101 investment choices

There are so many things we can invest in these days. Basically, it's a whole gamut of stuff including stuff like wines, art, watches, jewelry and antiques. Heck, I collected comics when I was in school because a friend of mine told me how they could appreciate in value over time! The comics are probably still mouldering away at home.

For the average person, there is no need to be knowledgeable in all or even most forms of investments and there is definitely no need to diversify into 101 areas in investment. I am quite contented to have the following:

1. Bank deposits
2. CPF
3. SRS
4. Foreign currencies (RMB and IDR)
5. Gold buillion coins
6. Single Premium Endowment Policies
7. Regular Premium Endowment Policies
8. Regular Premium Life Policies
9. Unit trusts
10. Equities (High yielding types mostly.)
11. Real Estate

I am able to manage these on my own and, in aggregate, if they outperform the returns from fixed deposits and outpace inflation, I'm happy. To me, investment is not a complicated matter. It's quite simple.

Keep things simple. Don't complicate things for ourselves. Land banking? Wine? I don't need these. There are many money making opportunities with the tools I have now. That's enough for me.

Things Singaporean: SRS, CPF-OA and CPF-SA.

As long as a person is paying income tax, he should start a SRS account and contribute to it yearly so that he pays less income tax (or none at all). For me, it's that simple.

What is done with the money in the SRS account is another question. For me, I've always put the money in single premium endowment policies, shortest tenure being 8 years and the longest being 20 years. They have guaranteed returns of 3% p.a. to 4% p.a. The returns are not fantastic but I like how everything is stable and guaranteed (with insurance coverage thrown in). Beats FDs anyway.

I didn't start using money in my CPF and SRS accounts for investments until after Oct 08. Over the years, I stuck to my believe that if everything else fails, I would still have my CPF and SRS intact for my retirement.

However, after Oct 08, I changed my mind. Things were just too cheap and tantalising. I used my CPF OA to buy shares in F&N, SPH and Suntec REIT. All liquidated and now I'm purely in SPH.

I even utilised 10% of my CPF SA to buy units in a Singapore equities/bond unit trust in December 08 (since I cannot use SA to buy shares) and that made 9% in just 6 months, 4.5x more than if I were to leave it in the SA. If I did not liquidate the unit trust, I would have made a lot more. Well, it was a new experience and my SA money is sacred to me.

My CPF SA is now my opportunity fund. If the STI sinks to support, I'm pouring my SA into the same unit trust. I fully agree with Buffet, Faber and Rogers that the worst thing to be in now is cash and I fully believe that the recovery is genuine and things will only get better in the next two years. CPF OA, SA and SRS are all cash. Must put them to work.