It is not easy to apply this principle, but this is the key to growing one's savings
OCT 12, 2014
BY CHERYL ONG
As a writer on personal finance matters, I should be a shining example to all of the benefits of saving regularly.
The truth is, like many young people, I have found it a really hard thing to do.
You'd think it would be relatively easy to stick to the principle of spending less than what you earn.
But for many young adults eager to join the workforce on the right foot, squirrelling away a small sum of money every month for the proverbial rainy day might not be a top priority.
I know this to be true from my own experience and from observing my peers.
After graduating from university a couple of years ago, it felt as though many of us spent a significant sum preparing ourselves for the working world even before the first pay cheque landed in our bank accounts.
After scoring an interview for your dream job, you definitely do not want to turn up in a dress obviously bought at a flea market for $20.
So there goes $100 for a crisp new work shirt and skirt. And then you shell out another $50 for a pair of new closed-toe heels (I have been told by etiquette experts that open-toe shoes are a faux pas for formal meetings).
And what happens when you do finally land the job? You will need a new bag to replace that old haversack that was lugged to the lecture theatres, of course. Maybe even a classier watch to replace the Baby-G you had been wearing for the past five years.
The cash registers at the boutiques in Orchard Road ring loud and long every time a fresh batch of graduates enters the workforce.
The fact is that making an impression costs money. For some, it is about new beginnings and making small sacrifices for big payoffs later.
Appearances should not be a preoccupation but the business world can be a superficial one where many decide if they like you within minutes of a first meeting.
It is also important to represent your title, company and colleagues well.
From my experience, it is easy to get over the initial horror of a depleted bank account when money rolls in on payday.
It feels liberating to finally earn your own keep and, for once, you are accountable only to yourself for what you spend your money on.
But, for me, that was also the start of the slippery slope. Coming from the banking sector, most of my colleagues seemed to be living it up with their fat pay cheques.
I suppose the irregular hours we worked meant we had only one another for company most of the time. At dinner, there would almost always be a few bottles of fine wine.
There was also no such thing as a budget for the gift exchange segment at Christmas parties. Once, I saw a Cartier key ring exchanged.
It was all rather overwhelming. But of course, I did not let anyone know that because I felt lucky to be welcomed by the group even as a fresh graduate.
The strange thing was, though I knew I was being paid a little more than my classmates from university, my bank balance did not seem to have grown by much even after a year.
It struck me that I had become the very personification of the adage: "We buy things we don't need, with money we don't have, to impress people we don't like."
This also reminds me of a few friends who have become flight attendants.
Other than being reimbursed for the risks and time they take to traverse continents, one of the perks of the jobs is, of course, the chance to travel almost anywhere.
But some will also tell you that the favourite part of their job is the chance to buy luxury goods in Europe, where tax refunds mean that a Chanel bag could be almost 20 per cent cheaper.
They are paid comfortably, but it seems most of their net worth is concentrated in hauls of luxury goods each time they return from Paris or Italy.
It is a lifestyle they fear they cannot keep up if they switch jobs. So they remain in it even if the glamour of jetsetting around the world eventually loses its lustre. I have come to realise that it does not matter if you earn $3,000 or $30,000 unless you understand the principle of living within your means.
Though I earn a little less as a journalist now, the irony is that I have managed to grow my savings pool. It helps that the culture here is less flashy.
So imagine my relief, two years ago, when my colleagues told me that presents for our annual Christmas gift exchange should not cost more than $10.
"Sure," I thought to myself. "That's more money to my savings account."
Tuesday, October 14, 2014
The Internet is not Harming You
The internet is not harming you. Here's what's harmful:
fearmongering about the internet
Google makes us dumb, FaceBook numbs us,
and cell phones pull us apart? Nonsense. It's time to counter the narrative.
BY JASON FEIFER
It was 1925, and the car was destroying America's youth. "The general effect of the automobile," wrote Princeton University Dean Howard McClenahan, "was to make the present generation look lightly at the moral code, and to decrease the value of the home." With a car, the youngsters could drive anywhere on Sunday. McClenahan didn't think they'd drive to church. And if they didn't, he argued, they'd become devilish and depraved.
This did not come to pass. Nor did phonographs create a "marked deterioration in American music," as composer John Philip Sousa feared in 1906. Nor did the telephone "break up home life and the old practice of visiting friends," as the Knights of Columbus warned in 1926. Nor did writing--a growing activity in the ancient world--"create forgetfulness in the learners' souls, because they will not use their memories," as Plato himself hypothesized. Some 2,400 years later, the Atlantic floated the same thesis about search engines. Its headline: "Is Google Making Us Stupid?" Proclamations like these should remind us that every technological revolution will spawn naysayers, who for the most part should be ignored.
