It turns out that every day I keep hearing on Class 95 marketing tie ups between Mediacorp and various condominium projects. I wonder whether this is something recent or have been going on for some time.

Income from October 2011:
$3,708–Regular Paycheck
$81–Dividends
$200–Bonus and Spiffs
Total Income: $3,990
Expenses from October 2011:
$452–Rent
$160–Student Loans
$74–Groceries
$73–Restaurants
$53–Internet
$52–Public Transportation
$44–Pharmacy
$21–Fast Food and Pizza
$40–Mobile Phone
$30–Gym
$105–Everything Else*
Total Expenses: $1,106

Asian’s are typically more secretive on these money matters, but I am just wondering how many readers would like to see more of these among finance bloggers here?

What I like is to find, explore and introduce readers to innovative ways that may or may not solve some of the society’s problems.

We are seeing a lot of innovative start-ups and business overseas that make society a better place but at the same time profit from it.

This is not really an investment or money related topic so I would discuss with my readers more at my productivity blog Productive Organizer under the segment Better Society.

Better society is a segment on Productive Organizer where we focus on business or people taking alternative efforts to improve the way we live through innovative means as well as opinions on our current society.

If you feel strongly or are interested in such a topic, you can follow and contribute at my sister blog or add the RSS feed to your rss reader.

Unemployed, Home-makers and Students – Do they have skills?

One group that were out of the employment equation are these 3 groups of people. We often hear that in Singapore society, when you reach the age of 45-50 you become very difficult to get employed.

People think that you learn things slower and you are resistant to new processes.

It becomes difficult to employ home makers if stay home mom is away from the working community for a few years.

During times of high unemployment, students fresh from college or university find it difficult to get a job

But do they really don’t have any skillset?

1. Home makers are able to cook well. They may organize things better than others because they are focus in this area.
2. They may have the best ideas how to teach and take care of infants.
3. The retired may have ample experience and able bodied, since they have been practicing their craft for 40 years.
4. The students are rough around the edges, but they can get the job done if their attitude is right

A Marketplace for skills and chores could be the solution

A market place is where we can meet those that do not have the time, have specific needs and are willing to pay for short tasks with those that have the skills to do it, want to try and simply love to do it.

At Productive Organizer we introduce 3 of them:Task Rabbit,Coffee and Power and Worklists.

Task Rabbit is a start-up that focus on having a bunch of ad-hoc life makers that can help working people or people short on time to fulfill their unique needs.

With a marketplace to match these people, both side wins out.

If you want to make this a more permanent engagement, build up a reputation just like as a free lancer or a professional and you are likely to get more engagement or charge more for it.

Conclusion

Sometimes, technology comes along but people do not make full use of it. When entrepreneurs come from a view to make society a better place and create a business model that is sustainable from this, everybody wins out.

I like the idea that while it doesn’t solve long term issues, like YouTube, people with interest and passion can create a passive income for time spend doing things they are willing to do.

What do you guys think? Will it work in Singapore?

The answer lies in the level of subsidies provided to animal meat versus vegetables. In the end money talks. A farm bill that is geared to subsidized meat will create a meat eating culture.

We all know that greens and fruits are better for us but why aren’t those subsidized?

There are also a lot of politics involved. If you have vested interest in farming animals and livestock or in the milk making industry, you will be fight through any means necessary to stop this allocation from changing, whether through lawful means or through kickbacks.

[Why is Salad more expensive than big mac >]

This article was posted originally on www.ProductiveOrganizer.com. Productive Organizer covers on productivity techniques, technology techniques as well as alternative healing and wellness.

Well I wasn’t expecting that SGX was able to attract one of the biggest football club in the world, Manchester United to list on the Singapore Stock Exchange.

They key thing to note is that we do not have much information

1. Talks seems to be in an advanced stage.
2. We still do not know how much of the club will be listed. The portion touted around is that it will be in the region of 25% to 30%
3. SGD 1 bil will translate to roughly 500 mil pounds. The amount of debts currently on balance sheet stands at around 500 mil pounds. Raising this amount and clearing the debts could potentially put the club on a solid footing.
4. We blog about Manchester United’s financial footing in the past (analysis here). We mentioned that annual revenue comes to 300mil but majority were sucked away by 57 mil in interest payment. Clearing this annual interest payment goes in a long way to ensuring the club have cash flow to invest in long term growth.
5. Glazers were said to be looking to sell United for 1.6 bil pounds. 25% of this is around 400 mil pounds. Now this ipo may be 20% over what is already an overvalued price.
6. Essentially this will keep the Glazers as the majority shareholders yet still suck the company dry.
7. For fans this may be the near term way to ensure some sensible survivability for their soccer club.

We have to see more details before we can make some concrete analysis. But my initial thoughts is that this IPO is preying on the club’s popularity in Asia to suck money for the Glazers at tremendously overvalued prices.

I run a free Singapore Dividend Stock Tracker . It  contains Singapore’s top dividend stocks both blue chip and high yield stock that are great for high yield investing. Do follow my Dividend Stock Tracker which is updated nightly  here.

Ok this could be classified as a rant post but I have been observing what is going on the bus and really do not like what I see.

I have been taking buses to work and school for almost 10 years straight but I still don’t understand why people still do not move in when people are trying to get on buses during peak hours. There are glaring gaps at the middle or back of buses but most will just mind their business and not make a concerted effort to move in.

My observations are

• Foreign Talents tend to not do that. They just park themselves there right in front should they find a good spot. I know that they will alight much later after me as I have seen them before but they will just park themselves at the most convenient place. The worse was yesterday, when everyone is trying to get home from work at industrial parks and they just park themselves right in front of the door getting up!
• To a lesser extent secondary school students. To be fair I observe that they are very warm to give up seats to elderly, but most of the time they are pre-occupied with themselves and do not make an effort to move in.
• The group of people playing with their iPhones and PSP. They just find the spot that allows them to not move and do that. The iPhones also allows them to be distracted enough not to make an effort to move in.

I think the government considers us as a first world country. But are these proper gestures showing the character that a  first world citizen should have? The students are our future yet what I see are more self-centered behaviors and now we are importing talents who frankly speaking think more for their own well being then for the society.

We should have a national campaign to re-educate and teach citizens how to be more considerate and the right way to use public transport!

Just to share, I do blog a lot and have stayed off exercise for some time and have notice a drastic worsening in my health.

So I definitely agree with this infographic

[Hattip Barry Ritholtz]

PageOnce like most finance website are US investors oriented. Why I say that is because they let you aggregate all your saving banks data in one place so that you can better manage it.

Think of it as if you want to aggregate OCBC,UOB,DBS and MAYBANK accounts in one view to see you networth or track spending patterns.

Most of these banks will post this msg:

Bundle lets you quickly and securely add accounts from most financial institutions. Start by searching for your financial institution below. If you need to add a new account to a financial institution you are already managing on Bundle, click Edit/Add account on that institution.

I normally will get out of this site once I see something like this since I thought it only caters to US folks but today I tried entering “DBS” and behold!

I thought this is a fluke so I happen to chance upon another finance platform today.

Bundle is a US personal finance site that aggregates your accounts and provide you with a glimpse of how people around your income group or age group spend their money.

Take a look when I tried searching for DBS

I have no such luck with UOB or OCBC bank. I even tried their full name.

Looks like DBS bank have a one up versus the other 2 banks. This concept is still not very popular in Asia, but is a step forward.

Would I let third party applications have access to this data? probably not now.

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