Insurance – Page 2 – Greg Fok Advisory

Gun and Shield

February 4, 2021February 4, 2021
by Gregory Fok

When a person goes to battle, he needs to be able to plan and fight strategically and efficiently.

If a person brings only a gun, all it takes it for the enemy to find a small spot of loose entry, the person will be killed.

If a person brings only a shield, he can protect himself well, but he will not be able to advance past the enemy line.

A smart soldier will need to have both – the gun and the shield. What similarities does it have with financial planning? In financial planning, we need both the gun and shield too. That is what all wealthy people do, by being smart.

The gun is there to help us advance in terms of getting to our long goals in a more efficient manner so that we do not need to work as hard on our part. Let time and patience be our best friend.

The shield is there to protect our income ability and existing assets. In case of an unexpected death, accident or critical illness, your income can be protected and any existing assets will still be intact without the urgent need to liquidate at a loss.

Have your fine-tuned your gun and beefed up your shield recently so that you put in the least effort to get to your dreams in life with the best achievable results?

Why do I need a financial advisor?

November 6, 2020November 6, 2020
by Gregory Fok

One of the common questions I was asked is to the one above. Not everyone needs a financial advisor but most people would want one if there can be value. Value to bring you limitless possibilities to design your life the way you want it.

1) I cannot see my own blindspots.

We always see what we know and plan ahead. But there are blind spots that are not within our experience to notice or look out for. Having a 3rd party see your blindspots allows for awareness and reduction of blindspots and risks.

2) We help you be your gatekeepers.

When we are emotionally charged up due to fear or greed or just affected by life, we tend to make the easiest decision which most of the time is not the wisest one. We help you to make decisions in your favour and not just take instructions.

3) We stretch your financial imagination.

When you plan on your own, you limit yourself to what you can see. When you plan with an advisor, often, you stretch your financial imagination beyond what you can even imagine. As iron sharpens iron, so does one man sharpen another.

4) We help to put things in perspective.

When we are in our own world, we seem to be struggling in many areas of life, especially financially. But when we put things in perspective, we either have an awesome life or the small things do not matter that much.

5) We help you peer into someone else’s experience.

We learn from older folks who have gone through much of life and bring that experience into the lives of those we meet to learn from the wise and learned.

6) Wisdom of life that is not just found in money.

An experienced financial advisor does not just talk about the financial aspect but more importantly the family and emotional aspects that hold more weight in decision making.

7) Provide you insights.

Nuggets of insights brings the ability to marry money, values and emotion to bring together proper financial planning for a human being.

8) Gains you time and quality of life and not have to worry about money.

Money is probably the number 1 worry most people have in life. An experienced financial advisor minimizes the fear through prudent planning and allows you to focus on the important things that money can bring to life. Eg dignity, maturity, quality of life, stewardship.

Interview and speak with an experienced and trusted advisor to provide you some insights.

Should I be my own doctor?

June 15, 2020June 15, 2020
by Gregory Fok

If you had an option, you could go to a part time junior doctor under going training and ask him to do a surgery on you.

Or you could go to a trusted experienced surgeon who has seen 1000s of patients and have been doing this for the past 15yrs and could immediately understand your problem, get a diagnosis and help you to draft a treatment plan.

Which will you prefer?

When it comes to family wealth planning and investing, you might unknowingly be doing the same.

We have seen consumers trying to DIY. They take an approach where they try to read the markets, trends, study companies and grow their wealth, protect their income, family and do all this part time whilst they are busy working in their main job.

At best, after all your effort you put in as a consumer, you become a part time surgeon with minimal experience to speak of.

Would you be confident to allow yourself to be operated by this part time surgeon, who does not have enough experience seeing enough patients to operate on you?

If you do not, please instead spend time to interview and look for a trusted advisor whom you can journey with on the long term and provide holistic financial advice.

It saves you lots of time, money and emotional pain. All that time and energy can be then converted to spend time with your loved ones and fill it up with your passions in life that are important to you.

