The Thirteen of March 2010

It has been ages since the last update. Reason? Lazy. So what brings me here again? I actually need to pen down my thoughts and ideas as I am afraid I may forget them although they are still very fresh in my head.
This afternoon, after breakfast at Serangoon North at our favourite stall in one of the coffee-shops, Joshua was walking around the living room, trying to destroy anything he got his hands on.
So I had no choice but to leave the computer to attend to him. I came across this AIA calendar/journal in Joshua's toy box, and thought that maybe I could just write something down while keeping an eye on Joshua.
For starters, I had actually terminated all my AIA policies except one hospital shield plan that I bought for Josh. Penny and I have ours covered by Aviva. I also got three of us group term insurance, paying around 30 bucks monthly. This one is not a bad deal because SAF tied up with Aviva to give soldiers affordable basic insurance. Now my son is actually disturbing me by grabbing my pen(how rude) haha. Maybe this could be an example for him to learn since he likes to imitate what Penny and I do.

Investment and Trading

One day I was playing my PSP when I suddenly felt like I had enough of these things and wasting my life. Everyday for me is like going to work, looking forward to weekends, looking forward to blockbuster movies, looking forward to the next pay day, or bonus pay-out, playing Facebook games, looking after my son, spending time with my wife and having tea with her. That's about it. I'm not saying that doing all these things are a waste of time, and I should continue doing these things because they mean quality time spent with my family. But, I felt that I need to wake up from restlessness and "sleep". There seems to be no longer any purpose in my life.

I chanced upon a book from my drawer, one which I took from my brother-in-law, and started reading. Its about investment and making money from the stock markets. I did not stop. I read everything, except on the portion on "how to make money using options". Because I didn't understand how it works.

A lot of things to mention, but i try to bring up them slowly, one at a time.
The book actually introduced not only investment and trading, but financial habits that we should adopt in order to retire comfortably and not get in debt.
One which I am convicted to do is to put away 100 bucks monthly to buy 31 shares of STI ETF(that was in January 2010 when it was trading at 2,900).

That was after I went to Poems to open a trading account and signed up for the SBplan. A goal which I set up for myself and intended to keep to it or increase the amounts if I have the means to in future.

I read a lot these few months. Going to the library to borrow financial books, like those "Trading for Dummies" and etc. Websites like investopedia and optionsxpress became my "must-visit" sites daily.

I was very impressed and even more determined and "charged up" to get my feet wet in Investment, until a point where I realised that one would need money to make money. I haven't actually pumped in cash for trading except for the one mentioned above, basically because I still have a substantial amount of debt which needs to lowered, and close to zero amount of cash in my savings account.

And so I plan to clear those debt asap and also continue to learn about investing and trading.
One of the very important things mentioned by those books and websites is that we should always try trading using a demo or virtual account for 6 months before we actually commit real cash in to the market.

Currently I have several positions in my Virtual account using optionsxpress. to be cont.