ST_women

May 25, 2005
Some thoughts on money - from a part-time pauper

by CYP

YOU might have met one or more of those kinds of people in social situations who ask: 'Do you know where you will be - financially - in five years?'

Or 'Will you have money working for you in a way that would let you retire by your 45th birthday?'
I'm not the sort to ask these personal questions. To me, they are acceptable only when asked by one's spouse or financial consultant. I have only one word for folk who ask this kind of questions: Annoying.
They are smug that they know where they will be in five years and that they will have money working for them in a way that would let them retire by their 45th birthday - and, worst of all, they talk like their way is the only way to go.
Since I don't belong in that camp, I got to thinking about where I stood on this.
Frankly, I turn cold reading about people who declare that they have got it all lined up - to make their first million by age 30, get married by 32 and retire at 40, having somehow also managed to grow a (meaningful) relationship and become a mum or dad along the way.
I lead a less-planned life. It seems enough for me to have some savings and a few insurance policies here and there - and occasionally realise that I've got more month than money left.
It makes life more ... interesting.
Yes, I do occasionally cast a querying glance at the future and all the surprises it holds, but life is also about the here and now and all its realness.
Sure, most of us can probably afford to put aside a couple hundred bucks a month in anticipation of a future, as-yet unknown emergency or luxury, but one can't deny the hedonistic pleasure of buying a friend a great meal, a trinket from Tiffany's and giving a surprise angpow to Mum or to an old folks' home - all on the same day.
Or the pleasure of knowing that one's credit card bills are a lot smaller the month after that - general caution spiced with occasional splurges is how I go about things.
Still, at my age, thoughts turn to retirement. I'll be 45 later this year and I sure as hell won't be in retirement by then, but I do wonder (not worry) now when that will happen and whether I will be well provided for enough to live comfortably when a steady source of income is gone.
Of course, 'comfortably' is pretty subjective. Think about what you earn now, and what you would need to be 'comfortable' when you retire - in terms of the value of the dollar when you retire, mind you.
So if you earn, say $4,000 now and reckon you can be 'comfortable' with $2,800 when you retire, the $2,800 of today will probably buy quite a bit less when you do retire.
CPF savings? Don't count on that to see you through old age. Most of us are using the bulk of it to service mortgages, so there will probably not be enough in there - especially for people who end up living beyond 75.
You might think of buying insurance as a form of savings, but you might also want to think about committing too much of your take-home pay to paying for premiums.
For me, to not be able to spend on something today because my money has been budgeted for paying premiums is not the way to go. A like-minded (but richer) friend once told me that if one puts more than 10 per cent of one's take-home pay into insurance premiums, it's too much.
So the moral of the story here seems to be: Buy some, but not too much.
For what is insurance, after all? It is a bulwark against what might happen. And this is the chink in your armour that insurance agents will exploit - your not knowing that you might need cash for that horrible emergency that will creep up and bite you on your behind.
Insurance is also a means to 'make your money work for you'. That's why agents either frighten you about what might happen in the future (see preceding paragraph) or they draw fancy charts that project fatter outcomes than if you kept your cash in a savings account or in a biscuit tin under your bed.
I've never met an agent who tells me I have enough insurance.
But I think it is a good idea to buy some insurance for hospitalisation and 'dreaded diseases' if one has ageing parents.
My reasons are quite simple. The Medisave component of our CPF savings would probably be used to pay for our parents' hospital bills, for, like it or not, our parents - aged anywhere from their 50s and up - are likely to fall ill and may not have that much in their Medisave.
And if money goes there, what else is left if we ourselves are struck down? This week's news about Kylie Minogue having cancer at age 36 will do wonders to snuff out any of our feelings of invincibility.
Hardly anybody falls sick and dies of 'natural causes' any more.
We can't guarantee our employers will pick up our medical bills either. What if the employer decides that your illness is going to be too long-term and costly and retrenches you?
So maybe one should review one's resources in this area and buy - some - products from a friendly insurance agent. Listen to him and your own needs but don't buy all his hokum.
I wouldn't want to plan my life to death and carry the equivalent of a soldier's full-pack containing all my life's plans and financial arrangements.
Just give me a smallish backpack. I'd walk lighter, enjoy the trip more and roll with what comes.

March 15, 2005
You've come a long way, SDU (by Chiang Yin Pheng)
THE Social Development Unit (SDU) is 21 this year, all grown up, and oh, so different from what it was like at its inception.

