Blog – Page 2 – Greg Fok Advisory

Who owns my wealth?

September 29, 2024
by Gregory Fok

I am going to be attending and facilitating a programme called, God, Money and Me.

It looks into the intricate relationship we have with our lives, our wealth and ourselves. I love to read into the connection between each other as it tells us a history of ourselves and how we can live our life moving forward.

As I started reading some of the materials, it reminds me strongly that all that I have is not owned by me, but by the one who made me. I am only a steward temporarily for this period.

When we are a steward, wealth does not belong to us, but we become responsible for what we are tasked with at that time.

For example, if we drive a car that belongs to a mentor, we tend to be much more responsible to ensure we return the car clean, and we drive it very carefully etc.

So when it comes to wealth management, when we are stewards to take care of it for others, we learn to be more careful and yet wise around it, to ensure that it will live beyond the current means and allow it to last longer as well.

It takes a different shift in mindset about ownership and responsibility and stewardship.

Does it make help shift some perspectives?

Financial Planning

You can have something more than Elon Musk!

August 22, 2024
by Gregory Fok

How is it possible to have more than Elon Musk?

Everyone would have thought that Elon Musk has “everything”.

I was speaking to my mentor some years ago, and he shared these wise words with me.

💡 “If you can’t be happy with $1mil, you will not be happy even if you have $5mil. And if are happy with $1mil, giving you another $5mil will not make much difference in your life.

Gratitude and faith is something that I am trying to constantly grapple with especially in the context of the work I do.

🎯 I talk about money and business to people all day long and I have also noticed that the very successful people in life, are those who are “hugely contented”! And they usually are those who do not have the most.

As the readings for today says, “If you want to be perfect, go, sell your possessions and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven. Then come, follow me.”

🧨 Such a powerful paragraph. Not too long ago, I was thinking about “upgrading” our home to a more “valuable” home (because my home is 99yrs), according to the excuse I gave myself. I still have lots more to grow in this aspect and I am still struggling to understand this. But this is a great reminder for me to stay grounded, to remain humble, to be contented at where I am. But to grow in my mindset, my purpose, my spirituality, to grow in my faith.

☀️ So the next time if you are thinking if you “want more”, ask what is the purpose.

Business

Do you wish you could Rest x 2…!

July 20, 2024
by Gregory Fok

We work in a hectic lifestyle in Singapore. I used to work non stop 24/7 when I first started out 19yrs ago. I remembered vividly going for multiple meetings in a day, sometimes packing 2-3 in one evening!

⛈️ One night, when I was taking the LAST train ride back, I asked myself, how long am I going to last at this pace? If I continue like this, there might be a burnout. I could even feel my heart pounding with all the adrenalin, just thinking about it.

My mentor was sharing with me, you need to take a different strategy if you want to be able to sustain long in this business. You need rest and you need to be selective in who is going to be your client.

💯 “Come to me, all you who are weary and are carrying heavy burdens, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.”

Today’s gospel passage reminds me of this.. REST. Within this short message, it reminds us to REST TWICE and leave our burdens to God in prayer. When I leave my problems at the foot of the cross and my concerns, I always have this feeling of assurance that God will provide and he has provided for the last 19yrs and counting, in HIS time. I do the right work, with the right people and with the right attitude of value adding and effective hard work, and I just trust the process.

🙏 Ever since then, I had repositioned my practice. We always have a “Pre-screening” meeting before prospects engage us. It was about us getting to listen to them, to understand their pain points and if they and we would be able to see ourselves on a long term partnership together. If for whatever reason there is no fit, we part ways respectfully. And if there is a good conversation with trust, then, we will be in for the long haul.

So today, we are not looking for quantity but quality and that will result in wonderful relationships we have with our clients, their partners and families, and we build a better and happier practice.

🎯 I have been “financial coaching” for the past 19yrs and those who have set their dream goals, stuck to their plan, remained disciplined, despite the market volatility, and had me as the one journeying with them, have a much higher chance of success in the best and worst case scenarios of their lives

♥️This take a PROCESS to plan, to TRANSFORM with a rewirement programme. And I can tell you it takes time. It takes effort to Unlearn to Relearn.

Pic : I got this as a gift which is so apt for me!

Investments

Are you able to reduce risks and yet capture…

June 6, 2024
by Gregory Fok

In most people’s minds, reducing your risks means reducing your expected returns, which is a logical concept.

However, we are able to reduce risks and capture higher returns, according to your long term goals, based on our experience over the past 19yrs of working with doctors, entrepreneurs and wealthy families

But before we do that, we need a few things needs to shift to do the above…

1) Focus on your goals, not on returns.

