My First Rainbow at Dawson

 

Pictures taken from my balcony.

First time seeing such a long-lasting rainbow! 

Discover it at 5:50pm. Now 6:30pm the rainbow still there!?

Those of you travelling after work, and reading my blog post, look up!

Maximum Pain versus Maximum Sheepishness

 

Those of us on the Earn More path, we'll discover soon enough that the sole purpose of Markets is to extract MAXIMUM PAIN from all its participants!

True right?

Just ask those who have chopped fingers and swear off "investing" forever. 

For survivors, we've become "philosophical". 

Have to. 

If not how to explain the insanity of doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results?

The good news is that if we switched to the Save More path, there is no MAXIMUM PAIN, just MAXIMUM SHEEPISHNESS.

How so?

Remember the electricity liberalisation move by big daddy? 

How not to love -20% discounts on our electricity bills!?

Then some discovered choosing the wholesale electricity plan "saves" even more than -20%!

(Conveniently forgetting "wholesale" meant it's for big consumers of electricity who are expected to do the electricity price hedging themselves)

Yup, imagine the sheepishness to find you are paying more than those "stupid" households who remained with PUB ....

How about HDB bank loans?

Who so stupid to choose HDB concession loan at 2.6% interest when we can easily get much lower housing loan interest rates from our nation building banks!?

Well, now some have discovered what maximum sheepishness felt like....

Remember CPF?

One could be forgiven to believe 1M65 never existed, judging by the queues at our banks and the topic of the month in our community!

First it was Singapore Savings Bonds, then Singapore Treasuries, then it didn't take long before someone shared bank fixed deposits give out more lah!

Ink haven't dry, WAIT! 

That bank over there got savings promotion that gives much more than fixed deposits!!!

Just as long we're willing to jump a few hoops like spend X minimum sum per month with the bank's credit cards; and transfer our salary deposit there. 

Fetch. Rollover. Kneel. Woof, woof! Good boy/girl!

Not maximum sheepishness, but it's the awkwardness you feel when you find what you thought was good, better, best has become 2nd best in a month or two....

In the gacha gaming community, we call it MIN/MAX. 

It works until the game developer power creeps your best built hero with a NEW must pull character! 

I'm a cat person. But I do notice dog people do become more cat like as they mature.

I mean we are both probably a bit bemused with young puppies - see hoop must jump, see ball must fetch...

We have this old fogey tarzan at this watering-hole. 

I'll poke him like Swiss cheese if he now tells me he is diverting his planned CPF voluntary contributions to better yielding savings vehicles! LOL!

Nah, he won't!

What's the point of long-term planning if we can get derailed just with 1 or 2% extra interests?

And I thought I'm the man-whore!

Another interesting observation I would like to share with readers. 

This tarzan and me are going in opposite direction - he adding to CPF; while I taking as much out as possible - but we both have the same destination in mind. Wink.

The 8 immortals' analogy probably flew over your head if you're not Chinese, or Chinese banana...

OK, this New York analogy clearer. 

To get to New York from Singapore, we can fly to London, and then New York.

Or from Singapore to San Francisco, then New York.

Earth is round.

Ding!

If official retirement age is 55 how?

 

Young that time, I witnessed 2 of my neighbours' fathers retired at age 55 as that was the official retirement age then.

I hit 55 this year.

I just had a "wu liao" (nonsensical) thought.

Imagine in an alternative universe, where we have high youth unemployment as economy "hentak kaki" (like in Taiwan?), and we don't have problems producing babies since that's the only "entertainment" when we don't have career aspirations as deterrent.

To make way for youths, everyone has to retire by age 55.

And you can take out ALL your CPF at age 55. You know, how it was meant to be when created by the founding fathers.

No CPF minimum sum, no CPF Life. 

How?

Would you be glad and happier?

Or would you suddenly feel a bit sheepish trash talking big daddy all these times?

Especially when you realise you don't do too well on your own... You prefer to have a pet owner - woof, woof!