Types of insurance cover

A continuation on previous post on how to deal with getting your own insurance. Now here’s a guide of different products. It can be roughly categorized into the various types. There are various things that needs to be take note of.

The policy should cover Death, Total Permanent Disability (TPD), Critical Illness (CI) of at least 30 types, Accident and Hospital&Surgical. Only by having all these covered will you have a peace of mind.

Let us go into each type of insurance cover:-

1.  Death/Terminal illness
   This can be quite disrupting to a family especially when one just started work. Death can be costly to the parents as in Singapore context, many parents actually look to children for retirement. For one that just married especially for guy with family, it can be quite a burden. Hence it’s important to get covered. A lump sum is usually handed out in this case. Another thing to take note if the policy covers oversea death.
2. Total Permanent Disability - TPD
   Imagined you are in your prime and yet you are brought down by chronic ilness and can’t work. Having to feed yourself is important. This is applicable for term insurance and cover up to the age of 65. Payment is usually advance, maybe with staggered payment.
3. Accident
   Loss of body parts can also be covered. Because one is alive and thus liability is higher and thus the payment is usually 2-3 times higher than death
4. Hospitalization and Surgical
   It is usually shield based. Means one can use his/her CPF Medi-Shield to pay part of it. Hence this is usually cheaper than to fork out cold hard cash. Remember to take note if it covered private hospitalization. There can be reimbursement if one went for public hospital with cheaper stay.

There are also insurance that covers inability to work due to hospitalization and illness. I will try to cover the different insurance out on market

Pragmatic guide with insurance

This post will be a rough guide on how I approach insurance especially agents from friends. I hope this do help for people who find it hard to reject them.

1. Know their interest
   Try to understand it is not in their best interest to find a policy to take care of you but to find the best plan that allows them to earn more from you. It is from every insurance policy you buy, which they earned their commision. So the higher premium you paid for, the more they will earn. Heard from my friend, the first year of premium you paid out actually went into their pocket.
2. Know your own interest
   It is your own interest to get yourself protected. One very compelling reason to get insurance is wealth protection. Just in case touch wood you get into a accident and can’t work for few months. Income is draining just to pay for the bills.
   Mind you, the hospitalization fees ain’t cheap. It’s not exactly worth it to save a few hundred dollars per month and get your life savings wipe out. A good rule of thumb is get yourself insured up to 10 times your annual income.
3. Hold your ground
   With reference from the first two points, you should remind yourself whether you are approached by close friends or relatives, think for youself and not because you’re pressured to buy from them. If you are not thinking in your best interest, then no one will. This is a pragmatic world. Remember that you’re the customer.
4. Know your stuff well
   It is at your best interest to know what products benefits you. Why are you buying it for? Knowing your stuff allows you to make informed decision on what is the best for you. I recommend you a easy way to know your stuff in the shortest time easily.
   Very simply said, find 2 other insurance agent from different company to talk to you. With more options to choose from, you will be in the position to pick and choose. Tell them in advance other insurance agent is also talking to you and you will choose the plan that gives you the most-effective coverage. So you won’t feel as bad as you allow them to choose whether to sell to you.
   I got 3 insurance agent to talk to me, from two other different company. As different company got different products, it is quite impossible to find a plan that gives you the coverage with the lowest cost just from the same company as different company got different strength. Demand that they explain over and over again until you understand before you make any decision.
   I don’t think this is unfair as you will be the one paying the premium for many many years to come. The last thing you would want is to default the insurance. So make them work for your money.

In a nutshell, you are to do your homework in the situation of buying insurance. Insurance is an  important part of wealth protection. Only buy insurance for your best interest and get yourself covered up to 10 times your annual salary. Hope this post helps.

My next post will be on the different insurance products pitched by the various agents. You will also understand why ILP is not exactly a good choice. And also some of the flaws in their pitch which they did not tell you up front. Like what I said, it’s not in their interest to tell you. Their job is to sell you the product. That is their job. So have to get this very clear.

Didn’t bring my phone

‘Daddy, i left my phone in the toilet at home’  

‘Ting, how can you be so careless, want me to turn back home?’

