Financial Planning

What Does It Mean When You Say No To Insurance

Have you ever wondered what does it mean to you when you decide to say No to a Financial Planner, who is doing up a financial needs analysis and at the same time recommending some insurance plans to you?

The Role Of A Financial Planner

Basically the role of a Financial Planner is to make you realize or indirectly disturb you emotionally with a Problem (concern about Medical Bills, not enough for Retirement or the means to save enough for your Child’s University Education) through a Financial Needs Analysis Process.

And after doing so, he will recommend a set of solutions to the above problems by means of committing to a certain range of Insurance Product – Endowment, Investment-Linked Plans, Medical Insurance and/or Critical Illness Insurance.

The objective of this post is not to tell you much about what a Financial Planner does for a living and here I will assume that the Financial Planner who may be attending to you is capable of doing what he/she is required to do in Financial Planning.

But rather, I will focus on, if the Financial Planner has actually done well (to make you realize that you have a problem) but in the end you decide to say one of the Few Common Nos’ (known as Objections to us) like:

I Do Not Need Insurance
I Have No Extra Money For Insurance
I Would Like To Wait

So let’s get down to the first No…

What Does It Mean To You When You Say That You Do Not Need The Insurance…

Have You Started Your Retirement Planning?

by FinancialDex
July 1, 2009June 23, 2010
2 Comments
Financial Planning

Part of a Good Financial Planning is planning well and early for your retirement and a good rule of thumb of starting your retirement planning can be well around your mid 20s as you may have started working by then and have the means to start saving.

What To Note For Your Retirement Planning

And the things to note for your retirement planning would be basically

The retirement monthly income you would need for your daily expenses (without really working) and lifestyle
How long you plan for this retirement income to last

A general guideline to know how much you would need is to note down how much are your current expenses and once you have gotten this figure, do a rough estimation whether you would like to maintain this kind of lifestyle (you can choose to have an even better or just a simpler one – it’s your life, so your choice!)

Then the portion for the how long you plan for it to last would be a gut feel. An average person would wish to have a retirement income to last for 20 years starting from the average retirement age of 65.

Once you have your figures ready, head over to the CPF Board’s Retirement Savings Interactive Calculator to get a rough feel how much you need to start saving now to hit your desired retirement income.

A sample of my Retirement Planning would be like below:

Hmmm… and seems like I do have to start saving like $600 per month for the next 37 years in order to achieve my desired monthly retirement income of $2000.

Just How Expected Is Unexpected, Question Is – Are You Prepared Today?

by FinancialDex
May 31, 2009June 3, 2009
2 Comments
Financial Planning

After working as a Financial Planner for the last two and a half years and being able to come across many real life situations with regards to insurance death claims – I have recently witnessed two death claims whereby

a guy in his late 40s whom lost his dearest wife and is in a total loss and
another case whereby the family is with mentally handicapped children and the wife is left with no insurance monies as the hubby has never done up any insurance coverage before…

I just have this sudden feeling to blog about this…

And I will be talking about something that most of you will not be interested to talk about – Death! Death is something that is so expected and one fine day you or I will just forget how to breathe. It’s just a matter of time as well but we do not know when is that time – that’s all.

That’s why my blogging topic is with regards to something that is so expected (it will come eventually) but yet so unexpected (you do not know when it will come), and the big question is how prepared are you today? Yesterday is gone and we are still alive and this is something good and tomorrow is still something worth looking forward to.

So should really anything happen today, how prepared are you and your family?

Mixed Feelings: Should You Protect The Goose That Lay The Golden Egg Or The Golden Egg Only?

by FinancialDex
January 19, 2009
Financial Planning

There is a favorite story that Financial Planners will use to show Breadwinners the importance of Income Protection or Whole Life Protection and that will be the story of the Goose that lay the Golden Eggs.

The Background Of The Story And What You Can Relate From It In Today’s Reality

In brief and in comparison to today’s context, this story shares that there is this Special Goose (in comparison, will be similar to a Breadwinner who maintain and sustain a family and reproducing future generation) that lays a Golden Egg each day (in comparison to the Children, who is the future pillar of of the society).

This Golden Egg, in the story, has actually made the owner very rich as the owner can sell the eggs for very good profit. Thus in reality, Children are good and valuable resources to the society as they can contribute their talents and services back.

Questions To Ponder Whether Are You Ready For Your Retirement?

by FinancialDex
December 20, 2008
Financial Planning

After seeing so many Clients (both the young and the matured), do you know that most of them have no considerations and are still not prepared for Retirement? This is something alarming and should be brought to your immediate attention!

What Is Retirement?

This is the time period

Whereby you should have stopped working (for goodness sake, after working so many years in your life)!
Whereby you should enjoy your life to the fullest – see the world, have quality time with your loved ones, enjoy your hobby, enjoy good food (please do not just survive on bread) or anything that has been your wildest dream!
Whereby you have not worries for money – you can have built up a Residual Income, or have Ample Savings (money being worked for you all these while)

How Long Can Your Retirement Be?

In today’s context, most Singaporeans would choose to retire at the age of 65 and with life expectancy on the rise, you and I can live to the age of 80 (for men) and to 88 (for women), and that can amount to nearly 20 years of retirement.

How Much Do You Need For Your Retirement?

Questions To Discuss For Your Survivor’s Needs Planning

by FinancialDex
December 15, 2008June 23, 2010
1 Comment
Financial Planning

Nobody likes to talk about Death or the idea of being Permanent Disabled. But Death will eventually come knocking on your door when you are the least prepared. So are the chances of being Disabled.

You can be single at this moment of reading this post but you may have your dependents like your Parents.

Or you can be just starting your family or you can be already having your two little “monsters” (children) tearing you upside down but nonetheless, seeing them growing up is always a joyous moment.

While so… how prepared are you in terms of your Survivor’s Needs Planning? And what we mean by Survivor’s Needs Planning are as such, when you suddenly forgot to breathe tomorrow but still being able to:

(if you are single) Take care of your Parents financially for the rest of their lives
(if you just start a family) Take care of your Spouse or the mortgage loans for your new house
(if you have children) Take care of your Spouse, your children till they are independent and their university education

all this and even more without affecting their current lifestyle with you still around!

Therefore you need to ask yourself the following questions and see how prepared you are in terms of your Survivor’s Needs Planning.