Any investment guideline for children education ?

[AndrewNg]

Hi Everyone,

My child have some small amount of saving about $2k. Along the way, she can save about $50 every month. Capital protection is most important and I am trying to find a good investment vehicle that can allow me to park that small amount away for 6 years and can fetch 4% to 6%. Is this a realistic expectation ?

I look into endowment but had bad experience because my parent get me an endowment for 21 years, in the end, we pay them for managing our investment and after 21 year, the endowment lose money. It is more painful than doing it our self and losing money, at least we pay for own mistake rather than paying professionals to make mistake for us.

regards
Andrew

[Dennis Ng]

Hi Everyone,

My child have some small amount of saving about $2k. Along the way, she can save about $50 every month. Capital protection is most important and I am trying to find a good investment vehicle that can allow me to park that small amount away for 6 years and can fetch 4% to 6%. Is this a realistic expectation ?

I look into endowment but had bad experience because my parent get me an endowment for 21 years, in the end, we pay them for managing our investment and after 21 year, the endowment lose money. It is more painful than doing it our self and losing money, at least we pay for own mistake rather than paying professionals to make mistake for us.

regards
Andrew

Hi Andrew,
one possible alternative is a low-fee Unit Trust and you can benefit from dollar Cost Averaging.

POEMS also have a Share Builder Plan to allow regular investment into stocks. Go to their website to find out more info. I've not tried their Share Builder Plan.

http://www.poems.com.sg/financialservic ... osheet.pdf

If you don't have a POEMS account and want to open an account, I can refer my friend to you, (remiser with Poems or Philip Securities.

[Starfire]

If she can save $50 per month, how about you also match that amount and invest for her as well ? Just like what our government always does.

[Dennis Ng]

to everyone out there,

instead of just focusing on How Much you can Save CURRENTLY based on your current income, you should also be thinking are there ways to increase your income? eg. by your spouse working part-time or even a part-time business? Or yourself getting a side income or getting another job in your industry that pays a higher salary.

10 years ago I earned S$30,000 a year. Now I save about S$10,000 a month.

[AndrewNg]

Hi ,

Thanks everyone for the information. I will look into poems share builder plan to learn more about it. Thanks Dennis for the help, i had opened up a poems account.

The dollar matching concept suggested by starfire is a good idea too.

It is very inspiring to see Dennis and the active forum folks here contributing and sharing knowledge about wealth management. Unfortunately I am still learning and thus can only contribute question. The information and seminar had helped me to create a buffer of 3 month expense and I am now slowly building up my war chest for investment.

Cheers to Dennis and his team.

regards
Andrew

[Dennis Ng]

Hi ,

Thanks everyone for the information. I will look into poems share builder plan to learn more about it. Thanks Dennis for the help, i had opened up a poems account.

The dollar matching concept suggested by starfire is a good idea too.

It is very inspiring to see Dennis and the active forum folks here contributing and sharing knowledge about wealth management. Unfortunately I am still learning and thus can only contribute question. The information and seminar had helped me to create a buffer of 3 month expense and I am now slowly building up my war chest for investment.

Cheers to Dennis and his team.

regards
Andrew

Hi Andrew,
All of us are on our learning journey. My journey started in 1998 after I started to learn about Personal Finance and Investing intensively, after a seminar I attended in year 1997.

My income dropped to S$2,500 a month in the year 2000 when I resigned from the bank to strike out on my own. Even in year 2007, after working very hard in our business for 5 years since year 2003, my wife and I only earned a combined income of less than S$6,000 a month, yet I managed to reach my first million dollars in year 2008, not through High Income, but through saving 20% of my income and growing the savings through investing.

The reason I share my personal life journey in my seminars and in this discussion Forum is I hope it can eliminate the myths, that it is difficult to achieve One Million Dollars for a person earning an Average Income, that I want to inspire more people to start on their own journey towards Financial Freedom as I have done back in 1998.

I hope a few years from now, we have seminar graduates sharing their personal life journey with us and how they achieved their One Million Dollars. This will be the Greatest Reward to me, for conducting seminars and writing articles and book.

How can you and your spouse increase your income so that you have more money set aside for investing, whether it is for Children Education or other purposes, this is something that you should spend time thinking and taking action.

This discussion forum is set up for the benefit of all our seminar attendees, to help all of us (including myself), to continue to learn after the Seminars. I personally don't think any other Trainer or Speaker in the market would spend the amount of time and effort I do on a daily basis to share with all of you. The difference is my Main Objective of conducting Seminars is NOT to make money for myself, but to help to educate the public on Financial Matters.

So I urge all seminar participants to step out, to ask questions like you did, becos the platform is set up for you (all seminar graduates), but it is really up to all of you to maximise your own learning by active participation, including asking questions.