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  • Life changing experience

    People tell me that parenthood is a life-changing experience. I don’t think I doubted that, but it did not exactly change my life the way I thought it would have — at least not yet.

    It is certainly tough caring for a newborn since the usual sleep/eat/poop cycle is approximately bi-hourly. I am not the type who can nap; I will wake up from a short nap feeling terrible. I cover night duties, so as a result I do not sleep until day break. If I am lucky, I get to sleep at 5 a.m.

    I end up sleeping very little each day. But just being tired is not what I would call life-changing. I have certainly been through times where I slept very little. Like going to Army/BMT, the time comes and you suck it up.

    Before the baby, most of my nights were spent working late, having dinner with friends, watching TV, busybody-ing on social media, etc. The arrival of baby meant I had to be home early and stay home for most parts of the evening. There’s only so much TV and social media I can feed on before I get bored, so I decided to spend my waking moments learning new things.

    During my army days, I spent free time reading books/online articles or creating stuff — software, music scores, etc. I learned a lot.

    So over the past month I started making a list of things I wanted to try/learn, and attempted them one by one. Baby time is great for reading or watching training videos because my hands are usually busy carrying or feeding the baby.

    Some of these action items actually required money, i.e. I had to buy/pay for stuff, and that was the biggest difference from my army days when I was broke.

    Money probably made some of those things easier/faster; but irregardless, I believe progress can still be made.

    Social time can really dilute you. I probably learned more (apart from parenting) in the last month than I have in the entire of last year.

  • The greatest gift to life

    The greatest gift to life is a new life.

    Born May 25, 2015 at 9.06am.

    printf(“Hello, world!\n”);

  • The coin toss

    There are always two sides to a coin. In a debate or discussion, the narrow minded will only try to reinforce a single-sided discussion. Pay attention to those who see both sides of every coin and have an opinion on both. Such people are usually razor sharp in their thoughts and observations. Learn from them, because these people go far.

  • Gingerbread Cookies for X’mas

    I made three attempts at Gingerbread cookies using this recipe, but I think some of the measurements were off, e.g. our eggs are smaller than those in the US and our measurement units are different, so here’s a Singapore version.

    I’ve also eliminated/simplified some of the ingredients, e.g. used self-raising flour to eliminate the need to use regular flour and baking powder/soda.

    An absolute newbie should be able to bake these!

    Servings: Lots of tiny bite-sized cookies.

    Ingredients

    • 300g self raising flour
    • 1/4 teaspoon salt
    • 1 tablespoon ground ginger (add more if you like more “spice”)
    • 3/4 tablespoon ground cinnamon (add more if you like more “spice”)
    • 60 grams unsalted butter
    • 130g brown sugar (NOT raw sugar)
    • 90g molasses sugar
    • 1 teaspoon vanilla essence
    • 1 regular egg (the local egg you buy in 10s, not the “large” egg)

    Equipment

    • Large mixing bowl (for wet ingredients and final mix of wet + dry)
    • Medium mixing bowl (for dry ingredients)
    • Whisk
    • Aluminium foil
    • Measuring spoons
    • Digital weighing scale (accurate to the gram)
    • Oven, or airfryer — see instructions below

    Dough Preparation

    1. In the medium mixing bowl, prepare dry ingredients by mixing flour + salt + ground ginger + ground cinnamon.
    2. In the large mixing bowl, prepare wet ingredients by first beating butter + brown sugar + egg on low/medium speed until well blended.
    3. Add molasses + vanilla to wet mix essence and continue to mix until well blended.
    4. Here’s the part you need to pay attention to. Start mixing the dry ingredients into the wet. Pour just enough dry ingredients to cover the wet mix, then start folding. Continue doing this until you feel that the dough texture is correct. You should have a little bit of flour left behind. Remember —  you can add, but you cannot remove!
    5. Let the dough sit, or put into a fridge for around 30 minutes to an hour.

