Road Map to Financial Freedom

Dear friends

I’ve completed writing my next book, Panzer’s Road Map to Financial Freedom and am pleased to pre-launch it here for a limited period (until end of June 2009 at the price of SGD 18.95!).

The concise 28 page book provides value that includes:

• Simplifying your financial life by using Panzer’s 5 step approach to helping you achieve financial freedom
• Saving you money
  
  from using the value-packed Excel worksheet to manage your cash holdings
• Clarifying your goal of achieving financial freedom
• Motivating you towards being in control of your finances and your life

On top of the benefits listed above, I’ll be supporting those who invest in Panzer’s Road Map with Six months of email support in terms of questions, queries and tips on how you can develop your own unique strategies towards your own version of financial freedom.

The price of all these is only S$18.95 (less than two movie tickets)!

I guarantee that you will immediately save more than $18.95 if you practice at least one of the techniques in this book.

I look forward to seeing you be equipped with the tools to drive yourself towards your very own financial freedom by buying it now.

Eating Bananas for breakfast

In this time of financial crisis and economic recession, there are still cheap, healthy and tasty foods around. My own breakfast centres around rolled oats plus a banana or two in the mornings. The banana is a good source of potassium as well as dietary fibre.

More importantly, bananas are relatively cheap as you can get a good bunch of Del Monte or Dole brand of bananas for $0.20-$0.30 each (bunch of 5-7). If you buy the malaysian bananas they can be even cheaper.

So consider adding bananas to your diet if you haven't already as part of your money-saving and health-enhancing diet!

Related Posts:

6 Awesome Health Benefits of Bananas
The Health Benefit of Bananas
Health Benefits of Bananas

Cheapest Chai-Peng in Queenstown

Is there still food that goes for $2.00 in Singapore?

I happened to venture into the Margaret Drive Hawker Centre and realised they still have stalls selling economical rice (2 veggies and 1 meat) for $2.00. The selection is not fantastic but it feels your stomach for all of SGD 2.00.

This type of deal is hard to find in our Lion City.

Spend less by knowing what you are spending

One of the best ways you can start to spend less and to save money is to first know how much you spend every day, every month and every year. I started to track my daily and monthly expenditure after reading the book "Your Money or Your Life" by Joe Dominguez and Vicky Robin.

I was amazed at how much I was really spending vs how much I thought I was spending after starting to record every single dollar and cent that flows through my life. The three months that I have started tracking has revealed that I spend much more of my income than previously thought because of many shared family expenses that were absorbed from my paycheck.

This woke me up from the illusion that I had about saving 20-30% of my income easily every month. In reality, I ended up only saving closer to 5-10% on months where expenditures were high despite me being relatively frugal and avoiding a high spending lifestyle. When the fuzziness is removed from what we think and clarity is achieved through the hard figures facing us from the spreadsheet, the brutal truth about our own finances is laid out in front of us, naked and exposed. Good or bad, that is for each one of us to assess based on our investment goals and targets. But it really is a good wake up call for you to determine if really you are managing to save (or not!)

If you have not started recording your expenses, you may want to do it for a period of say 3 to 6 months and analyse what you spend on. For me, insurance and car payments take up a significant chunk of my income. For you to better manage your expenses, you may want to consider learning to spend less by learning how much and what you are spending in the first place.

Habits are difficult to change if we don't know what they are!

Be well and prosper.

Saving $240 by making a phone call

Image by illustir via FlickrSaving money doesn't have to be difficult. Sometimes all it takes is just a phone call.

I was billed $240 for my ABN AMRO Platinum Card for the annual fee. I have been using this card for free for 2 years and called them up to cancel the card because I haven't been charging much of my expenses to this card.

Spoke with the call centre rep who forwarded my call to their cards dept and immediately got a waiver for 3 years because they were in the process of rebranding the card and repackaging the benefits and promotions and would rather retain me as a customer even though I charged only a little of my expenses to the card.

The other recent example was the NTUC Income Car Cooperative. I had recently cancelled my membership and was surprised to receive a bill for a car booking for the supplementary membership that was held by the wife. Called up the CarCoop finance people who said they would check as I had already cancelled my membership before the date of the transaction. Later that day, a call centre rep called me to inform me that the charges would be cancelled as they had billed me erroneously due to a call centre operator making a mistake on the membership number of the person making the booking.

That was $132 saved if I had not checked and paid the bill unthinkingly.

What is the lesson I continue to learn about saving money?

1. Check your bills carefully
2. Dispute the transactions or ask to cancel for credit card annual dues
3. Be firm but polite

Every cent counts and every money saving tip you apply stretches your hard earned dollar!

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Free Commercial Computer Games

When I was young, I loved to play computer games. Now that I am older, I still love to play computer games but my roles as a father, spouse and family man makes it a bit more challenging. But you can get access to free commercial games that have been released as freeware, usually after a number of years after its commercial release.

Check out Wikipedia's list of commercial games released as freeware and save that $59.90 or $64.90 for a new game.

Save your hard-earned monies!

Save money by controlling what you put into your mouth

Have you heard of the term garbage-in-garbage-out?

