Insights from Financial Planning talk by Mr Tan Kin Lian

- Buy Term Life Insurance for 25 years, after which your children would have grown up.
Beyond that, you can pretty much rely on your savings. Major illnesses are covered by Medishield.

- Watch out for this product (not available in SGP yet): Decreasing Term Life Insurance, useful because it cuts your sum insured as you get older and thus your premium. May sound counter-intuitive but explanation given by Mr Tan was surprisingly logical. An insight that would only occur to us when we reach his age. ie. By then we are not that far away from death and our children no longer needs to be taken care of by us.

- Preferably, accumulate 0.5 million SGD , before accounting for depreciation and inflation, by the time you retire, usually around 65. This works out to about $1000 per month assuming you start work at 25. This will be your rainy day fund.

- Life insurance amount should be at least equal to 5 years of earnings. ie If you earn $2500 per month, $2500 x 12 x 5 = $150,000. More if you can afford and of course more if you earn more.
That way, your family can still function even without you around.

- Go for what you can afford. Forget about the $1 million life insurance your agent told you about. If you are just earning $2,000 a month or less, align your expectations accordingly. Never let the premium become a source of financial burden. It's meant to provide protection, NOT undue stress unnecessarily.

Finally, the one i liked best:

-Once you are very old, say 70+ or 80, medical insurance become way too expensive and are really not necessary anymore. For one, you have medishield. Then again, let's say you are down with some critical illness say cancer. Would you want to go for an operation that cost $250,000 yet the success rate is not 100%. Many old people would rather die in the arms of their loved ones at home than on the operating theatre or on the hospital bed. By then, it's just watching the days go by. 一天过一天。Why would you want to get a health insurance when you are not even planning to go for any major operations in the first place? Minor specialist treatments costing between a few hundreds to a few thousands can easily be taken out of your rainy day funds which have already been consciously built up.

I thought this was really insightful. What he said made sense. When you turn old, your mindset about life will take a drastic turn. Many things become transient. Not withstanding that the risk of operation increases proportionate to age. Of course, there will be people who argue that we should seek to live a longer life so that we can do more fulfilling things; we can still contribute to the society. I don't deny that. But if we were really sincere about doing these, we should have started when we were young and well. Not wait till we are old and frail. No time is an excuse. It's the heart that wants to do something that counts. Just some personal thoughts~