The third great wave
The first two industrial revolutions inflicted plenty of pain but ultimately benefited everyone. The digital one may prove far more divisive, argues Ryan Avent
Oct 4th 2014
The Economist
MOST PEOPLE ARE discomfited by radical change, and often for good reason. Both the first Industrial Revolution, starting in the late 18th century, and the second one, around 100 years later, had their victims who lost their jobs to Cartwright’s power loom and later to Edison’s electric lighting, Benz’s horseless carriage and countless other inventions that changed the world. But those inventions also immeasurably improved many people’s lives, sweeping away old economic structures and transforming society. They created new economic opportunity on a mass scale, with plenty of new work to replace the old.
A third great wave of invention and economic disruption, set off by advances in computing and information and communication technology (ICT) in the late 20th century, promises to deliver a similar mixture of social stress and economic transformation. It is driven by a handful of technologies—including machine intelligence, the ubiquitous web and advanced robotics—capable of delivering many remarkable innovations: unmanned vehicles; pilotless drones; machines that can instantly translate hundreds of languages; mobile technology that eliminates the distance between doctor and patient, teacher and student. Whether the digital revolution will bring mass job creation to make up for its mass job destruction remains to be seen.
Oct 4th 2014
The Economist
MOST PEOPLE ARE discomfited by radical change, and often for good reason. Both the first Industrial Revolution, starting in the late 18th century, and the second one, around 100 years later, had their victims who lost their jobs to Cartwright’s power loom and later to Edison’s electric lighting, Benz’s horseless carriage and countless other inventions that changed the world. But those inventions also immeasurably improved many people’s lives, sweeping away old economic structures and transforming society. They created new economic opportunity on a mass scale, with plenty of new work to replace the old.
A third great wave of invention and economic disruption, set off by advances in computing and information and communication technology (ICT) in the late 20th century, promises to deliver a similar mixture of social stress and economic transformation. It is driven by a handful of technologies—including machine intelligence, the ubiquitous web and advanced robotics—capable of delivering many remarkable innovations: unmanned vehicles; pilotless drones; machines that can instantly translate hundreds of languages; mobile technology that eliminates the distance between doctor and patient, teacher and student. Whether the digital revolution will bring mass job creation to make up for its mass job destruction remains to be seen.
Monday, October 13, 2014
Bold action needed for global economic recovery: IMF
TODAY
OCTOBER 13
WASHINGTON — The International Monetary Fund’s (IMF) member countries on Saturday said bold action was needed to bolster the global economic recovery and urged governments not to squelch growth by tightening budgets too drastically, though Germany poured cold water on the idea of a new global crisis.
With Japan’s economy floundering, the eurozone at risk of recession and China’s expansion slowing, the IMF’s steering committee, chaired by Singapore Deputy Prime Minister Tharman Shanmugaratnam, said focusing on growth was the priority. “A number of countries face the prospect of low or slowing growth, with unemployment remaining unacceptably high,” the International Monetary and Financial Committee said on behalf of the organisation’s 188 member countries.
OCTOBER 13
WASHINGTON — The International Monetary Fund’s (IMF) member countries on Saturday said bold action was needed to bolster the global economic recovery and urged governments not to squelch growth by tightening budgets too drastically, though Germany poured cold water on the idea of a new global crisis.
With Japan’s economy floundering, the eurozone at risk of recession and China’s expansion slowing, the IMF’s steering committee, chaired by Singapore Deputy Prime Minister Tharman Shanmugaratnam, said focusing on growth was the priority. “A number of countries face the prospect of low or slowing growth, with unemployment remaining unacceptably high,” the International Monetary and Financial Committee said on behalf of the organisation’s 188 member countries.
Wealth without workers, workers without wealth
The world economy
The Economist
The digital revolution is bringing sweeping change to labour markets in both rich
and poor worlds
Oct 4th 2014
TECHNOLOGICAL revolutions are best appreciated from a distance. The great inventions of the 19th century, from electric power to the internal-combustion engine, transformed the human condition. Yet for workers who lived through the upheaval, the experience of industrialisation was harsh: full of hard toil in crowded, disease-ridden cities.
The modern digital revolution—with its hallmarks of computer power, connectivity and data ubiquity—has brought iPhones and the internet, not crowded tenements and cholera. But, as our special report explains, it is disrupting and dividing the world of work on a scale not seen for more than a century. Vast wealth is being created without many workers; and for all but an elite few, work no longer guarantees a rising income.
The Economist
The digital revolution is bringing sweeping change to labour markets in both rich
and poor worlds
Oct 4th 2014
TECHNOLOGICAL revolutions are best appreciated from a distance. The great inventions of the 19th century, from electric power to the internal-combustion engine, transformed the human condition. Yet for workers who lived through the upheaval, the experience of industrialisation was harsh: full of hard toil in crowded, disease-ridden cities.
The modern digital revolution—with its hallmarks of computer power, connectivity and data ubiquity—has brought iPhones and the internet, not crowded tenements and cholera. But, as our special report explains, it is disrupting and dividing the world of work on a scale not seen for more than a century. Vast wealth is being created without many workers; and for all but an elite few, work no longer guarantees a rising income.
