In May this year, a 64-year-old man who came to me for general financial consultation. This person had leukemia.

Thanks to modern medication, his condition is stabilized but requires expensive drugs. Unfortunately he is inadequately insured. This puts a heavy toll on his monthly cash flow. From my cash-flow analysis, his family will be technically a bankrupt 12 years from now. This is because the family is not a well-off family with relatively low networth and high medical bills. My estimation of 12 years assumes no sudden surge in medical bill and no surprising inflation. If there is going to be a sudden surge in medical bill, the family will become a technical bankrupt at a much earlier time.

However, the family estimated time to becoming a technical bankrupt was accelerated by an financial salesperson who sold him a property unit trust – probably without needs-analysis nor risk profiling. As we know today, property market is not doing well now. Therefore, his net asset must have significantly shrinks. This is another real-life story of unethical salesman causing great grief to families. I frequently come across such cases but this one is really terrible because even a dying man the  salesman did not let go. Is there no justice in Singapore? What is MAS doing? Can’t these salesmen just let the dying man live his last days on earth happily?

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