Our body is a system. If you feed it with nutritious and healthy food, it will thrive. If you feed it with snacks, junk food and empty calories, you will grow fat and unhealthy.


How can we control our diet?
Eating balanced meals from the basic food groups such as carbohydrates, protein, vegetables and fruits, and drinking water is important to your overall well-being. Control your diet by eating enough for your body's needs. If you are in a physically demanding job where you need to do hard labour, taking proportionately more carbohydrates may help you with sufficient energy. But for many of us who are in a sedentary jobs in the office, too much carbohydrate without sufficient exercise means gaining excess fats stored because we are not using up the calories we consume.

Overeating and snacking contributes to putting in too much calories into our bodies when our caloric output is not high. The excess tends to be stored in fat that is visible as well as those invisible parts clotting up our blood vessels. This is a major contributor to risk factors that could lead to obsesity, heart disease, high blood, high blood cholestrol levels etc.

Do not eat to a completely full stomach
Eat to about 3/4 full and top up by having fruits or water. Your mind takes time to register that you are full so the natural tendency is to eat beyond what we need in terms of calories. So after your meal, you may feel you are not full, but just stop, take some drinks and your body will later reach the full feeling.

Taking more soluble fibre in the form of fruits and vegetables also provides the bulk for our digestive system to work through and also help flush out toxins. Ever since I started on a rolled-oats breakfast diet coupled with a sensible moderate exercise programme of jogging on weekends, I have managed to trim a little bit of excess fat and gain more energy.

Focus on health benefits
When you are healthy, you spend less money on medical bills as well as sick-days making you save money and have a better quality of life.

Save money by using your appliances until they break down

Money Saving Tip on Appliances

My 5 year old Sony CRT 29" TV still works fine and I have no strong desire to upgrade it to a plasma/LCD. "If it ain't broke, then use it until it does is my mantra!"

My refrigerator and washing machine too are still going strong for about 6 years. The only recent indulgence for me in terms of electrical appliances for the home is my Philips vacuum cleaner to make my house cleaning more efficient! ;-)

Did you know that electrical appliances depreciate the most in their first year. Just check out how fast prices fall after 6 months to 1 year when a new model is launched. When plasma and LCD televisions were first rolled out in Singapore, they cost easily in the tens of thousands or high thousands.

Nowadays, a decent 32" model could be had for $2000-$3000 depending on the model and brand.

Living within your means means making the most out of what you already have!

Find the cheapest parking using sgcarmart

Flickr photo by MART!N.

Make use of the internet to find out where to park your car for the lowest rates.

Sgcarmart has a section that details the various car parks and their charges. Make use of this website to help source of the most value-for-money locations for car parking.

Mitigate inflation using Singapore Money Savers.

How to gain health and save money by cooking

Photo by leahish.

Cooking is an under-rated skill in Singapore. If you believe in the concept of specialisation of labour, then you would think that it's more efficient for working professionals to concentrate on working and earning money and buy cooked food for our meals.

Well...yes and no.

While Singapore hawker fare is relatively plentiful and inexpensive, the true cost of not cooking is reflected in our health. In general, eating out can be more costly in the long-term because of the health implications.

Hawker food (and even restaurant standard) usually is:

* Not fresh
* High in sodium, oil, sauces
* High in saturated fats
* Bad bad bad for your health

So what's the alternative?

Learn to cook.

I used to be those who didn't know how to cook. Then I slowly picked up the hobby of cooking over weekends by learning to buy the ingredients such as meat (chicken, fish, pork) , vegetables, spices and sauces etc. Learning how to steam, stir-fry, boil simple dishes and soups.

Hey, isn't this a personal finance blog rather than a cooking blog? You're right, this topic is relevant to our personal finance because cooking can save you money as compared to restaurant meals. Recently I bought a whole chicken (1.1kg) for only $2.90! (Ed: sometime in mid 2007, now is $4.50) Wow... That's enough to feed me for 3-4 meals as I can chop the chicken into 3-4 portions, freeze most of it and cook each portion for a meal. Coupled with quick stir fry of spinach + shitake + dash of seasame oil, light and dark soy sauce, chopped garlic and onions and we have a simple nice meal all whipped up in less than 40 minutes.

The one thing that I realised from cooking my own meals is that it's very much healthier as you can control how much of salt, fats and oils you add to your dishes. In addition, the fresh onion and garlic are natural anti-bacterial agents which help to kill nasty germs in your body helping to boost your immunity.

Cooking is also a survival skill as you learn how to choose what you want to put into your mouth instead of relying on someone to cook leftovers and charge you $3-4 for that.

Be well and save money by cooking your own healthy meals!

Our Public Libraries - Unlimited DVDs Rentals for $21 per year

It is a open secret that our public libraries are a economical source of knowledge, entertainment and resources. Reading can be both a pleasurable activity as well as financially rewarding as one learns new information, skills and hobbies that can turn into a future career. Since public libaries are funded by taxpayers and provided free-of-charge to residents, why not take advantage of this public resource to save money on entertainment.