Go and spend your time to live a life of possibilities!

Common overlooked fact by doctors

June 10, 2020June 10, 2020
by Gregory Fok

As doctors, you spend most of your time focusing on your craft as a medical specialist..

Your work demands long hours and you even sometimes have to skip meals. We specialize in working with doctors so we understand what you go through. All your time is spent either working or studying with hardly any time left. If you get married and have kids young, it accelerates the sleep deprivation cycle.

Time passes so quickly and by the time you get a little more control on your life, you are probably about almost 40 years old. That is the main reason why most doctors might eventually decide to move to private clinics or set up their own medical practice before the control happens.

Whilst the busyness of life takes over, health deteriorates and some doctors might get hit with the same medical conditions that they were treating the patients for.

When that happens, the income flow suddenly stops.. Life is affected, work is affected, income is affected, but expenses of the house mortgage, the car, the family continue. If you have your own clinic, you still got to pay rental, pay for equipment, pay for staff salary and the list goes on…

What if you took a few minutes every year just to review your overall financial situation and ensure that your income can be intact and even have a sinking fund that can tide you and your family over the next 10-20yrs without a need to worry when bad things happens?

Wouldn’t that few minutes of that precious conversation allow you to have more financial freedom and protection?

We specialize in working with doctors and know what you go through. Let us have an initial chat.

Passing the baton

May 19, 2020May 19, 2020
by Gregory Fok

You have painstakingly spent many years working to build up your assets, investments, properties and businesses.

You have been a great steward. The very least you should do is to spend some time to think about your potential beneficiaries and how you would like them to inherit your legacy, in case something happens prematurely.

Every family situation is unique and special but here are some things you should think about.

Debts – who needs to pay off the loans that were incurred during the time you are thriving?

Assets – with your structure and type of assets, what kind of liquidity and ease of distribution does it provide? Most of wealthy families assets tend to revolve around businesses and properties which become the target of contention between various beneficiaries as it is chunky and illiquid.

Beneficiaries – understand the emotional states of beneficiaries when they might inherit assets all at once. For example, a child who has not handled anything more than $50k in his life may not be able to manage $1mil of asset when it is given to him all at once. He might also unknowingly attract more friends in the process for the wrong reasons.

Family bank – can you imagine creating your own private wealth bank for your own family, even for generations. And it hardly costs anything and does not require the family much. It all starts with an idea that you would like to create something of your own.

Can you remember your great grandparents name – what if your great grandparents continue to give you an ang pow every year during your birthday? Will your great grandchildren remember you for a long time?

There are many exciting and strategies that can help a person make his dreams come true..

With experience and wisdom, you will be able to pass on the baton with your values in a more meaningful way.

How much are your tomorrows worth

April 10, 2020April 10, 2020
by Gregory Fok

How much are your tomorrows worth? Most people would not have thought about this question. If a person was killed in a car accident, how much would the family sue for, if someone else had been responsible for the death?

If you owned a printing press which could print out legal, $300,000 a year for you and your family, over the next 20years, that would have been $6mil dollars. How much would you insure your printing press for?

We are all like the money machines. How much are your tomorrows worth?

I have a friend who was very fit, stayed healthy and ate with a strict diet. As he was playing basketball with his daughter one day, he suddenly had a heart attack.

The questions on the family’s mind is…

1) When will he promptly recover and get back to good health?

2) Will he be able to continue to work?

3) Who will continue to pay him the income when is not working?

4) What will happen to the total family income if the spouse takes some time off work to take care of the emotional and physical needs?

5) Will the banks come in to refinance the property and request for a top up because one spouse had stopped working and who will fund that?

The family will struggle physically and even financially.

Let someone else take care of the financial part for you. We can design your financial situation so that the above questions will be addressed and allow the family members peace of mind to know that the finances are in order. The family just needs to focus on recovering as quickly as possible with strong emotional and physical support.

Speak with an experienced financial advisor in our firm who can ask the difficult questions that most people do not wish to talk about.