    Baking

    1. Meanwhile start preheating your oven to approx 180 degrees celsius in non-convection mode. Air fryer — reduce to 160 degrees celsius (I have yet to try, but will try it maybe tomorrow).
    2. Start rolling the dough into tiny 4g (small) or 6g (large) balls. You need to use an accurate weighing scale for this.
    3. Line the baking tray with aluminum foil, lightly flour the surface to prevent sticking.
    4. Flatten the dough with a flat-bottom cup to make a cookie. It should not be too thick as it will rise in the oven.
    5. Space cookies about 4-5cm apart.
    6. Bake cookies between 7 to 10 minutes. Shorter = softer cookies. Small cookies (4 grams) are OK to remove around 8 minutes. Large cookies (6 grams) should start getting crispy near 9-10 minutes.
    7. After baking, quickly use a thin spatula or knife to flip the cookies and allow them to cool.
    8. Bake one batch at a time, let them sit for a while before trying them. They will turn crunchy once they cool. Don’t eat them hot or you’ll get a sore throat!

    Have fun baking! Let me know how your cookies turn out!

  • Planning your property purchase

    Many people do not know that planning for a property purchase can take up to a year or more. Without proper planning, many people are stuck after making the wrong move.

    Here are some common mistakes: –

    Buying a property before knowing your budget.

    The biggest hurdle when purchasing a property is usually the loan. Not many people I know have a million bucks floating around. Most people fail to get this right because they assume they are able to obtain a loan.

    Using the current LTV of 80% and TDSR of 60%, the income required to buy a $1m apartment ($800K loan over 30 years) is around $6K assuming no other commitments. If you have some credit cards and a car loan, this figure could easily balloon to $8K.

    So what happens if you bought a new property and paid the 1% option-to-purchase (OTP) fee ($10K for a $1m property) and is unable to obtain a loan? The answer is simple: you’ll forfeit the 1% and the seller can now throw a party.

    Buying a new property before selling the current one.

    This is very common. What happens if you can’t sell your current property in time? You will be made to pay the additional 20% downpayment (your LTV is reduced to 60% from the original 80% you were expecting).

    For those hoping to apply for an ABSD remission, sorry. It’s gone.

    So why does a property purchase planning take up to a year?

    That’s because if you are unable to obtain a loan (especially self-employed), it will take up to a year to get your year-end tax filings corrected. A typical loan approval-in-principal process can take up to one month. Then you’ll start selling your current property before buying a new one to avoid any of the pitfalls I mentioned above.

    Happy house hunting.

     

  • How to buy a cheap(er) car: Will COE fall in 2015?

    We have an old car in the family expiring next year, and I’m sure everybody out there is wondering the same — will COE fall?

    My personal opinion is that it may fall a wee bit (Category A at around $50K) but may not fall further than that.

    Vehicle population growth rate has been reduced steadily from 3% to 1.5% to 1% and now 0.5%. I believe it may be further reduced next year, and it may possibly be capped at close to 0% growth because that’s really the limits of our infrastructure and limited land space.

    So if you are in such a situation, what’s the best way to get a cheaper car if you really need one?

    It’s actually very simple, but there’s one catch: you’ll need to pay fully in cash (no leverage).

    The trick is to buy a car with 1 year or less left on the clock, and renew when you think it’s right.

    Take for example a relatively new Jan 2013 Toyota Altis selling at close to $100K. The depreciation is about $12.5K/yr.

    If you bought an old Aug 2005 Toyota Altis at around $17K and renewed the COE (assuming current price at $66K), you will pay $17K + $66K = $83K for around 128 months of usage. This works out to a depreciation of only $7.8K/yr.

    No doubt older cars will also come with rising road tax (capped at 150%) and rising maintenance costs, and possibly even poorer fuel economy, but with the savings of almost $5K/yr you could spend that on an engine overhaul and still have spare change for a small holiday.

    If you feel that such a hefty sum of money can be better used to invest, then there’s only one way to leverage: long time owners of private properties can consider a mortgage term loan (using property as collateral) to partially finance COE renewal.

    Even if interest rates rise to 3%+ it may still be cheaper than a conventional vehicle loan because a mortgage loan is a reducing interest loan while a vehicle loan is a fixed interest loan.

    Business owners with overdraft facilities can consider too, if the vehicle is to be used for business purposes.

    I do not encourage taking a loan on the full value of COE. Although any unused amount of COE is fully redeemable, interests can get quite hefty, especially when OD interests are around 5-6%.