Valentine’s day is just around the corner. While seeking for the perfect gift, keep in mind that you must also be financial-savvy. You may be tempted to go over your budget since you want to make your lover feel special. But, your gifts need not to be expensive to make your loved ones smile! Here are 5 Sweet Valentine’s Day Gift Ideas Under S$50.
To remind your partner of how much you love him or her, hang this rough sign saying: “I LOVE US”. This rough wood sign is available in Black color with cream wiring. How sweet is it to declare your love with this simple statement?
Wouldn’t it be nice to give your sweetie a bag that speaks your mind? This Black tote bag exclaims: ”Anyone can be cool, but awesome takes practice”. This 100% canvas tote bag that measures 14 x 14 inches is not only perfect for the beach but also for every day use.
Nothing beats a custom-made gift such as a Personalized Name or Word Necklace from MyLittleBow shop. You may use his or her nickname, your secret code or your term of endearment. It will make your girlfriend, boyfriend or best friend feel that you have really thought of them. Orders take about 3 weeks to be ready, so be sure to place your order early!
4. FOR YOUR FOODIE BUDDY
Image Credits: saveur.sg
They say that a quickest way to a man’s heart is through his stomach. If you desire to impress your loved one without breaking the bank then check out the 3 Delicious Valentine’s Day Dining Places in Singapore That Are Under S$50. Tickle your taste buds with cuisines from France, Singapore, and Mexico.
Want to take on an adventure that is both physically and mentally rewarding for you and your partner? Then try the North Face Wall Climbing in Sentosa. Worry not about falling because the maximum weight the harness can hold is 120 kg. To keep your safety into an optimal level, you are encouraged to cover your shoulders, waist and thighs to minimize any discomfort from the harness. Covered shoes are also required.
For questions like “What to buy?” requires fundamental analysis. But when someone asks, “When to buy?” This is when technical analysis comes into play. Technical analysis is the other approach of investing. When you talk about technical analysis, you’re looking at things like charts, chart patterns, technical indicators, etc. It gives you a visual information about how the stock price moves for the minute, the hour, the day, week and even month! This information is useful because it can give you a better sense of how the stock is doing right at the moment. Fundamental analysts usually have to deal with information that isn’t updated because company reports would only come out quarterly, or even annually! Many things happen in between the quarters but you could possibly be trading based on the previous quarter’s results which may no longer be relevant.
Pure technical analysts are not interested in the research of a company’s fundamentals because the way a stock price moves would have indicated how much everyone thinks the stock is generally worth. When an undervalued stock moves because it was uncovered by a fundamental analyst, it wouldn’t be missed by technical analyst who watch price-volume action of a share price. As long as a stock moves, the technical analysts will be there watching it as well! Price movements can give a technical analyst a lot of information such as breakouts, psychology of the market players, trend, reversal patterns, etc. These days, there are a lot of people relying on charts when buying a stock. You would only be putting yourself in a disadvantaged position if you choose not to avail yourself to the same information they are receiving. With more and more speculators in the market, fundamentals might be ignored for short moments and only technical analysis can help you for the moment to be profitable.
Here’s an example:
A pure fundamental analyst would not know where the support or the resistance is. He would know what the company should be valued at but he may not know when is the best time to enter. For example, NOL is down-trending from $2.30. A fundamental analyst values it at $1.50 based on Price-Book ratio, P/E ratio, or other metrics available to him. When NOL sells down to $1.50, the fundamental analyst would make the purchase because he thinks that is what it is worth. However, from a technical analyst point of view, he would wait to see if $1.50 is supported or not. If the price is not supported, he waits for the share price to continue falling and test the next support level at $1. When share price eventually gets to $1 and shows that it is supported with a high volume, the technical analyst buys it.
At the end of the day, both analysts got NOL, but the technical analyst got a better price because he knows that from past price movements that $1 is a strong psychological support and buys it at a support instead of simply buying it because he thinks that is what it is worth. Past price actions can give you a hint about the future price movement because of many reasons, largely psychological support and resistance levels. The fact is that many people are relying on such information, and if you aren’t, you will lose out and the market will not make sense to you. Having a visual image of how the stock market is going will be very much easier for you to find support levels such as in the case above.
