pretty a lot these days. I think life is all about creating your own utopia.

If you feel that life is about creating multiple streams of income. Thats your utopia. If its about getting married to your loved one and having lots of children, thats your utopia. If its about rising the corporate ladder, thats your utopia.

We humans seem to always need a certain target to attain or achieve and when we have achieved that, sometimes we just need another target to hit and to attain.

Maybe i am just thinking too much. Anyway, merry xmas to all of you and wishing you all happy holidays and may your utopia come true!