Topic: Foundations
15 posts tagged “Foundations”.
Your Estate Plan in One Page
The whole pillar in one place. An estate plan is not a thick legal file — it is five short decisions that say who decides for you, and who receives what, when you no longer can.
What Your Estate Actually Is
A surprising amount of your wealth never passes under your will. Knowing what travels inside the will and what travels outside it — including the common puzzle of joint accounts — is the first step to a plan that does what you intend.
Dying Without a Plan: How the Law Splits Your Estate
With no will, the Intestate Succession Act decides who gets what — by a fixed formula that may not match your wishes. Here is how the shares fall across the common family situations.
The Cost of Doing Nothing
No plan is itself a decision — one that loads delay, cost and friction onto the people you leave behind. The price of inaction is paid in time, money and family strain.
Estate Planning Is Not Just for the Rich
The myth that estate planning is for millionaires keeps ordinary households unprotected. In Singapore the family home alone is usually a six-figure estate — and it is only part of the total.
The Five Documents Every Adult Should Consider
A complete plan rests on five short documents — a will, a CPF nomination, insurance nominations, a Lasting Power of Attorney, and an Advance Medical Directive. Here is what each one does.
What Insurance Is Really For
Money has three jobs — to save, to invest, and to insure. Each meets a different slice of an unpredictable future. Insurance is the one built for the rare, severe shock you could never fund yourself.
Insurance in One Page
The whole pillar in one place. Good protection is not a pile of policies — it is a short, ordered set of decisions: cover the big risks, use the national base, right-size it, keep it simple, and review it.
Insure Only What You Can't Afford to Lose
The single rule that sorts almost every insurance decision: transfer the risks that would ruin you, and quietly carry the ones that would only sting.
Start With the Risk, Not the Product
Good insurance decisions run in one direction — name the risk, size the need, then choose a product. Reverse that order and you end up owning policies that answer no real question.
Self-Insure the Small Stuff
Not every risk is worth a policy. Small, affordable losses are cheaper to carry yourself — through a buffer and a sensible excess — than to insure away at a premium that includes the insurer's costs and profit.
The 300-Year Story Behind Your Premium
Insurance works because of two ideas borrowed from mathematics — a table of who lives and dies, and a law that says crowds are predictable even when individuals are not. Peter Bernstein told their story in "Against the Gods."
The Four Risks Every Singapore Household Should Cover
Strip insurance back to basics and almost everything you need answers one of four risks: dying too soon, being unable to work, a serious illness, or a large hospital bill. Singapore covers some by default — but only partly.
Beyond Life and Health: The Cover Most Households Overlook
Life and health cover get the attention, but four everyday "general" policies protect your home, your travels, your car and your body from accidents. Two are compulsory in Singapore — and one you may already hold without realising.
Telling Needs from Wants
Every budget rests on one judgement: which spending is a genuine need and which is a want. The honest answer is usually "it depends" — so here is a simple test for sorting the grey zone where budgets are really won or lost.