I don't have a physical piggy bank those days, but I do "invest" or lets say buy things that people at my age values. During those days, I started buying FIFA cards (From Pcakets) , Dragon Ball cards (From 20 cents card-machine). Slightly older, I am into Tamiya cars , WWF gaming cards. In contrats, today I still don't have a physical piggy bank, haha! I started buying Physical Silver coins and Gold coins for investment and leisure. Moved on to Unit Trust, Indexes, Forex, Options and finally Stocks. I don't really believe in saving monies in the past but during volunteer work at a regular old folks home and cancer foundation, many people shared with me their life regrets. Most common regrets are financial management and spending time with their loves one. I am fortunate to have value investing mindset and act on it. However that is not enough, to share knowledge to family, relative and friends is equally important. To encourage proper financial management for them to save into their own version of piggy bank is important, that would likely eliminate more than half of potential issues arising with monies disputes. There is no "right" time to start a piggy bank saving, the best time is now.

There are 14 Christmas trees sighted... Ho ho ho, merry Xmas and a happy new year people!

Surprised look when I learn new things or discover interesting stuff. Keep this going, keep me surprised! Upvote for Pikachu!

My personal finance resolutions are 1. Dig deeper into critical illness insurance (early ci), exclusion, etc. To forge a better understanding to determine which plan to buy extra for ci. 2. Diversification, Monitor and pick 3 dividend stocks to invest in. Research on respective industry of stocks and nature of revenue generation not only from balance sheet. 3. Jobs opportunities and side income jobs. To dig deeper to see if there's anything worth doing. 4. Traveling cost optimization by doing more research and staying at a cost effective accommodation and air tickets.

There are pleanty (i.e. GSC) and many others. Precious metals market in SG is dead, personally that was my first few investment for physical gold/silver, including graded ones like MS69/70 silver panda 1oz. Yearly there is a coin festival at MBS which you can visit to buy/sell/trade as well. But I have to say market is very very small with most people bleeding like myself (Entered market 5-7 years ago, bleeding ... still bleeding but not dead yet).

Didn't attend such seminars that require paying. I am building my own Dividend portfolio by researching and reading books. It doesnt take rocket science to build a simple dividend portfolio. If DIY is not your thing, go for plans instead. Even with the overheads included in the plans, it save you time so that you can focus on other things more important in life.

No straightforward answers here. I will advise to top up MA/SA to enjoy tax relief if the following are met (But not limited to): 1) You will confirm + chop reach FRS at 55 years old, with the projected increment of the minimum sum. 2) You enjoy a "good" tax rebate, meaning your income is on a higher tier tax bracket and not the 1st/2nd bracket for instance 3) You do not need the cash until you reach 55 years old (With assumption #1 is met). You should have reserve monies from other places. 4) If liquid monies is important to you, can consider SRS. At least can withdraw at a penalty for early withdrawals subjected to 100% tax for that year.

I will go for either 1) Retirement plans from Insurance companies 2) Build-my-own by buying into Bonds (30%) and Dividend stocks (70%) These 2 will help me to fund my retirement. As you mentioned your friend is a ful time freelancer, this demographic personnel usually won't put money into CPF, thus the above 2 recommendation is for your friend's consideration.

Cost comparison, likely you will lose out abit if you sell or trade in your existing ride for a new ride. You can do the maths which many people had compared before which usually result in losing monies when they buy new car and forgo the old car (~ 5 years ago on average). Not on money terms, but spending abit more money to get a new car and a guaranteed car for 10 more years, it might be worthwhile to re-consider, not on money terms but on luxury of having a new car and the certainity that you will have a car to drive for another 10 years.

1) Emergency funds set aside 2) Purchase adequate insurance coverage 3) Excess monies, go for indexing (i.e. STI ETF or ABF Bond ETF) to build some baseline portfolio before looking into individual stocks.