2) Understanding how investments work and risks or journey with someone who can be able to help you do that.

3) Rewiring your mind – lots of unlearning and relearning.

4) Using an science-based approach towards investing instead of timing the market and picking stocks.

5) The best “investment strategy” is not one with the highest returns, but one where the investor can apply through, with more peace of mind and more confidence of the future!

6) The big returns on large amounts are captured primarily through emotional well-being than the “best stocks”.

This take a PROCESS to plan, to TRANSFORM with a re-wirement programme. And I can tell you it takes time. It takes effort to Unlearn to Relearn.

My name is Greg and if there is someone who would like to transform, multiply their life, their business, their wealth, with PURPOSE, and have time for themselves, with less anxiety, pls feel free to share or reach out to me and repost too! I would sincerely appreciate it!

Business

Wouldn’t you like to simplify your financial life?

May 22, 2024May 22, 2024
by Gregory Fok

Which would you prefer? The journey on top or below?

You are getting one year closer to retirement than you think. You realize that as you grow older, you have more assets.

When you get more senior and wiser, the following happens…

🧨 You want to reduce your risks.
So one of your ways of diversifying is to split your investments into various stocks, funds, pools of types of assets. Maybe you even start to invest overseas.

🧨 Managing larger amounts of wealth.
The skill-set of investing small amounts of wealth vs the skill-set of managing larger amounts is very different.

🧨 Your life becomes more complex
Because of the above 2 reasons, your life becomes more complex due to the need to spread your investments around. There are some people we work with who have even lost track of what they have with age and time.

💡You will come to a stage when you want to SIMPLIFY your life. Especially if suddenly, health changes or if someone else is going to take over what you have. The likelihood of them being able to appreciate all your efforts and work of your lifetime is going to go down the drain.

We help you to consolidate and have a clearer picture of what you have. So that your family can have a clear picture of where you stand and know the strategies to execute in a SIMPLE way, but yet still reduce your risks and increase your expected returns, while giving you and your family peace of mind, with less anxiety.

Which would you prefer? The journey on top or below? The choice is yours.

If you like to find out more how we do it to help families and businesses get to financial freedom, follow my posts and reach out for a copy of our PROCESS or we can have an initial meeting at our cost, with no obligations.

♥️This take a PROCESS to plan, to TRANSFORM with a rewirement programme. And I can tell you it takes time. It takes effort to Unlearn to Relearn.

Financial Planning

Work hard, and then, work smart!

April 30, 2024
by Gregory Fok

Most of us are told to work hard. I was told by my Mum to rely on pure grit and strength to get ahead to success in life.

We should all work hard, especially early in our lives. Once we have built some stability and fundamentals, it will be time to work smart.

I was speaking to a couple who were trying to impart the values of hard work to their child. And I added, the next step is to work smart. Let your existing resources, assets and income work for you.

And then after a while, it becomes a cycle of it’s own, without you needing to interfere in between. The cycle of growth and re-growth continues as long as one plans well.

So with the recent case, just by reallocating their existing assets, they have managed to increase their value by an extra $2mil using OPM (Other people’s Money)!

If you know someone who would like to find out how to be more creative by increasing their experience and wealth, let me know and we can have an initial meeting at our cost, with no obligations.

Business

The unspoken considerations for wealth transfer

March 21, 2024
by Gregory Fok

When it comes to wealth transfer, all parents plan with the best of intentions. However, when we hear it from the beneficiaries, it may not be viewed in that manner.

💣 There was a couple who had 2 properties. One is a HDB and the other is a private property. And they have a business and some other parts in investments and cash. They still have outstanding loans for the property and have taken a loan for the business, with a personal guarantee. They have 3 children and 1 of them is in the family business.

🔥 The above scenario is quite typical for an affluent family. However, you can just imagine the time bomb that they are sitting on, waiting to be passed on to the children.

When I speak to the child, he says it just seems like a recipe waiting for disaster to blow up. Who will take over the HDB? Who will take over the private property? What is the implication to them to take over the property? Is it going to be split 3 ways? How about the business? What is going to happen to the value of the business? And who will be the specific beneficiary to be settling the outstanding loans?

☀️You have taken a whole life of a few decades to build your wealth. Wouldn’t it make sense to spend just half an hour to understand what the implications are and how you can potentially prevent problems down the road? Most people have no solutions but we can bring in our 19yrs of experience to help.

We walk through a process of ABCD to plan for them. ♥️ Be wise and plan ahead.