People used to snigger at this Government-backed matchmaking agency for graduates as help tossed out to the Single, Desperate and Ugly. Few wanted to admit to going for its activities.
Nowadays, people are quipping that SDU members are Sexy, Desirable and Unique.
Take a look at the agency's website here and you'>On offer are courses on how to dance the Argentine tango, do yoga and start a business. Or you may want to go for an overnight screening marathon of Korean drama shows, high tea or a steamboat dinner; or you may want to try out 'silent dating' or sign up for computer matchmaking.
In whatever form, these are all opportunities for the agency's members to mingle, and these activities can be had at subsidised fees, which, together with membership dues, are all payable through Giro too, thank you.
In other words, it's tax-payer funded networking, good for making contacts who might be useful on the professional front, for finding like-minded friends and yes, for finding a potential spouse in a by-the-way fashion.
What a difference 21 years make. Ask me. I was there when SDU was born, in somewhat awkward fashion.
SDU began by putting its feelers out to unmarried graduates in the civil service, where I worked for most of the 80s. My colleagues at the time and I, fresh graduates in our early 20s, were all feeling a little sheepish about having been singled out by then Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew as the nation's 'problem'.
In 1983, he had chided our kind, saying that not enough of us were getting married, and that the women among us were insisting on 'marrying up' (that is, getting hitched only to guys doing better than we were) and then putting off having babies or not having them at all.
The upshot of this treaded the shaky ground of eugenics: Fewer babies by graduates meant less brain power and fewer leaders to keep the nation chugging.
The weighty issue of the nation's sustainability aside, my colleagues and I sat down in a hall within the then National Library in Stamford Road to fill out a lengthy multiple-choice questionnaire that poked into what we looked for in a spouse and even whether we were in a steady relationship at the time.
The SDU was set up in 1984, shortly after that Inquisition. Memberships were duly handed out and a whole slew of activities organised.
Within the ministries in the civil service, 'social development officers' - usually married - were given the job of sussing out which graduates 'needed help'.
Pamphlets listing activities were handed out. My in-tray was given a miss because I had declared in the questionnaire that I was in a steady relationship at the time.
My colleagues - mostly 20-somethings - signed up and went on these activities. The going joke at the time was that they were trying to 'get hitched' - to take a leaf from the headline of this newspaper's report of PM Lee's speech.
Some in their late 30s or older, however, were repeatedly unsuccessful in their applications. They were invariably told these events were already 'full'. The explanation came soon enough: SDU said it was focusing its resources on younger members who had a higher likelihood of getting married. It was like telling these senior singles that they were no-hopers!
Two years later, shortly after I split up with my then-boyfriend, those pamphlets mysteriously started appearing in my in-tray. (SDU didn't have a website then.) The office grapevine must have given the resident social development officer news of my 'available-again' status, I reckoned.
For a lark, I went to one of those 'tea dances' at the Mandarin Hotel's nightspot, The Kasbah, with my colleague, K. That afternoon's event was to leave us laughing for a long time afterwards - and even now, which is why I've decided to talk about this - about how much like a cattle market it was.
We turned up duly at The Kasbah's entrance and were told by SDU officials to pick a table number by drawing lots from a container.
We were to learn that there was nothing random about this exercise when we insisted on being at the same table. An SDU official simply reached into the bowl and fished out two lots marked 2A and 2B.
'Go sit at Table 2, please', she said.
We found the table to be a low round one with four seats. It didn't take us long to realise that the guys were being allowed to sail in and sit at any table they wished.
How gauche. The drawing of lots was simply to ensure that every table had its complement of two women!
Soon, two fellows arrived (separately) at our table and took the remaining seats. The one who sticks in my mind even now looked like a Singapore Everyman, bespectacled and just a tad awkward.
'Hi. My name is Steven,' he ventured stiffly, sticking his hand out for a handshake. He was an engineer, is all I can recall about him.
He didn't say much else through the afternoon. Didn't drink. Didn't smoke. Didn't dance to Madonna and the whirling disco ball.
Even when K and I made light of how the guys didn't have to draw table numbers while the girls had to, he couldn't be drawn to talk or even laugh about the 'situation'.
Over the next couple of years, I was to marvel at the SDU's creativity.
An invitation to tour Japan for a month came from the Japanese government to Singapore in 1989. The Japanese, ever the gracious hosts, wanted to show 24 of Singapore's civil servants the Land of Cherry Blossoms, ostensibly to oil the wheels of cooperation down the road, when these individuals went up the ranks in public service.
SDU stepped in and decreed that the all-expenses trip was to be only for unattached civil servants who were its members and aged 30 and under, and that the group was to comprise 12 men and 12 women.
Convenient, really. SDU didn't have to do or spend anything to throw 24 young people together for holiday at Japan's expense. Who was to say Cupid wouldn't shoot some arrows?
As it turned out, romance bloomed between at least two people and they are now married and with children.
I came back from the trip with no boyfriend but with $800 in spending money blown on Japanese souvenirs, including a single, pinkish Mikimoto pearl threaded on a gold chain.
SDU was, in the mean time, building up its register of members, even as it released yearly figures to the press of how many among its members tied the knot. The figure after 21 years stands at 34,000.
Today, the SDU is located in a colonial bungalow in a very nice part of town, still going about its task.
If the website is anything to go by, things are less coy, and dating through the SDU isn't a skeleton in one's closet. In fact, it's regarded as the smart thing to do for networking.
The range of activities and services has expanded to the point where SDU has 12 business 'partners' to take care of the logistics of organising events to get people together, to see the joys of marriage and to get on with it early.
It has become a well-oiled military mission, no more awkward shots in the dark, no more furtiveness.
The website offers an online forum where people exchange views on dating and get their questions on relationships and love answered by an Agony Uncle.
For those who don't like the idea of being matchmade by a computer, SDU offers a one-to-one personalised introduction to someone who could be a life partner.
Those who have gotten married with help from SDU openly tell their stories and show their pictures.
Stuck for a birthday gift for an unhitched friend? Get him or her an SDU membership. It can be a thoughtful gift if marriage figures somewhere on his/her horizon, the website suggests.
All in, getting married is seen as something to be worked at consciously. The road to that end-point also happens to be dotted with self-improvement classes, opportunities to grow as a person and to climb the career ladder.
My, SDU, at 21, you've come a long way.
Chiang Yin Pheng, the Deputy Editor of ST Interactive, found her Other Half after leaving the civil service and without SDU. Are any of you out there active in SDU?Email her your recent experiences.