‘nah, its okay daddy, i can live without my phone for one day’ then i hesitated

I am suppose to meet my friend for project meeting, and we have not fixed a time and place (smart). looks like i will have to find out where her lecture will be at, so that i pretend that i am stalking her.

I have to attend a toastmasters event today, so i would be home late. but i don’t have any means to cancel dinner at home (oh crap)

I have no means of communication with th today, because he did not activate his M1 messaging service. oh well.

Lesson learnt: don’t bring your phone to the toilet

~misting~

The worst recession but the fastest recovery?

It’s been barely a month since our ministers urged us to brace through this recession. But in the past 2 weeks, there are so much optimism everywhere that the recession is coming to an end within this year. But ain’t it incredible that leaders throughout the world has mentioned time and time again this is the worst depression ever since world war 2.

For the past 2 weeks, US market has been on the rally. Not to mentioned that AIG and Citibank has gained 300% profit in a matter of two weeks. Market rally has been based on the point that Citi’s CEO mentioned that the company is making profit for Jan and Feb in a MEMO. Market rally just base on a MEMO? Ain’t it just incredible? Including the fiasco of Federal Government going to the point of taxing any bonuses paid out by AIG. Executives should know it’s not going to work well with US citizens, afterall, it’s taxpayer money.

Obama has also taken a tough stance towards bonuses payout using bailout money as well as making his point clear that American will ride out of this recession under his leadership. There has also been plan to buy out the toxic asset by Federal. So far, Geithner has been trying to create regulatory reform to the financial sector. I’ll reserve my comments on whether it will work. The housing sector is showing good sign that it is recovering. It is good news for the subprime crisis is root for this recession.

But no matter what, it is far too early to determine if the recession is truly over. Not until the end of the year. But it’s not a bad time to invest with everything on sale right now. Dollar averaging is a good strategy now. Buying Index fund is also a good idea due to low risk and low transaction cost.

Beware of buying on sentiment as the current rally is due to speculation and financial institute has been shorting stocks for this week. It has ended quite badly. So now, I still encourage the buy and hold strategy as the market is already near its bottom and market timing doesn’t really ensures that you can buy at the cheapest price and due to transaction cost.

Busy week with insurance agent and being a PC handyman

This week has been busy for me as one can infer from the number of post on my blog. I’ve been busy doubling up as the PC repair man and also to top up as a sweeet boyfriend. haha.

It’s not only that, I’ve been busy meeting up with insurance agent for the moment. It is important as I’ve said before that insurance act as the foundation for any wealth management. I’ve met 3 to be exact last week and this week. So it’s almost 6 times. For now, I roughly had a idea on what I’m looking for. I will post an article to help people like me who are clueless about insurance to help themselves.

For now, a good night rest is something I deserved. Something to add on is my observation with the US market as well as some knowledge gain from reading “A random walk down wall street.” Took me a month to finish reading the book while traveling. Investment is something I would like to talk from now.

History of Internet

An ad by microsoft for IE8. I especially like the last part, Developer Developer Developer. I guess they should make this more nostalgic by focusing more on during the start of internet days.

I also heard IE7 might be the last they are developing. Don’t know how true it is but it will certainly be good news to other browser company.

Win 3 Xbox 360 and 15 Microsoft Office 2007 Standard Edition worth S$600 each!

From January 15 - April 15 2009, buy any book from www.mspress.sg and stand a chance to win 3 Xbox 360 and 15 Microsoft Office 2007 Standard Edition worth S$600 each!

*Terms & Conditions apply.Ads by BLOG2u

Promoting Mandarin?

It’s been a long while since we have all the newspaper covered on promoting mandarin among the Chinese. What I would suggest is that MOE will have to take a resolute direction to making sure Mandarin is also taking in the same limelight as English.

English was emphasized in the past even until now because it will make trades with the West easier and now China will also be a important trading partner and thus Mandarin is getting more important. But one must know that failure of English in PSLE or O level means you’ve failed overall but this cannot be said for Chinese.

I personally went through the period where I would fail my English during mid term and pass it miraculously during end of the year. My mandarin is of above average standard during that time. Not sure about now. After years of toiling in the field of academics, English is already driven in my mind as the most important language. Thus even when I’m back from States, I still consciously remind myself to continue to improve my English. Hence, Mandarin has been of limited use for the past 1 year. Does it matter? Nope as of my work now, Mandarin is not of any use to me except to read manga.

