Importance of the right financial knowledge in Singapore

It didn’t seem too long ago when we too were blissful, blissfully ignorant. The reason why financial topics and articles are described as “heavy”, “boring” and “complicated” is because the less ignorant you are about them, the more you realise just how much you don’t know.

It has always seem like a curious phenomenon to us that in a country full of burgeoning financial institutes coupled with tertiary institutions offering an increasing number of finance-related courses, that so many of us remain clueless about the very basics of finance. We’ve seen people who work in banks not knowing what the interest rates were for their CPF ordinary accounts. We’ve been advised to buy financial products from people who didn’t even understand the concept of returns. We’ve studied economics with people who just couldn’t comprehend why it is important to start saving young.

Simply understanding the basic concept of saving and investing can equip one with life changing knowledge to better help with retirement planning. Knowing that investing in a safe, blue chip, dividend paying stock could provide you with more than 100% higher returns over the long run compared to what you receive at banks could be the difference between a barely sufficient retirement nest, and one spent travelling around the globe. Interested?

In a report in March by Reuters, it was claimed that Singaporeans faced a lot of bias when being considered for finance and banking related jobs. We wonder whether it was just bias, or bias because we are less qualified? The government has done nothing to boost our employability in this sector. Does that however mean we sit back, do nothing and just demand and blame them about it? We have to help ourselves first, because no matter what initiatives the government might introduce in the future, it will not make us instantly more employable.

We’ve worked with industry players who see the value in the mission that we are championing. We have grand visions for a more financially knowledgeable population in Singapore. Recently one of our articles on entrepreneurship drew some flak for being superficial. Do we agree with the comment? No. But we want to hear the opinions of like-minded Singaporeans and engage them in healthy discussion on financial topics.

And if you think you are not one of these “like-minded Singaporeans”, then you are unfortunately wrong. Financial related matters are going to affect each and everyone one of us, regardless of whether we are interested in them or not. The only difference is just how prepared you are to make the right financial decisions in life when it comes your way.

We’re not like other websites.

Firstly: We like to be proven wrong though hopefully with valid reasons.

Secondly: We disagree with our government a lot. Yet we also agree with them a lot.

Lastly & most importantly: We are not profit driven. We’re not looking to make any money out of you by selling anything. Even if you would like to buy something from us, we have nothing to sell, except what is already offered free on the website – the articles.

We don’t advocate taking out all the fun from life, just some of it. Surely foregoing 10 minutes of less fun each day playing candycrush or watching Korean drama is acceptable just to gain a little more knowledge on important financial topics? DollarsAndSense.sg bridges this gap, it empowers you, 10 minutes at a time, to understand financial topics that are pertinent to your lives. Questions about retirement, career, insurance, credit, mortgage, investing, the government, their policies and the whole gamut is available at one location at your behest.

We made a deliberate attempt to cap our article at the 10-minute range as we think this a reasonable time limit to ask our readers to forego fun in a day while still capturing their attention. We don’t want to compete with your time spent playing Candycrush. We just hope to seed a little financial knowledge among the Singapore population.

Knowledge is empowerment.

The Dollarsandsense.sg Team

 

Original photo by Benjamin Lim. Used with permission.

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