Of course, this is not to say that technical analysis is 100% accurate and gives you pin-point accuracy. What it can provide you is more information that opens up your eyes to more opportunities for buying entries. There is always a time an investor will face where he says “I’m waiting for the right time to enter”. It could be a fundamentally sound company but simply trading too expensively and this is when technical analysis will tell you when the right time is. Or rather, give you a hint of when the right time is. Of course, hindsight is 20/20 and the chart above could have gone in a totally different direction and crashed through $1 rather than stay supported on 2 more counts on Nov 2011 and May 2012. I used an old chart for the purpose of effectively sending my point across rather than try to teach based on current prices where even I don’t know where the future is. No one can predict how the future price will move, they can only get a vague idea of it. By effectively utilising both fundamental and technical analysis, you would put yourself in a profitable position where the odds of a profitable trade is higher.
Important Disclaimer
The above chart is for teaching purposes only and is not a recommendation to buy/sell.
Earlier this month, Singaporeans were taken aback when we were told by the Public Transport Council (PTC) that there will be a fare hike of 2.8 per cent in April 2015. It was no surprise that it was met with public outcry when the fare adjustment did not tally with the price of crude oil which has plummeted from $110 a barrel to $45 a barrel. Gas price has in fact fallen for a record of 17 consecutive weeks as at the time of writing.
The reason that there was a increase in fare prices despite falling oil prices was because of a remaining 3.4 per cent that was rolled over from last year fare’s adjustment. Last year, fare should increase by 6.6 per cent but because implementing the full fare hike may significantly increases the expenses of an average household, the fare only went up 3.2 per cent. This year fare adjustment has in fact went down by 0.6 per cent due to lower energy cost which explained why overall there was still a 2.8 per cent increase.
The question that we may be asking is whether the increase is justifiable after taking into account various factors such as wage level, inflation rate and energy cost – the metrics used in the fare formula.
We shall look at some of the reasons that Singaporeans has voiced out.
Service level has not seen significant improvements
While it is understandable that trains, tracks and buses have their usual wear and tear, service level has not seen significant improvements since 2011 where SMRT had received two fines of $1 million for the massive disruptions in the month of December. SMRT was fined $200,000 for a 40-minute disruption in January and $100,000 for a 50-minute disruption in May last year. In 2013, SMRT was also fined $400,000 for safety breaches in October.
The most recent delay happened two days ago:
[NSL]: Estimate 20 mins additional travelling time from #Sembawang to #YioChuKang towards MarinaBay due to track fault.
LTA and the PTOs have to restore public confidence before even talking about a fare increase – MP Liang Eng Hwa speaking in Parliament in 2013
The benefits of privatisation has not been materialised
It was believed that privatization would lead to improve efficiency and thus reduce costs. With a profit motive, transport operators will aim to innovate and be efficient in their operations. This will in turn lead to cost reduction and savings can then be passed on to the commuters.
Unfortunately this has not been the case in Singapore when the duopolistic nature of our transport system has not made our two PTOs competitive. With no overlapping of routes and a industry with a high barrier of entry, PTOs see no need to compete with each others for profits and market share. Moreover, Singaporeans also depends heavily on MRT and buses for commuting and one would fail to see how this will lead to innovation from our PTOs.
For bus services, it is clear that being privately managed does not equate to a more efficient outcome as government intervention is needed to expand the number of buses and thus improving connectivity and better service level. This is evident when the government has implemented a $1.1 billion Bus Service Enhancement Programme (BSEP) in 2012.
What about other countries? Take the British Rail for example. Railway companies in Britain had been self sufficient prior to privatisation by the government of John Major. Now Britain’s Railways are one of the most expensive in the World despite receiving four times more in taxpayers’ subsidies than a state-owned British Rail.
Comparison to Hong Kong’s MTR and Taiwan’s Metro
Hong Kong’s MTR boasts a 99.9% on-time rate for many years and is even looking at running operations in other parts of the World in Europe, Australia and other parts of Asia.
For the NSWEL performance against LTA’s Operating Performance Standards, train arrival punctuality has went south for a consecutive of 5 years.
Hong Kong’s MTR has also moves close to 5 million passengers a day compared to 2.5 million in Singapore, but surprisingly the frequencies and punctuality of the Hong Kong’s MTRs has managed the crowd during peak hour so well that you hardly see the crowded and congested platforms in Singapore.
