meek-investor

Heard about this new promotion from Singapura Finance for children below age of 15: Open a Singapura Blue Sky Junior Savers Account  between 30 March 2013 and 30 June 2013 with a minimum amount of $500 and get a coin bank and instant cash credit of $30. However, the $30 cash credit is fixed, even if you deposit more than $500. That's an instant return of 6% for your kid.  But you must maintain the account for minimum 12 months. Beside the instant interest, the account is paying 0.375% interest p.a., with interest crediting into the account every month.  Assuming that your kid is keeping the $530 for one year, it will generate $1.99 interest for the year.  This will give a net interest of 6.398% p.a. for your initial deposit of $500.  Effectively this is the highest return that we can get from bank saving accounts nowadays. This is a good starting bank account for children.  Parents could deposit children's "angpow" (red packet) mo...

Singapore has a sound banking system.  Banks and finance companies licensed in Singapore are supervised by the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) and MAS requires these banks and finance companies to have sound risk management systems, adequate internal controls, well capitalization and sufficient liquidity to meet any unforeseen needs. However, MAS does not guarantee the soundness of individual banks and finance companies.  As there is no 100% safe business in the world, therefore, a Deposit Insurance Scheme (DIS) has been set up to protect the core savings of small depositors in Singapore in the event that a full bank or finance company collapses.  This is a safety net provided to the depositors that their Singapore dollar denominated deposits, including those in CPF Investment Scheme and Supplementary Retirement Scheme placed with a DIS member bank or finance company, are insured up to a maximum of S$50,000.   Foreign cu...

Savings accounts serve the purpose of regular savings and parking your money for later deployment.  When the money gets to a sufficiently large amount, then you could either transfer it to fixed deposit or use it for other investments. However, the interest rates for saving accounts are almost zero nowadays, most banks offer pathetic interest rates at 0.05% to 0.1% p.a.  Even Standard Chartered's eSaver, which supposed to give higher interest rate than others because the bank does away with all non-essential services like passbook, cheque book and atm/debit cards, has dropped to 0.1% p.a.  There is no longer motivation and incentive to keeping the money there. After some looking around, I found that CIMB StarSaver Accounts offer the highest interest rates for savings accounts in the market, a massive 0.8% p.a.  The interest rate of StarSaver Account is even higher than some banks' fixe...

I opened my first bank account at Post Office Savings Bank (POSB) when I was in primary school. In those days, we could buy postage stamps from our form teacher and paste them onto a card. That was the "Save at School" card with empty boxes where you could paste the stamps. After completing the stamp card, the teacher would collect it, hand it to the bank and deposit into our POSB account. POSB was also a pioneer in a number of industry innovations, such as the GIRO electronic payment system, direct salary crediting and the automated teller machine (ATM), of which it had the largest network. POSB was truly the "people's bank" then. After I started working, I continued to use POSB for all my banking transactions, including salary crediting, GIRO, current account with free cheque book, NETS, etc. POSB at those days was also the only bank with tax exemptions on interest paid to savers. The "people's bank" came to an end in 1998 when POSB was broug...

After I started working, I followed my parent's old path on savings.  Due to busy work schedules and occasional regional duties, I did not have much time to manage my finance actively.  I saved whatever I could and deposited the money into bank Fixed Deposit accounts.  At one point, I have 150K in FDs. However, the FD interest rates kept dropping and FD was no longer the "cash cow" that it was in the old days.  Over the years, the interest rate finally dropped below the inflation rate and it became obvious that my money got eroded just by idling in the bank. I tried to look around and there were several options: 1. Stock Investment to gain regular dividends. 2. Endowments and long term saving plans 3. Unit Trusts and Investment Linked Products. 4. Bonds 5. Property 6. Structured deposits offered by the banks (which they said "have high returns" and  are "perfectly safe" --- how could those giant US banks and the trusty old Lehman Brothers fail?...

My parents do not know the idea of passive income, but they save whatever they can and deposit the extra money into a fixed deposit account.  They do not know other options then. The good old days when I was young, the banks have high interest rates on fixed deposit accounts.  The interest rate was closed to 10% per annum then. My parent's FD account matured on early November and they used the interest for the children's school books and clothing for the new year.  The interest collected was like bonus for our family. The bank did not have FD auto-renewal then, and they didn't care if you did not come to the bank to collect interest and renew your FD account.  If you come late to renew your FD, the bank will just stop your FD and will not pay you interest for the lapsed days.  Due to work and other commitment over the years, the mature date for the FD account slowly moved from early November to mid-November. Later the bank implemented au...