To really promote Mandarin, it’s more than just preaching on the need for it. Rather that, more reform on education needs to done.

Welcome back Jerry Ee

Just want to mention I STILL don’t like the photo they used. It’s just a preference of taste I guess. With that kind of money, I believed he could have live a life with a different identity so I’m still quite puzzled why he turn himself in.

Extracted from CNA
SINGAPORE: Jerry Ee, the former Cortina employee who made away with some S$8 million worth of watches from the Cortina outlet at Raffles City last December, surrendered at the Singapore embassy in Bangkok on Tuesday.

The Singapore Police Force said 35—year—old Jerry Ee is currently in the custody of the Royal Thai Police.

More than 200 pieces of the stolen watches were recovered from him.

Insurance matters

Many would have know that insurance make up as the backbone of any wealth management and it should be well planned for various contingencies. For the next two days excluding today, I will seeking financial advice from financial planner. However I will only buy from one that provide me the best coverage as well as to leverage on them to provide me the education I need. Well I already told them so and they willingly meet up with me. Time are tough aike. I will write up an un-biased post of all what I’ve learnt during the various meetup soon, so stay tune.

As you can see this blog has more information on financial matters as misting is taking a break for school matters. It will be good to know the various stuff that one have to make including financial matters especially when one start out his/her career. And addition burden for me will be to also help out with parent’s insurance. Well that’s what a filial son should do. So no complaint.

Well yes I’m still bitting my tongue that I did not buy stocks from AIG and Citi when they’re at their all time low. I will continue to keep a lookout on both stocks. I think the time is ripe to buy Citi (will continue to lookout for a month or so) though not sure for AIG.

Credit Crisis explained

Nice explanation about how we get to such a state. Maybe people shouldn’t be too innovative on the financial sector. Is there a need in any way in the first place?

The Crisis of Credit Visualized from Jonathan Jarvis on Vimeo.

Singapore well short of 60,000 births needed each year

Well I don’t really see the concern for the falling birth rate. From the way it is and the way Singapore operates, we can always import babies from other countries just like we import sportsman etc. Isn’t it so?

Extracted from CNA
SINGAPORE: Singapore remains well short of the 60,000 births it needs each year to enable the population to replace itself naturally, figures showed.

A report released on the Department of Statistics website showed 39,935 babies were born in 2008, up marginally from the previous year.

It is the highest number of births since 2002, when there were 40,760 babies born, but remains well short of the number needed for population levels to remain stable without measures such as increased immigration.

Singapore needs a fertility rate of 2.1 babies per woman so that the population can replace itself naturally, the government has said.

The government has implemented several measures, including financial incentives, to encourage married Singaporeans to have more babies but these have failed to make a significant impact.

And when you grow old, you can go to JB for retirement. Kudos to MrBrown for this video

A TRUE STORY - VERY SHOCKING

A TRUE STORY - VERY SHOCKING

Very Shocking…. .
This is a real story of a young college girl who passed away last month in Pasir Ris.

Her name was Rui Ping. She was hit by a truck.

She was working in a call center. She had a boy friend named Peter.

Both of them were true lovers. They always talked on the phone.

You would never find her without handphone. In fact she also changed her cell connection from Starhub to Singtel, so that both of them can be on the same network, and save on the cost.
She used to spend half of the day talking with Peter.
Rui Ping’s family knew about their relationship. Peter was very close to Rui Ping’s family as well. (Just imagine their love) .
Before she passed away she always told her friends ‘If I pass away please burn me with my handphone’ she also said the same thing to her parents.
After her death, people couldn’t carry her body, A lot of them tried to do so,but still can’t. Everybody had tried to carry the body, the results were the same.
Eventually, they called a person known to one of their neighbours, who can speak with the soul of dead person and who was a friend of her father.
He took a stick and started speaking to himself slowly.
After a few minutes, he said: ‘this girl misses something here.’ Then her friends told that person about her intentions to burn her with her phone.