If you think that commuters in Hong Kong and Taiwan are paying more for better services, you would be surprised that they actually match up or even pay lesser than what commuters in Singapore are paying.
(Source, Public Transport Council)
Have i missed out that you can also get free WIFI at every stations in Hong Kong’s MTR, Taiwan’s Metro and even the Seoul’s Subway? Though Singapore has only recently started to offer free WIFI in selected stations, one may only wonder why we are lagging behind the rest of the Asian Tigers.
Public transport as a merit good
Public transport is considered as a merit goods and in Singapore where land is scarce, the role of MRT and buses help to reduce private vehicles ownership and thus reduce road congestion. By increasing fares when prices of fuel and COE are decreasing, are Singaporeans getting the wrong signal that one should consider owning a private vehicle? For the extra comfort and convenience, it would be no surprise to see more people choosing car as their mode of transport.
Moreover, another benefit of public transport is that it reduces pollution as less vehicle on the roads would also means less air pollutants emitted to the atmosphere. This generally leads to a better quality of living with healthier individuals.
Less taxpayer’s money is also spent on infrastructure costs such as building more expressways, expanding roads and increasing parking lots which could have been better used to improve and subsidise healthcare costs.
Public transport operators to earn supernormal profits
Should public transport operators earn supernormal profits at the expense of its citizens and taxpayers? Everyone has contributed to the construction of roads, railway tracks and depot stations (whether you use it or not) in the form of tax. In fact, public transport operators in Singapore is one of the few that is profitable in the World with a farebox recovery ratio of 125% in 2008.
The truth is taxpayers and majority of the people have no interest in SMRT or SBST. Whether the PTOs are making a dollar today or a million dollar tomorrow, unless you are its employee or shareholder, it hardly matters. What commuters are concerned about is how fares adjustment will affect them and their standard of living.
Critics may argue that profits are dwindling for the past few years due to increasing operating costs. The decline in profits is evident in the chart below.
(Source: SMRT Financial Statements, in $millions)
As one may have expected after the spate of disruptions in 2011, we expect the transport operator to step up on improving its ageing trains and tracks.
(Source: SMRT Financial Statements, in $millions)
Staff and related costs also increased because of the need to hire more staff to handle the increased ridership in MRT and buses.
(Source: SMRT Financial Statements, in $millions)
What is important here is not finding out why the profits of transport operator declined but rather asking ourselves what is the appropriate level of profits that public transport operator should make?
From the charts above, one can see that profits has climbed sharply from 2002 to 2009 while the costs has been relatively flat for the same time period. What does this tell you? One would expect the profits to soar to a high of $162.9 million in FY2010. Were the amount allocated to repairs and maintenance sufficient to keep our trains moving with minimal disruptions? The Attorney-General’s Chambers (AGC) don’t think so.
What about staff and related costs? It’s realistic to say that Singapore’s population has been increasing every year and this would thus lead to increased ridership. It is surprising to see that staff and related costs have been rather stagnant before FY2009. It is no wonder that during these period, Singaporeans were complaining about congested trains and buses and the long wait for buses on certain routes and the need for the government to implement BSEP.
The achievement would have been commendable if some of these gains were passed on to the commuters as cost savings and not as dividends to shareholders. Ideally, in a nationalised transport system, these profits would have been reinvested to improve the standard, increase reliability and keep fares affordable.
Now ask yourself if the benefits of a better, cheaper and more reliable public transport has been realised? Has the increased profitabilty of privately owned transports translated to better services?
The principle for setting fares was clear. Fares will be kept as low as possible, consisted with collecting enough revenue to meet the running costs of the MRT, replace parts and equipment regularly and provide company shareholders a reasonable return. – Transport Minister Yeo Ning Hong, 9 July 1986
What’s your view on the fare increase? Is the fare adjustment, a fair one? Share your thoughts with us.
Luxury items are typically symbols of status and wealth. When we see one walking down the street with, say, a Chanel Classic bag, onlookers would definitely label her with words like ‘classy’, ‘stylish’, ‘rich’ and the like. Such bags have a wide range of prices depending on the novelty of the brand, how famous the designers are, as well as the material cost that has gone into the product. Every brand boasts quality in their products, justifying the prices and stature. This goes the same for all luxury goods.
