Charges for property courses

Dear Mr Tan,

Just read your blog on some of the forex exchange training courses.

Will you be able to touch on the property investment as well? Almost everyday I see advertisements in the Straits Times promoting about property investment courses (where they claim that you can invest with little or no money and own 3 properties with 1 property). These courses are also not cheap at all. People who are unable to buy properties of their own can get together in a group and pool their resources and invest together. 

I have never attended any of these courses before. I'm not sure if this is the legal thing to do in S'pore. Please advise if you can also look into this area besides financial investment.

JL


REPLY
 I did not realize that people pay money to attend property courses as well. It seems to be another way to give away money!

Request for assistance on a bad investment

Here is a guide on the type of information that needs to be provided by the consumer who wishes to seek the assistance of Tan Kin Lian to seek compensation due to the failure of an agent or adviser to give the relevant information on a financial product.

$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.