March 11, 2005

The many facets of the Asian woman

By Ong Soh Chin
Senior Writer

THERE are 1.5 billion women in Asia. So it is no wonder that the world's marketeers are waking up to their vast economic potential.

But cracking this nut is going to be difficult for two reasons: One, there is not enough information available, and two, there is no such thing as a definitive Asian woman.
These points are evident from the survey by MasterCard International, on women's advancement in the Asia-Pacific region, launched earlier this week. MasterCard plans more reports on women's consumer habits which will be released later this year.
The advancement survey compared the socio-economic level of women to men in 13 markets: Singapore, Malaysia, Australia, China, Vietnam, Japan, Korea, New Zealand, Philippines, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Thailand and Indonesia.
Four key indicators were used: Participation in the labour force, tertiary education, managerial positions and 'above median income'.
The first two were objective and based on hard statistics, while the latter two were subjective - based on the women's attitudes about themselves.
In other words, the study asked women if they saw themselves as being in managerial positions, or if they felt they were earning more than the median income. The idea behind this was to gauge how positively or negatively they felt about their place in the workforce.
The final figures showed how close or how far women in each country came to being equal to men.
A score under 100 indicated gender inequality in favour of males, while one above 100 indicated inequality in favour of females. A score of 100 would indicate complete equality.
The study, conducted among some 300 women in each country between November and December last year, brought forth some interesting insights, including the revelation that Thailand (92.3) and Malaysia (86.2) had the highest overall scores. Singapore (61.3) ranked eighth - after China, Australia, Taiwan, Hong Kong and Vietnam.
Thailand scored 131.9 for tertiary education as it was discovered that more women than men went to universities.
On closer inspection, however, the results proved more problematic than enlightening.
For one, the study was hampered by the lack of available statistics in certain countries, as Dr Yuwa Hedrick-Wong, MasterCard International Asia Pacific's economic adviser, admitted. China, New Zealand and Vietnam had neither data on women's participation in the labour force nor figures on how many women have had tertiary education.
Taiwan, Malaysia, Philippines and Indonesia had no figures on women in tertiary education.
Dr Sharon Siddique, a development sociologist and deputy director of the Institute of South-east Asian Studies, calls it a particularly Asian problem, the lack of detailed gender-based data.
'I could get a breakdown according to income or province, but not gender,' she said.
The implications of this data dearth are huge. With the increasing numbers of Asian women entering the workforce and making consumer decisions, it would be a fallacy to think of women as a 'niche' market.
'Gender has become an important component in looking towards the future of any group, whether one is a marketeer or a banker,' said Dr Siddique.
However, categorising the Asian woman is in itself a difficult and delicate task.
While Japan and Korean cultures are relatively homogenous, countries like Singapore, Malaysia and China are ethnically and religiously diverse.
Dr Siddique's own research shows that four out of five Asian women live in China or India. There are also 327 million Muslim women in Asia, which means the majority of Muslim women in the world are Asian, not Arab.
'All this complexity makes it difficult to tell their story,' said Dr Siddique.
What is clear, said Dr Hedrick-Wong, citing David Landes' famous book, The Wealth And Poverty Of Nations, is that the emancipation of women is among the most important factors in modern economic development. 'Societies that exclude women are doomed to fail,' he said.
So, while the MasterCard survey has its flaws, it is a step in the right direction. With the company stating its intention to update these figures yearly, a better picture of who the Asian woman is will eventually emerge. And not a moment too soon.