Financial advice for the ‘have nots’

I over heard this young financial advisor offering his expert advice to a few have nots on how to manage their finances. He earnestly told them that they must learn financial planning to manage their income and expenditure. If they don’t do financial planning, they would always be in financial difficulties. And the govt cannot help by giving them handouts.  Giving them a few hundred dollars to tie things over is futile, not effective. It is all about financial planning.

The few have nots listened intently, kept nodding their heads to the good advice. Before they left, they thanked the finance advisor profusely for his wisdom.

After they have left, the couple of friends of the financial advisor turned to him and asked him why he wasted to much time explaining to the have nots about financial planning. The financial advisor smiled. Then he spoke again. I divided my clients into three categories. The first category was those who earned millions. For this group, no need to tell them anything about financial planning. They had all the money they needed, and more. Got financial planning or not, never mind. They could spent and spent, and lost and lost, but still got plenty of money left to enjoy life. Talking to them about financial planning was a joke.  But he said that he still needed to give them some advices to earn his keep.

The second group was those that had some money and needed to manage them wisely or they would lose them and money became not enough. This group came from the middle income. To this group, financial planning was important and made a big difference to their finances.

The third group was the have nots. To this group, financial planning was a waste of time. How to make financial planning when eat also not enough, everyday trying to make ends meet? Telling them about financial planning is ‘seow’. They have no money to plan. Money in money out the next moment and still not enough. What they really need is a job that paid well. What they need was money, even handouts, charity.

His friends agreed. But why did you talk to the few have nots about financial planning? The financial advisor smiled. ‘What do you expect me to tell them?’ I got no money to give them, so it is best to con them about financial planning and they would think that it was their own stupidity, dunno how to plan, that was why they got not enough money. He burst into laughter. It was so easy to con the have nots and put the blame on themselves for their poverty. ‘Financial planning for the have nots? You must be joking.’

What a talented young man.

The Finance Industry – Who are the real criminals?

Big international banks have been caught for all the things that they were not allowed to do, money laundering, cheating on their clients, selling toxic products, using computers and algorithms to cheat traders, creating fictitious derivatives that are worthless to sell, like printing money, even selling the gold in Fort Knox and the vaults of some countries even have their national gold bullions emptied.

Some banks have been fined for cheating, violation and criminal offences. Some traders have been caught and found guilty. For the banks and traders cheating on the system for profit, they knew that their acts were criminal. They knew that when caught, they would pay the price for the infringements. Oops, I have to correct this statement. The CEOs of the banks would not be made to answer, would not be put behind bars. There have a special immunity from financial crimes.

It is fair game out there for traders to try to outsmart or cheat the system. Every profession you will have people doing that, to take advantage of the system, to find loopholes, to use privilege information, to profit from them, nothing new and nothing to crow about. But they know there are cheating and can be caught. They are not above the law.

What is bad, is the ultimate crime when regulators and govt who are supposed to be regulating and approving financial system to condone or allow and approve unfair practices or systems to operate legally. How can govt and regulators knowing that a practice or system is wrong, unfair, cheat on the innocents and allowed it to be part of the system? This is the ultimate crime, when the real criminals are the govt and the regulators. And the same govt and regulators would go around talking about ethics, honesty, fair practices and not doing anything that is criminal. Just look at the financial system in the USA and the West and you will get what I mean. It is simply operated by crooks with govt and regulators backing.

Singapore is an exception. Trust me. I just cannot find any faults or flaws in our system. If you don’t trust me, you must trust the priests and monks and the highly moral and upright super talents in charge.

Welcome to the 21^st Century of hypocrisy at the highest level when the crooks and criminals are in charge.

SGX versus Remisiers – Who is the referee?

The Stock Market is collapsing, the industry is dying, remisiers are resigning and leaving, business has fallen to an intolerable level that some remisiers are earning less than a cleaner. On the other corner, the Stork Market is doing well, and improving, getting betterer, more trades, more volumes, more participants, more products, in the pink of health. Many measures and improvements have been introduced by the SGX and everything is fine.
 
Obviously one is lying through the skin of his teeth. Which one? Who is to judge and call the bluff? The facts cannot lie and it does not need a rocket scientist to know the truth. But no one is saying anything, or have they said and concluded that everything is fine?
 
This is like two guys inside a lift. One farted, and both got into a heated argument on who farted. Sure, between the two of them they jolly well knew who farted. But the outsiders looking from the outside would not know who the liar was. But if one has a vested interested in the argument, one could side with the side that favours him. A neutral party would or could easily prove who the farter was by smelling their pants.
Guess the verdict? Would the real farter stand up or be asked to own up? Is it so difficult to know the answer? Would the referee still be thinking, thinking hard or would he be assuming that everything is fine? No thinking needed?
 
Maybe it is better to set up a committee to look into it, a board of inquiry, ya?

Touch your heart

Many of you out there are professing that you are all kindness, wanting to look after the less fortunate. I ask you one simple question, ‘Are you real?’
 
Touch your heart and ask yourself, are you cheating on the oldies, the senior citizens, of their money, their life savings? If you are, you know for sure what you are doing, please repent. You still have time to repent before the curtain falls. Do not let your evil ways catch up with you and regret when it is too late.
 
Do not cheat on the oldies. Do not cheat their life savings under the pretence of being kind and helping them.
 
You cannot run away from your evil karma. Trust me.

Phillip Ang – Stand up against PAP’s flawed housing policy

Phillip Ang wrote an article calling for the singles, divorcees and single parents to stand up against the PAP’s flawed housing policies in the TRE. The small issue that I would disagree with Phillip Ang is that Sinkies have this daft habit of being swayed by shifting goal posts. Today someone sells them something for $10, tomorrow the same thing for $100, and the day after for $1,000, the Sinkies will then think $1,000 is acceptable and used it as the new reference point.
 
The good PAP of the past took the road to the dark side when they changed the housing policy from providing cheap and affordable housing for the people, to give the people a roof over their head, a stake in the country, to paying a ransom for a leased flat that in all counts is owned by the govt. Several unfavourable policies followed suit when the mission was changed.
 
From affordable housing to market priced housing, to asset enhancement, to not building enough to meet the needs of the people. And now everyone is paying for a hot potato that they believed would only go up in price when the truth is that it would end up worthless at the end of the lease.
 
And they still did not know why all their life savings are gone? Do I really have to put down the numbers, 1,2 and 3 to show them that all their money that should be sitting in their CPF accounts for retirement has been transferred out because of this change in housing policy?
 
It is not only the singles, divorcess and the single mothers that should be standing up to this flawed housing policy. Everyone should be standing up to it, for paying for something at so called market prices that made them feel rich when it is just an illusion, a transient thing, with a zero bottom line and the depletion of their life savings.
 
Can see this or not?