Magazines and Periodicals
The library stocks many of the periodicals that one finds on the newstand. Instead of paying that $5.00 or $6.00 for that FHM or HERWORLD magazine, why not borrow these from the library using your NRIC (if you are already a registered library member)? Granted, the latest magazines would likely be borrowed but you can get hold of the last couple of months. Periodicals such as Fortune, Time, Newsweek are all available from NLB libraries.

CDs, DVDs and Movies
The library@Esplanade provides DVDs that we can borrow relating to drama serials, movies and science-fiction series. Boxed set of Star Trek, Cheers, Seinfeld and even Space 1999 can be found at this library. There is a catch of course! The borrowing period is 1 week and you need to be a Premier library member and pay an additional $21 per year, or only $0.06 cents a day to enjoy this privilege. Compared to paying $3-5 per rental for 2-3 days from VideoEZY or your neighbourhood video rental shop, this is a bargain. I particularly enjoyed following the first 2 seasons of Deep Space Nine (Star Trek spin-off) which was not shown on Singapore TV and hence it was good to be able to watch such series.

Novels
The fiction section of the library stocks most of the popular fiction e.g. Tom Clancy, David Eddings, Nadine Godimer, James Michener, Charles Dickens, JK Rowling etc. If you are really desperate to reserve one of the popular fiction books that were just released, you can pay $1.55 to make a reservation online through NLB's website and request to collect the book from the public library nearest your home. Talk about convenience!

Avoid library fines
We understand that Singapore is a "fine" city. If you are late in returning your library books, the NLB will levy a fine of $0.15 per book a day or $0.50 per AV item per day. You can register for sms or email reminder notification of your due date of books here so that you won't forget to return your library materials on time!

So for those who like me love to read and watch DVDs, make use of our public resource -- The Library and save your hard earned money for investments that will advance your goal of achieving financial freedom!

Fight inflation with Singapore Money Savers!

Bring your own portable hydration unit

Saving money is sometimes about pinching pennies, other times it is pinching pounds! :-)

One of the great money saving techniques which has a strong health benefit is to bring your own (BYO) water!

All of us have to drink water. H2O gives us life and 2/3s of our bodies are actually made up of water. Did you ever stop and count how many soft-drinks or coffee/tea that one consumes that makes up our fluid consumption? If we drink say, 8 glasses a day and drink 1-2 glasses of water, another 1-2 softdrinks and the remainder through milo/coffee/tea etc. How much would that cost is a typical work-day (assuming you have to pay for it yourself?)

2 glasses of water : $ negligible
2 cans of soft-drink: $1.20 per can = $2.40
4 cups of coffee/tea: $0.90 per cup = $3.60
Total daily expenses on fluids = $6.00
x 20 days a week = $120 a month
x 12 months in a year = $1,440.

Wow... That means we could potentially be spending about more than a thousand dollars a year on soft-drinks! The good news is that there is an alternative we can turn to, good old PUB water direct from the tap or from water coolers. Generally, water is "free" to the consumer if you get it from public water coolers or if your organisation provides water coolers for one to fill up one's bottle.

Invest in a good Lexan/Rubbermaid/SIG type of water bottle to the size of your preference and you are good to go in your quest to save money!

Hydrating yourself throughout the day makes you feel less hungry and you tend to eat less. Drinking water also helps moistern the throat and for those who need to speak a lot at work, this will help your voice last longer. Also, drinking water helps the circulatory and lymphatic systems and waste products in our body makes. The amount of money we save from buying softdrinks and coffee/tea would also offset our investment in the water bottle! It's a win-win-win strategy :-)

Of course, that does not mean we have to swear off softdrinks and hot beverages outside. Simply carry a water bottle around and reap the benefits of spending less money on purchasing them. When I was in New York, I realise most New York office workers actually walked around with their Evian/Dasani water bottles and it was part of their culture.

So let's bring out our water bottles and say "cheers" to the money-saving benefit of bringing your own water bottle.

Free Internet Television

If you have already subscribed and are paying for your broadband internet access, make the most out of your internet connectivity to watch free online movies and television programmes.

You can simply google "free internet television or movies" for the results.


To get you started, try Project Free TV.

I also enjoy watching Japanese music videos on both Youtube and Dailymotion.

Enjoy.

Parking Redemption at Vivocity

If you drive and intend to visit Vivo City for your leisure, dining or entertainment needs, remember to go to information counter to register your car in-vehicle unit number.

Once registered, you will be issued a card that allows you to claim parking rebates (for receipts accumulated to $50).

You need to go to the Information Counter (Level 1) or basement near Giant, pass them your receipts and your card for the staff to total up and scan the amounts qualifying for rebate.

The parking rebate will be net off when you exit Vivo City's carpark and any excess rebates will be stored and can be used for future redemptions.

Happy shopping and dining at Vivo City.

Singapore Money Savers Blog is Born!

As part of exploring the themes of financial freedom in Five Cents Ten Cents Blog as well as Singapore Fixed Deposits blog, I thought it was also timely to create a blog that focusses on specific money savings tips you can learn day by day contributed by friends, readers of my blog as well as the Singaporean public at large.

Do send in your money savings tips and as always, be well and prosper (by saving money!) ;-)

PanzerGrenadier
(Helping you to make your money work HARDER for you!)