Measuring the distance

March 21, 2020March 21, 2020
by Gregory Fok

With the volatility in the market, it can be very scary and unnerving at the same time.
This also leads to potentially making emotionally charged decisions – which leads to decisions based on fear or greed. That normally leads to regrets further down the road on hindsight.

The important thing to do now is to focus on your goals.
For example, if I asked you to measure the distance between Changi Airport to Jurong Point, would you take a measuring tape and stop to measure every 3 steps before you reach Jurong point? Or would you use a vehicle, chart the starting point and end point and move towards your goal. Maybe you might stop to check every 5km to see if there is a faster route available, but definitely, you do not need to check every 3 steps.

It’s the same when it comes to retirement planning. Most of the time, we invest because we have a long-term goal like retirement which is a far distance away. So it does not make sense to keep checking our investments every other day. Whenever we check it, it might just lead to stress and emotions of greed and fear take over.

At the same time, there will be opportunities for a faster way to get to your retirement. This will be one of them and you might just miss out the “Sale” that comes a few times in your lifetime. This kind of sale of this magnitude will not come very often but it will be the road less travelled.

So here are a few tips.

1) Focus on your long-term goals and not get distracted.

2) If you have extra cash over and above your 6-12 months emergency funds, you can find strategies to deploy this money during this opportunity.

3) Find risk and non-risk instruments to give you peace of mind.

4) Invest into Global CORE portfolios that are rebalanced by professionals so that you do not need to stress about doing that on your own and after you invest during this period.

5) Do NOT peek at your statements if you are already invested or going to be investing this period.

6) Finally, pls do not read the news too much. It can be mostly depressing because bad news sells. Instead, spend more time with your family and do things you love and go out into the sun more often.

If you have a doctor, business owner or senior management whom is trying to get an opinion from their wealth advisor and is not able to do so, I will be happy to connect with an initial chat.

Tip #1 Financial Planning Advice

April 30, 2019April 30, 2019
by Gregory Fok

Be clear of your financial objectives.

We all know this feeling. Money is flowing in all directions and there is always something that comes up which is a priority.

When it comes to financial planning, there are multiple objectives as well. We need to save for retirement. We need to get the insurance. We need to pay the mortgage. We need to send our kids to university. We need to invest our money…. and the list goes on.

If you are not clear of your priorities in life, you will keep shifting your priorities and along the way, lose money and you say that financial planning does not work.

You just need to get it right from the start of what you want to do and why you need to do it and stay focused.

The truth is – this is probably the hardest part of the planning.

Successful Businessman thoughts

March 28, 2019March 28, 2019
by Gregory Fok

If Mr. Businessman has four basic objectives, then there are four questions that should be asked:

What is the price tag on the first clause in his will, which says, “Pay my debts, taxes and costs?”
Who will write a check each month to his family, and for how long?
How will the assets be transferred to the children one day with minimal conflict?
How can the business be kept healthy?

7 figure payout

November 20, 2018
by Gregory Fok

7 figure payout!

Is insurance an investment asset class?

Recently, I was helping a friend with his will. His biggest concern is not to leave any debts or liabilities for his wife and children.

When we looked at the breakdown of his assets, initially, it seemed like there was not much to begin with.

Very soon, we realized that there is a large pay out of more than 7 figures when he is no longer around. And 95% of his portfolio is from insurance that we had helped design for him since about 10yrs ago.

Then he heaved a sigh of relief and in fact, started to smile as he had ensured that his family does not need to worry.

Insurance is an asset class which is typically forgotten and ignored until the unexpected event happens. No matter how bad the markets are or bad the timing is, insurance payouts will eventually happen and we have seen that in our 13 years of practice. Insurance is the cheapest form of asset class if you know how to structure it.

Have you designed your 7 figure payout? How did he do it? If you would like to find out more, speak to us, your trusted financial advisor from Steward of Wealth to value add to you.

#7figurepayout