Financial Readings

Where blogs are concerned, I’ve been mainly following two blogs:

(1) Get Rich Slowly
(2) I will teach you to be rich

Both blogs provide advice concerning finances. Get Rich Slowly has a more down to earth, person next door tone, with a more ‘low-cost living’ kinda approach. I will teach you to be Rich has a more arrogant tone, as seen by the title itself, but nevertheless, shares valuable day-to-day advice which proves quite true.

While all these are helpful, the target audience for these blogs are americans, and so some of the advice given only benefit americans.

For those interested in learning more about investments, there are two sites that have been recommended, to read up on: Morning Star and Fool’s School.

Recently, while being lead from one blog to another via links, I happen to come across some local blogs providing financial advices. It’s always nice to have a general idea of what and how to invest and deal with your finances, and when you hear familar terms like CPF instead of Roth IRA, it just makes you feel more at home:

(A) Salary.sg
(B) Qotion
(C) Five cents ten cents
(D) Tan Kian Lian

Salary.sg has a tagline: ‘All about Income, Jobs, Career, and Investment in Singapore‘. It’s a relatively new blog, and it still has room to grow. It has some interesting tidbits on it currently.

Qotion is suppose to be a portal for information concerning credit cards. I haven’t found much use for it yet, but maybe it might be useful one day.

Five cents Ten cents talks about alternatives, like borrowing from the national library instead of buying, bringing a bottle of water around which keeps you hydrated, and saves you from buying one too many soda, and stuff like that.

The last one was obtained through a link via Salary.sg. Apparently, Mr Tan Kian Lian, the retired CEO of NTUC Income blogs about finances on his blog. People send in their questions, and he answers them on his blog. He has also created a FAQ for commonly asked questions.

I wish I had resources like this when I was younger. They should teach financial stuff in school. It’s one of those things which will still be relevant long after they leave the school system. Stuff like these are so much more important then the mindless pursuits of paper.

Don’t get me wrong, paper can be beneficial if you know what to do with them. But getting one just because that’s what everyone else is doing really doesn’t help you in any way. These days, paper is no longer a guarantee to a cushioned life.

Anyhow, I guess it’s better late than never.

Update: Just stumbled across another blog called My Money Blog. This blog is interesting as the author uses himself as a real life example, giving step by step advice on how to manage your money, or more interestingly, how to make money (thousands) off credit cards! Dang, how I wish I was in the US. Although the concept is sound, the conditions do not exist in Singapore.