Seedly Personal Finance Festival (Highlights): Turning Personal Finance Into A Party

What went down at Seedly Personal Finance Festival 2019?

We’re probably late to the coverage of Seedly Personal Finance Festival 2019, seeing how so many of the community members have written about their own experiences. Besides catching up on sleep, the team is still blown away by the overwhelming support that was showered upon us during the festival.

The Seedly Team cannot thank you guys enough, and we hope that the festival was fun and useful for you.

The idea behind Seedly Personal Finance Festival

The idea behind the festival is simple. It is imperative that millennials see the importance of personal finance, and that personal finance knowledge was to be delivered in a way that best suited them.

Millennials are a unique bunch. Here’s why:

• We are constantly targetted by advertisements digitally, every day
• Millennials have a short attention span
• Yet we are armed with the ability to absorb information instantaneously
• We love quick actionable checklists but hate coming up with one.
• We are into COOL THINGS
• Life’s a party for us

We also seek to approach Personal Finance with a mix of old-school and new styles. A combination of lessons learnt from past speakers who have been there done that, coupled with possible new technologies and a new style in which information is delivered.

We put that old school reminder into the design of our collateral!

Highlights of Seedly Personal Finance Festival 2019

If you have yet to kick start your personal finance journey, there is no better time than NOW!

The festival kicked-off with Kenneth Lou, Co-founder of Seedly, bringing the attendees through the Seedly Money framework.

The objectives are clean and simple: That one should be able to confidently start doing any of the 5 to-dos in the money framework stated below:

Kicking Start Your Journey To Financial Freedom – Dawn Fiona, SGBudgetBabe

Dawn Fiona, Editor of SGBudgetBabe, shared with the audience on how she managed to save $20,000 in a year.

For fresh graduates, this tiny step-by-step guide on budgeting might just be the way to get the ball rolling on your budgeting journey.

• Pay yourself first
• Open separate bank accounts to better segment your salary. (This method works best for spendthrifts and shopaholics)
• Track all your expenses, using the Seedly App of course.
• Eat cheap
• Make your own morning coffee! Say no to snacks and bubble tea!
• Think utility, not price.
• Make full use of credit card promotions (again, if you have little self-discipline, you might want to relook this)

Insurance: Cut The Fluff – Christopher Tan, MoneyOwl

One of the more important slides which Christopher Tan talked about is knowing the type of insurance you should be getting.

By identifying what you really need, you can look past the possible fluff which your agent might be trying to sell him.

How To Win The CPF Game – Loo Cheng Chuan, Founder 1M65

While most Singaporeans under the influence of social media harbour a certain degree of negativity towards the concept of CPF, this segment of the event gave new insight to how one can strategically get $1 million in his CPF by the age of 65, as did Loo and his wife themselves did.

Unlike popular beliefs, 1M65 is a strong supporter of not withdrawing from your CPF when possible. He believes that education needs to start young and that millennials need to view CPF as a money making tool.

Below are the 4 main pointers from his session.

• Internalise the power of compounding
• Always build a safe financial safety net before taking risks
• Be thrifty
• Pay the price to be rich!

Panel: Making Smarter Personal Finance Decisions for Noobs

In the first panel, we discussed the various ways to make smarter personal finance decisions. Panel speakers Christopher Tan and Loo Cheng Chuan divulged some valuable insights with the attendees.

• Christopher Tan (Executive Director of MoneyOwl)
• Loo Cheng Chuan (1M65)

The panel was moderated by Cherie Tan from Seedly.

Here are some questions that were asked and answered during the panel on our QnA platform:

• Could you touch on how you allocate funds to meet different investment goals?
• How reliable is CPF as an instrument?
• I’m servicing endowment plan today for 100 dollars a month. It will mature in 15 years. Should I give up my endowment plan which my parents bought for me?

Panel 2: How Should I Invest A Percentage of My Monthly Salary?

We resumed the second half of the day with another panel, just to get the food coma out of the way.

Want to invest but not sure how to? Our panel speakers shared the various methods you may choose to invest with your salary.