He then opened the grave box and place her phone and sim card inside the casket. After that they tried to carry the body. It was then moved easily and they then carried her into the van.
All of us were shocked. Rui Ping’s parents did not inform Peter that Rui Ping had passed away..

After 2 weeks Rui Ping called Peter’s mom…..

Peter:’Aunty, I’m coming home today. Cook something nice for me.

Don’t tell Rui Ping that I’m coming home today, I wanna surprise her.’

Her mother replied….. ‘You come home first, I wanna tell you something very important.’
After he came, they told him the truth about Rui Ping.
Peter thinks that they were playing a fool. He was laughing and said ‘don’t try to fool me - tell Rui Ping to come out, i have a gift for her. Please stop this nonsense’.
Then they show him the original death certificate to him.
They gave him proof to make him believe. (Peter started to sweat) He said… ‘Its not true. We spoke yesterday.. She still calls me.

Peter was shaking.
Suddenly, Peter’s phone rang. ’see this is from Rui Ping, see this….’ he showed the phone to Rui Ping’s family. all of them told him to answer. he talked using the loudspeaker mode.
All of them heard his conversation.
Loud and clear, no cross lines, no humming.
It is the actual voice of Rui Ping & there is no way others could use her sim card since it is nailed inside the grave box

They were so shocked and asked for the same person’s
(who can speak with the soul of deal persons) help again. He brought his master to solve this matter.

He & his master

worked for 5 hours.

Then they discovered one thing which really shocked them….

Singtel has the best coverage
‘Where ever you go, our network follows!!!’

Marriage distribution in Singapore

Just weeks ago, it is reported on The Newspaper of the marriage patterns in Singapore. As you can see the numbers can be quite disturbing where 78% of male married after 50 and most woman married after 30 also makes up a huge percentage.

The report also mentioned that the female at 30yo don’t really mind going after a 50yo guy. And as such that, it brings question on whether the government policy to promote pro-create might work. In addition, having to cope with a greying population might be a social issue for the latter generation. Well, unless the future generation work hard to push the numbers else this trend will continue. With the norm of couples wanting to enjoy life and the pro-company policy in Singapore. It can be quite hard for couple to want to have a bigger family with so much insecurity.

Just to add on, this report miss out on some interesting facts. For example the nationality the that Singaporeans are married too. In the case of induction of sportsman around the world, would this be the case for Singaporeans where the guys will look for Vietnam brides and the ladies for the Ang Mohs (White)?

Tianhong, a NTU-Undergrad Google user and slavery of jsp-servlet, is a freelance contributor for Plaktoz.com

Basking @ Clark Quay

Contrary to popular believe that basking is an easy job, my experience tonight was enlightening. We are talking about Singaporeans here, they are a bunch of demanding audience, but if you are someone who likes challenges, this is a job for you~!

So daniel, bernard and i went down to clark quay to do basking, with magic tricks of course, and according to our analysis, here are some things we encountered and learnt.

1) Variety, variety, variety
My first mistake was being ill-prepared. I only brought 3 tricks: linking rings, fire rose and flower production. So it would start out with my fire rose to attact attention, then i will move to my linking rings. My linking rings trick attracted many audiences, but the problem i faced was how to sustain their attention and not walk away.

Then i realized the limitation of my linking rings, it was too draggy and its all about linking and unlinking them. I finally realized why music is so important for linking rings, because the moves co-ordinated with the magic is an attraction itself. But there was no music sadly. So crowds dispersed after awhile.

2) Angles
Rarely did my flower production because i was very conscious of my angles, i.e. the position of your blind spots. This is not a stage performance, where the audiences are seated, no, they are walking all around you. Not only you have to perform your trick and entertainment, you must be aware of your surroundings, I did my flower production once and failed miserably, because i was not aware of my angles.

3)Willing to perform
If you think basking is to earn money, you are so mistaken~! I think money should not be in your mind at all. One commenable thing i saw today was sportsmanship. Even though there were a group of people demanding for more magic, they did not give any money. But it did not dampen our spirit, because we are performing for our enjoyment and others.

Passion is so important here because it is going to help sustain you through horrible and inconsiderate audiences. One must be willing to showcase even with criticism.

I think the passion to perform is in both daniel and bernard’s mind, I have so much more to learn about basking and magic

~misting~