Saturday 2 March 2013

My Poor Fixed Deposits

After I started working, I followed my parent's old path on savings.  Due to busy work schedules and occasional regional duties, I did not have much time to manage my finance actively.  I saved whatever I could and deposited the money into bank Fixed Deposit accounts.  At one point, I have 150K in FDs.

However, the FD interest rates kept dropping and FD was no longer the "cash cow" that it was in the old days.  Over the years, the interest rate finally dropped below the inflation rate and it became obvious that my money got eroded just by idling in the bank.

I tried to look around and there were several options:
1. Stock Investment to gain regular dividends.
2. Endowments and long term saving plans
3. Unit Trusts and Investment Linked Products.
4. Bonds
5. Property
6. Structured deposits offered by the banks (which they said "have high returns" and  are "perfectly safe" --- how could those giant US banks and the trusty old Lehman Brothers fail?  They tried to convince me into buying)
7. Multi-level Marketing.

I will blog on my experience with the above options in later posts.

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