• Vikas Jain (Senior Director of Funding Societies)
• Ow Tai Zhi (Co-founder of AutoWealth Singapore)

This panel was moderated by Kenneth Lou from Seedly.

Here are some questions that were asked and answered during the panel on our QnA platform:

• I’m 26 this year and just started working, should I start with an ETF as my first investment?
• For Vikas and Taizhi, how safe are P2P investing and Robo advisors respectively?
• How do I determine my risk profile as a beginner investor and should I take on more risk in my earlier years?

A step-by-step guide to picking your first winning stock – Alvin Chow, DrWealth

Alvin may have revealed a company that might be worth investing during his session – but a huge chunk of his session boiled down to one very important formula which can help investors pick a possible first winning stock.

For investors who have done their due diligence: if you think that the Net-Net method makes a lot of sense, here it is!

How To Identify The Right Time To Buy Or Sell? – Joel Sim, MrFinanceSavy

Personally, was really hesitant about touching on Technical Analysis (TA) for this festival. This was due to a few concerns.

• Is TA suitable for new investors?
• Everybody thinks they can trade, but few actually can.

Despite these concerns, Technical Analysis is definitely something investors will come across sooner or later. And of course, the sooner the education comes along, the better.

Crazy jargon aside, Joel managed to take apart complicated concepts into very layman ones. Uptrend, Sideways, Downtrend.

Short, Sweet, Simple, Seedly!

Building Your Passive Income (Shake Leg, Collect Money) – Victor Chng, The Fifthperson

Shake leg and collect money. Sounds like the ultimate Singapore dream hor?

Here are 3 criteria to choose an income stock:

• How consistent is the dividend?
• Sustainability of dividend
• What is the business model of the company?

Panel: Hacks And Tips To Successful Investing

In this third panel, we discussed some hacks and useful tips for successful investing. Our panel speakers revealed several tips and tricks in this session.

• Joel Sim (founder of Mr Finance Savvy and has over 10 years of trading experience)
• Alvin Chow (CEO of DrWealth who developed the Factor Based Investing CNAV strategy)
• Victor Chng (is an equity investor and co-founder of The Fifth Person)

This panel was moderated by Ming Feng from Seedly.

Here are some questions that were asked and answered during the panel on our QnA platform:

• As an investor who just started out, what type of investment strategy should I use? (eg. income investing, growth investing, value investing etc.)?
• Is it advisable for me to hold on to my savings until a stock market crash to invest?
• Difference between trading and investing?

Financial Independence At A Young Age Is Not A Dream! – Christopher Ng, Trees of Prosperity

Christopher took the stage and immediately crushed the dreams of many millennials. But with good reason.

That was before he painted them a NEW Singaporean dream and a more realistic one at that.

• The ultimate goal of investing is to cope with unforeseen problems Millennials face as they reach middle age.
• You can retire early if you build up your financial knowledge, find ways to earn more, spend less and invest better.
• The surest way to retire early: focus on mastering passive income. Do this by creating your first brick that produces $100 passive income every month.

QnA with Christopher Ng and SG Budget Babe

In this fourth panel, we had a QnA session with Christopher Ng and SG Budget Babe. Sick of working every day? Want to retire early? If that is you, Christopher Ng and SG Budget Babe shared two very varying experiences based on their own life.

• Christopher Ng (author of Growing Your Tree of Prosperity)
• Dawn Fiona (is an ordinary lady striving to achieve financial freedom in Singapore before the age of 45)

This Q&A was moderated by Kenneth Fong from Seedly.

Here are some questions that were asked and answered during the panel on our QnA platform:

• How much of your salary did you set aside to get started on building your portfolio? What about for average Singaporeans?
• Assuming u are truly financially independent at 62 yrs old, what would u do on a daily basis in SG? It seems boring to retire in SG…?
• How do I know when to sell a stock? Should I go based on the percentage of profit made? Same for losses, how much percentage loss is a gauge for me to sell?

The ultimate question to throw back at the attendees of the event will be, “Are you going to take action from what you’ve learnt?”.

To the Seedly Personal Finance Community, thank you for riding on this personal finance journey with us. Let us all grow together as one from this point on!

See you at the next one! 😉