(Image credit: kagen33, via Flickr)
So what exactly are luxury goods? To start it simply, luxury goods are simply, well, just goods! They are considered non-essential items where demand for them usually increase when income is high. Why is that so? Because they are items that we do not need, yet want and would be able to afford when our income reaches a certain level. They serve about similar (okay, to be fair, maybe a little more?) functions as many other product listed in the market. Such examples would include luxury bags like those from Louis Vuitton, sports cars and Rolex watches when there are many other cheaper alternatives that one may choose to own. Luxury companies romanticise their products in order to remain appealing to potential consumers, having the idea of prestige sprayed all over their items in television advertisements and billboards.
As the phrase goes, ‘what you pay is what you get’, but is every single cent worth the item you have paid for?
(Image credit: Ed Yourdon, via Flickr)
Many people would be able to more or less recognise the boutique prices of the luxury items when they see them. Because of that, such items tend to make heads turn due to various reasons including envy, awe or even admiration. This is probably one of the main reasons why people would be willing to spend on such a costly item without regard of whether their purchase is worth the money or not. On the down side, replicas are rampant in the market due to people wanting to spend less to look equally good. Not many are able to differentiate between the two most of the time because of how similar (or even accurate) the imitations look. With that, it sure makes me wonder if it is really all that worth the money to buy something when people cannot recognise if the item is truly the real deal.
Psychologists have proven that the mind tricks us to believe that the item that costs more is indeed the one of better quality. When conducting a research, most subjects nominated the bottle labelled ‘mineral water’ as the best tasting water compared to the other 2 bottles they have tasted. However, it has been revealed that the labels on the bottles have been replaced to trick the subjects to believing that the mineral water was, well, truly mineral water. The ‘mineral water’ they have nominated was actually regular tap water, contrary to what they have been made to believe. This can only prove that just giving people an impression can actually cause a huge impact in their choices and actions, likewise to choosing a luxury item over the alternative.
Well, ultimately whether you would prefer to spend a large sum of money or prefer to purchase a cheaper option, the choice is yours. Some would think it as a psychological impact when they carry a bag that makes them look good, some would prioritise practicality. Most importantly, choose what makes you and your wallet happy!
According to DEBTSteps.com, envelope budgeting or envelope system is a popular way of maintaining a budget. It starts by storing the cash into separate categories of household expenses that are allocated in separate envelopes.
1. TRACK YOUR LAST MONTH’S SPENDING PATTERNS
One of the first steps that you have to take is to analyze your spending patterns, variable expenses and fixed expenses (i.e., monthly electric bills).
Fixed expenses remain the same every month (e.g. Hand Phone Plan, or HDB Rent). Variable expenses include food, entertainment, clothing, and other expenses that may change every month or year. The challenge now is for you to choose on which expenses you can reduce.
2. DEVISE A BUDGET PLAN
Recording all your expenses, no matter how big or small they may be, can help you plan your budget wisely. Categorize your expenses 7 or more sections such as Rent, Utilities, Electricity, Groceries, Gas, Entertainment, Savings, Loan, Childcare, Tax, Travel, etc.
For example if you are Fresh graduate living in your parents’ house and you earn S$1600 a month. Allocate your money with the fixed expenses first.
Rent- S$700
Utilities- S$150
Electricity- S$80
Student loan- S$100
Fixed Expenses Total: S$ 1,080
Then your variable expenses…
Savings- S$170 (transfer it to your bank account)
Groceries- S$100
Travel- S$100
Entertainment-S$100
Emergency- S$50
Variable Expenses Total: S$520
3. PUT YOUR INCOME IN SEPARATE ENVELOPES
Image Credits: wikihow.com/Do-Envelope-Budgeting
Use your marker to assign each category to each envelope. Use whatever size is best for you. It shall be able to fit easily in your purse or wallet. Follow the budget plan and allocate your money accurately. Spend only from the designated envelope and stop spending once you’ve emptied it. This practice of discipline will help you save a great deal of money.
Watch this simple video tutorial of the envelope budgeting or envelope system by NCNBlog:
