$5,000 for a forex training course

An investor shared this experience of attending a foreign exchange training course. He paid $5,000 for a 3 day training course. The course could have been completed in half the time, but was stretched for 3 days to justify the high fee. He found the training techniques taught at the course to be not successful.

He later obtained a training DVD from another source, for free. It teaches him how to trade using candlesticks. He found this to be more useful. 

Foreign exchange training courses - misleading statements

If you have attended a foreign exchange training course and have paid several thousand dollars, and found later that you were misled, please write to kinlian@gmail.com. I am helping a friend to lodge a complaint about these courses and more evidence is needed.

Save on interest payment

It is important to have an emergency fund that can be used for your unexpected payments. This can save you a lot of interest payment.

Suppose you need $5,000 in an emergency - for medical expenses or disruption in your income. If you borrow $5,000 on your credit card, you have to pay interest of $100 a month (2%) on the roll over. If it takes you 2 years to make the repayment, you would have spend an additional $2,400 in interest payment, on top of the $5,000 that you borrowed (and have to repay).

If you have emergency fund that you can draw down, you can save on the hefty interest payment. But you should have the discipline to repay the borrowing back into your emergency fund - just like you have to repay an external lender.

You should  build an emergency fund of 6 months of your earnings. If you earn $5,000 a month, your emergency fund should be $30,000. You should keep the emergency fund in liquid investment, such as fixed deposit or short term bond. You should avoid investing it into a life insurance policy or structured product where there is a high upfront cost (which becomes a penalty on early withdrawal).

Remember - building up the emergency fund is your top priority - above buying a car or other discretionary expenses.

Foreign exchange training courses

Dear Mr. Tan,
I am a Singaporean PR with a background in the financial services sector. I am quite appalled at much of what goes on here in terms of mis-selling of products and services by the finance-related sectors. I am glad that you have managed to take on some of these issues and wish that the various authorities here in Singapore would be more active.

For the last couple of years I have had various dealings with such groups as MAS, ABS and CASE in my efforts to have some of these bad practises stopped and have had periodic successes.

However there is one issue that I just can't seem to make any headway on that I feel is something that somebody really needs to tackle and that is the selling of "get-rich-quick" type foreign exchage trading courses. This activity has been going on for years here and is essentially an on-going fraud that takes place in full public view, most notably via advertisements in the Straits Times.

The groups behind these schemes have made millions and millions of dollars here carrying out an activity which would be banned in most countries. It saddens me every time I open the newspaper when I see these advertisements because I know that it means yet more people will today be conned out of their hard-earned savings, or taken into debt, in order to attend one of these courses.

I would like to urge you to try to tackle this issue. I think that if you could do so you would be doing the Singaporean people a great service. Many millions have been swindled, but lets not let this practise go on for yet more years. I have realised that my efforts with the MAS, CASE, ABS etc are coming to nothing in this area so I realise it needs somebody of your status to be involved in this if anything is to change.

Please let me know if you would be interested to look into this issue and I would be very happy to help in any way I can starting by briefing you on what I believe are the illegal practises carried out by these groups in full public eye,

Concerned

Social inequality in Singapore

Yee Jenn Jong is a non-constituency Member of Parliament from the Workers' Party. He writes regularly on social and economic issues. Read this article on social inequality in Singapore.

Social insurance - to pay for large medical bills

My friend asked me to help publicise an appeal for a little girl called Chloe who has a rare disorder called Pompe Disease and needs $200,000 to $300,000 a year to be treated. This is a lot of money and is likely to be beyond the means of compassionate, ordinary people.

This issue raises the following questions:

• Should something be done to help people like Chloe who are borne with a rare disorder? 
• Should the state take this burden from the parents?
• Can a solution be found using private insurance?

I must first rule out private insurance as most people are not likely to take up insurance against the unexpected and undefined risks of life - until it happened. There are other problems associated with the profit motive of insurance companies, leading to dispute on claim settlement or unfair rejection of legitimate claims.

The best approach is through social insurance, i.e. insurance provided by the state. It should cover all  eligible people and be funded by taxation or compulsory contribution (that can be adjusted based on actual experience) or a mix of both sources of funding.

Some issues to be considered by the state are:

• Should the social insurance pay for expensive treatment that boost the profit of pharmaceutical companies?
• Should there be a cap on the amount that are to be funded by the state?

Some possible approaches that are helpful are:

• The compensation should be for the actual cost of treatment and can be subject to a cap of say $100,000 and should be used under proper guidance.
• The cap may not be sufficient to meet the needs of serious cases, but it does help to provide some relief to the parents. It may be possible for the pharmaceutical company to reduce the cost of the drugs. 
• More importantly, there could be many cases where this type of compensation would be helpful to the parents.

It may be difficult to design a social insurance scheme, but this should not stop us from giving attention to this matter. If nothing is done, then the burden has to be met by the parents or family members (who may not have the financial means) or the patient will not be treated due to lack of funds. 

It is not a good approach to leave these problems to charity. Apart from the high cost of collecting and accounting for the donations, there is the risk that some of these cases may be exploited by unscrupulous people who wish to make a personal profit from the effort. (However, in Chloe's case, I find that the donations will be administered by the hospital).

Tan Kin Lian

Mobile optimized website

Dear Mr Tan,
My company is launching an exciting mobile marketing platform to local companies and entrepreneurs to help them reach out to large and increasing mobile market in Singapore.

Qrion Entreprise specializes in designing mobile-optimised websites that can be saved as mobile apps by customers.

We would like to seek for a business opportunity with your esteemed organisation to market your events, mobile applications and book publications on a mobile platform that people can access while they are on the move. One of the key benefits of this mobile platform is that interested parties can call/ SMS/email the organizer directly from their mobile phones.

We strongly believe that harnessing mobile platform to publish events will gain popularity as more people are getting themselves connected to the internet wirelessly through portable devices such as smart phones and tablets.

Qrion provides the enabling platform for event organisers to design their mobile websites with our easy-to-use Mobile Site Creator and Content Management System. We can also design mobile websites upon customer request.

You can view our sample mobile website indicated below (Note: please view by smart phone or tablet):

- Event Publicity (http://eventhub.mviso.com)
- Products/Services Showcase (http://raffles.mviso.com and http://meiosis.mviso.com)

If it is convenient, we will also appreciate very much if you can mention our mobile marketing services in your public blog.

William Ng
Director
Qrion Enterprise