Finance

I am doing my Finance module this term and learned quite a lot about investment risks and returns. The whole idea is to put money in some assets/investments for a period of time and let the money grow. The interest rates offered at banks for our savings are at all time low, much lower than the infaltion rates, so putting money in the bank will only depreciate the value of our savings. The money I have in the bank today will be worth lesser in a year, and even lesser if the interest rates are going to be lower than inflation rates for the whole time. So, what do we do? We have to invest and with investments, risks of losing part or all our money will be involved. The recent stock market performance has caused many people to lose money and I am lucky that I did not hold any stocks this time. I had lost quite a lot of money in the last Asian Financial Crisis in 1997. I have been burnt so bad that I really do not have anymore courage to touch on stocks now...

At the moment, I do not have any investments except for 1 private apartment in Hong Kong and 1 in Singapore that are bought with mortgage. Hubby thinks that investing in properties is the safest kind of investments but is it true? Comparatively, investing in properties may be safer than investing in the stock market or the forex market but nothing is risk-free. There are many people in Hong Kong who have been burnt badly from speculating properties and some are still stuck with their devalued apartments. Some of these apartments will never go back to the prices that they were bought at the peak.

When we were back in Singapore over the Easter Holiday weekend, hubby and I went show-flats viewing. The private property prices have dropped >14% this quarter compared to the prices of the last quarter of last year but I still think that the prices are high...However, we are thinking of buying the unit next to our new apartment to expand into a 6 bedrooms unit for all the members in our extended family to live in together. Just hope that we can get it at a good price and make our dream come true. :)