Hong Kong protests: Labour union’s growing discontent at Occupy movement
Oct 12, 2014
By Li Xueying
AS THE Occupy Central movement enters its third week with no end to the impasse in sight, an increasing number of people began to voice their unhappiness over the prolonged protests.
Some 30 members of a local construction union marched to the rallying site in Admiralty on Sunday afternoon, challenging the students to end their protests, the South China Morning Post reported.
It came as the pro-government Blue Ribbon Movement threatened to surround the protest sites unless authorities dismantle them by Tuesday night.
"We respect your demands because many of our children are among the protesters," says Mr Chow Luen Kiu, chairman of the Hong Kong Construction Industry Employees General Union. "But it's been 15 days. You've done enough and the whole world has known your demands. So please leave and let your parents resume work so they can raise you."
Mr Chow said some 4,000 construction workers' jobs had been affected by traffic blockades.
By Li Xueying
AS THE Occupy Central movement enters its third week with no end to the impasse in sight, an increasing number of people began to voice their unhappiness over the prolonged protests.
Some 30 members of a local construction union marched to the rallying site in Admiralty on Sunday afternoon, challenging the students to end their protests, the South China Morning Post reported.
It came as the pro-government Blue Ribbon Movement threatened to surround the protest sites unless authorities dismantle them by Tuesday night.
"We respect your demands because many of our children are among the protesters," says Mr Chow Luen Kiu, chairman of the Hong Kong Construction Industry Employees General Union. "But it's been 15 days. You've done enough and the whole world has known your demands. So please leave and let your parents resume work so they can raise you."
Mr Chow said some 4,000 construction workers' jobs had been affected by traffic blockades.
"Democracy is very important but people's livelihoods are also very important," said Mr Chan Tak Keung, one of a group of angry taxi drivers who shouted at the students in Admiralty on Sunday.
The world's getting safer - and more dangerous (From Aug 2008)
[Still relevant 6 years later? Fukuyama's analysis is enduring.]
Aug 31, 2008
By Francis Fukuyama
Are we entering the age of the autocrat? It's certainly tempting to think so after watching Russia's recent clobbering of Georgia. That invasion clearly marks a new phase in world politics, but it's a mistake to think that the future belongs to Russian strongman Vladimir Putin and his fellow despots.
I'm particularly interested in trying to discern the shape of the new international moment, because I wrote an essay in 1989 entitled The End of History?
It argued that liberal ideas had conclusively triumphed at the end of the Cold War. But today, the United States' dominance of the world system is slipping; Russia and China offer themselves as models, showing off a combination of authoritarianism and modernisation that offers a clear challenge to liberal democracy. They seem to have plenty of imitators.
Although Mr Pervez Musharraf has finally agreed to step down as president of Pakistan, that key US client has been ruled dictatorially since 1999. In Zimbabwe, President Robert Mugabe refuses to give way despite having lost an election. In the Andean region of Latin America, democratic freedoms are being eroded by populist, democratically elected presidents such as President Hugo Chavez of Venezuela.
Take all these together, and various writers have suggested that we are now witnessing a return to the Cold War, the return of History or, at a minimum, a return to a 19th-century world of clashing great powers.
Not so fast. We are certainly moving into what Newsweek's Mr Fareed Zakaria labels a 'post-American' world. But while bullies can still throw their weight around, democracy and capitalism still have no real competitors.
By Francis Fukuyama
Are we entering the age of the autocrat? It's certainly tempting to think so after watching Russia's recent clobbering of Georgia. That invasion clearly marks a new phase in world politics, but it's a mistake to think that the future belongs to Russian strongman Vladimir Putin and his fellow despots.
I'm particularly interested in trying to discern the shape of the new international moment, because I wrote an essay in 1989 entitled The End of History?
It argued that liberal ideas had conclusively triumphed at the end of the Cold War. But today, the United States' dominance of the world system is slipping; Russia and China offer themselves as models, showing off a combination of authoritarianism and modernisation that offers a clear challenge to liberal democracy. They seem to have plenty of imitators.
Although Mr Pervez Musharraf has finally agreed to step down as president of Pakistan, that key US client has been ruled dictatorially since 1999. In Zimbabwe, President Robert Mugabe refuses to give way despite having lost an election. In the Andean region of Latin America, democratic freedoms are being eroded by populist, democratically elected presidents such as President Hugo Chavez of Venezuela.
Take all these together, and various writers have suggested that we are now witnessing a return to the Cold War, the return of History or, at a minimum, a return to a 19th-century world of clashing great powers.
Not so fast. We are certainly moving into what Newsweek's Mr Fareed Zakaria labels a 'post-American' world. But while bullies can still throw their weight around, democracy and capitalism still have no real competitors.
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