We all want to transfer wealth with minimum costs, minimum conflicts and confusion, wouldn’t you?

Financial Planning

Be a mustard seed!

February 7, 2024
by Gregory Fok

When I first started in my practice 19yrs ago, it was all about achieving success to show the world that I am better.

While that approach worked well for the initial years, while I was trying to gain credibility, it soon tapered off after a while. The sense of satisfaction of achieving the awards no longer seemed to mean as much to me as time progressed.

⏩Instead, what was something that had driven me was the ability to make a change in someone’s life. Of course, the financial impact mattered. One of the clients we worked with had a big challenge when it came to saving any money. But when we recently reviewed her portfolio, she has almost $600k we had built over time! And she was quite impressed with herself!

What was even more interesting was a recent case when I told him to stop worrying about the short term noise in the market. He used to be a stock picker who looked at the markets and news all the time. His eyes were fixed on the prices of the companies.

💥Nowadays, he says that he is so freed up of all the short term noise. He knows he would have held the most valuable companies, most profitable, on a global basis of 15,000 stocks. And it was rebalanced on a daily basis. If the company had run up in price too much, there would be a system to sell part of it, to find other more valuable companies. So there was nothing to track for him and that saved him at least 365 hours every year and re-gained back his mental energy which he had put into exercise and time with his family. And best of all, the wealth will take care of the higher increase.

♥️So if we can be that mustard seed, to help a person grow, TRANSFORM a person’s life, for the better in terms of his wealth, and his LIFE, his business, his fitness, his renewed energy, his outlook, we know we have made that little difference!

How would you like to transform your life in 2024?

Business

A painful lesson of my life.

November 29, 2023November 29, 2023
by Gregory Fok

March 2009…

I was away for a holiday in March 2009, at the depth of the financial crisis. I had sat through one of the biggest downturns of the markets and my emotions and mood was swinging up and down with the market conditions.

I told myself that there seems to be enough blood with the red in investments in the streets. I will want to avoid the emotions so I will wait till I get back from my holidays before I decide to buy more stocks again.

When I got back a few weeks later, the stocks I had wanted to buy had gone up by at least 15%!

So I thought to wait for it to come down before I decide to buy again. The prices soared and never came back down to those previous levels. I had missed the boat. In the recent years, some of these same stocks have actually been delisted!

💥 Lesson learnt : It is so hard to time the markets or pick stocks, especially over a prolonged period of time.

🤓What is the solution?
And so now, I use a systematic process that helps me and my clients have more purposeful living, increased peace of mind, better relationships, reduced risks, have more time for yourself, simplify your life and still get higher returns!

When you have a solid process for decision making made at the beginning, you get to your goals more easily.

Do you agree?

My name is Greg and if there is someone who would appreciate and read my posts and insights, pls feel free to share with them and me and help to repost too!

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Investments

Better strategies than timing the market

October 21, 2023October 21, 2023
by Gregory Fok

We all know that timing the market can be so tough over the long term. So many books and courses sell this online but few of them match up to expectations.

Recently, I have met with an investor who said she lost almost $50k with the recent experience of the markets and specific stocks of big names that seemed valuable.

The fact is, market timing is tricky, because big gains and losses can come in relatively short periods. Not even the professionals have much of a track record in successfully negotiating these unpredictable twists and turns.

So what can we do to give us a better experience? These are exactly the same steps I take to reframe.

1) Focus on the long term

Markets in the short term provides extreme variable outcomes. In the long term, it provides strength in long term growth, if a person is willing to stick through it.

2) Construct a portfolio that can weather through all seasons.

Diversification is your best friend. The right mix of allocation depends on your age, goals and circumstances. Whatever your risk capacity, diversification is key. Spreading your risk across different asset classes and geographies will reduce the impact of a steep decline in one particular market or sector. Ultimately, it’s your asset allocation that’s going to be the most important driver of your investment returns.

3) Rebalance appropriately

Touching your portfolio too often creates emotional stress. But a strategic, structured and disciplined way of rebalancing that reflects your needs and circumstances will bring out the best outcome for you.

4) Have sufficient cash and take opportunities

Having 3-6 months of emergency buffer will be able to provide for unexpected scenarios. And those who feel nervous in a downturn can hold slightly more cash. In fact, if a person has the appetite and time horizon, downturns can create opportunities for buying during a “sale”.

These are steps that I have adopted for myself and the clients we work with.

How about you, how do you create better personal strategies than timing the market so you can still have a comfortable life over the longer term?