In a recent high court case of Soh Eng Beng (as executor and trustee of the Estate of Soh Kim Poo, deceased) v Soh Eng Koon was a case with regard to an ambiguous clause in a Will. The judge has to decide the exact meaning of the clause. But as I read the case, my opinion is that it could simply be a genuine human error which all humans are not immune. Anyway I will not dwell on the human error but the process in which the Will was written. According to the link above, I gather that the Will under dispute was written in the following circumstances:

Here are the insurance charges for an ILP bought in 2002 by my client from an adviser 8 years ago.I asked her to get the latest benefit illustration with the mortality and morbidity charges from the insurer. $100,000 death benefit and $50,000 critical illness, they are paying an annual premium of 1,826.40. When she bought the policy, she was 44. Now she is 52. I calculated that the insurance cost based on the different ages will be:

By now, all new rules to curb speculators from causing a property bubble have been out. Frankly speaking, I seriously doubt anyone truly could fully understand all the rules. I always give myself 3 minutes to read a newspaper article. If the newspaper article requires more than 3 minutes to comprehend, I consider it as an academic paper meant for academics. From what I see, the desire to curb property speculation is good but the solutions are too complex and require too much resource to implement.

I saw an endowment policy that was bought in 1989. It supposed to mature on 2043. The original illustration shows that estimated maturity value is $169,757. The premium is $509.60 per year. Based on these figures, the IRR is 5.56%.

However, in the latest statement the projected maturity is $83,131. The revised IRR is 3.56%. By reducing the return by two percentage points, the maturity value drop by half! After taking into account of inflation, this is a disaster! The lesson? Never buy a product because of nice market materials.

There have been a significant number of changes to HDB rules. Of significant is that individual who purchase a non-subsidised HDB flat has 6 months to dispose existing private residential property. The summary of changes can be found on this webpage: HERE

I always feel that HDB just has too many rules. I always advice my clients never to “invest” in HDB. Buy a HDB flat because of need and not for investment purpose. There appears to be changes to HDB rules every year. Some crazy people would actually spend a fortune buying a HDB flat. There is no need to be a guru in financial planning to know this is a crazy thing to do. All it takes is some common sense. The question is this: Does an ordinary Singaporean have some common sense? Related article: Cash-Over-Valuation for HDB

New measures to cool the property market was announced today. The wonderful thing is that these measures are with immediate effect. The new measures are:

Question: “My insurance agent recommended me to buy the TM Legacy Plus with a Dreaded Disease Accelerator Rider covering the life of my daughter. She is coming to 6 years old. My agent quoted me a limited pay 25 years annual premium of $925.60 which covers $200,000 for death, TPD and critical illness. Is this policy worth the purchase?”

It was supposed to be a happy family vacation but it turns out to be a total disaster. By now everybody knows what happened. On 23 August 2010, Rolando Mendoza, a former high-ranking commissioned police officer hijacked a tour bus carrying 25 tourists from Hong Kong in an attempt to get his job back. After a botched rescue attempt by the Philippine National Police, 8 persons died. Those who survived like Tracey Wong Cheuk-yiu, 15 and her brother, Jason Wong Ching-Yat, 12 became orphans instantly.

I wrote to Straits Times forum page about the poor take up rate for CPF Life. However, they did not publish my letter after 10 days which I assumed was rejected. Here was what I wrote to them:

Dear Editor,

I refer to Straits Times article “CPF Life: Some want to be given a choice” dated 18 August 2010.

Very often insurance agents and financial advisers would state in their name cards that they are members of the MDRT. You can also see it in the newspaper when photographs of MDRT members are splashed in full page. So what is MDRT? Are they millionaires?

I read with dismay about a case in which a man left nothing to his legally married wife upon his demise. Instead, it appears that the only insurance – dependent protection scheme – was left to his ex-spouse through nomination. You can read about it on Mr. Tan Kin Lian’s blog post: HERE. It is difficult to comment on the case as little facts are presented. But in my experience as a financial planner, majority of the Singaporeans are like this

The Youth Olympic Games is now considered the failed project. Despite all tickets being sold out, the attendance turns out to be extremely poor. I find this to be an embarrassing event. Many bloggers and writers to the Straits Times forum page have written on the many negative aspect of the YOG. I shall not add anything that was already repeated by someone else. But I got something to add that so far nobody mentioned.

Someone state that CPF Life is not subjected to Insurance Act. I did a check. Actually there are many schemes under the CPF which are exempted from Insurance Act. Here is a brief survey:

Question: "I am looking for a financial advisory job. I see you are very stringent in your recruitment process. Which is good and something I admire. Too bad I do not meet the mandatory requirements."