Saturday, April 25, 2009

Peace of Mind in Uncertain Times

The cauldron over unscrupulous bankers who preyed on the gullibility of our seniors to buy the high-risk DBS high notes linked to Lehman Brothers is still resonating in my head. How can I forget especially when the world continues to reel from the effects of the financial meltdown since Sep 08?

It was in this backdrop that I recently attended a talk which was highly geared towards gaining customers to go into land investment in other countries - such as USA, Canada. The speaker informed that this exotic investment instrument used to be the play thing of the rich, multi-millionaries whose wealth has now been whittled down by the global financial meltdown.

But I am not convinced. In this austere times, I am wary, very wary to leave my hard-earned money to some self-acclaimed "expertise". And frankly speaking, the short less than one hour session did little justice to his experience. The speaker made some predictions which were not in my language. And hey, did we not read that the current downturn was caused by financial derviatives shrouded under layers and layers of secrey, I would need this guy to give me a better education on how this investment work. But his continued repeat of his achievements were a little put-off to me. It reminded me of Bernie Madoff - "Hey, I am a busy man. There are scores of people waiting to see me."

I have read countless self-help financial books that I need to do my homework. Until now, I have yet to find little pockets of time to do so and hence have been engaging the help of financial planners. As my friends recently told me, this does not make any sense, we are paying someone to lose money.

Until I make time to educate myself, I will have to be content with the zero interest rate given out by banks....

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