Planning for doctors – Greg Fok Advisory

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!

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.

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.

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?

How do we make investment decisions?

June 28, 2023June 28, 2023
by Gregory Fok

Someone shared with me a “stock tip”. I did some research and believed so much into it and made the decision to buy..!

If you are like me and most people I know, it starts with someone in a social gathering sharing a “stock tip A” and someone believing so much into it.

Then we decide to do some research and extend our belief by finding the data and details to solidify our decision of why this single stock A is worth investing into.

We do the same over time and then accumulate many “Stocks” with no coherent value of decision making but all based on someone else’s story. And even then, we will be worried to put too much into one stock for fear of an idiosyncratic risk of a single company disappearing like “Wirecard”.

When we have more spare cash, we adopt this same model over and over until we realize that we have many stocks and funds that are all over the place. What markets become volatile, which do we sell and buy?

What about the companies that are unheard of, that we might never have heard about of the Apple’s, Tesla’s and Nvidia’s in the early stage. By the time the names come to the public view, typically their valuations have grown to become fairly lofty. But the other question is how many of these small companies grow to become giants in the industry?

💥Does this decision making process make sense?

Well, I previously used this strategy and I can share with you that this does not get me to my big long term goals which need to be sustainable over decades of investment periods into my retirement years which may last 4-5 decades.

So I needed a better way to plan and invest.

Instead, what we do is to help you to reframe the process the other way. Start with your BLUEPRINT of your plan like constructing a building!

💡We go through a process. We start by asking you what your goals are, how much time you have, understand risks of markets, reframe our mental models towards uncertainty, bring confidence through planning before we even decide what asset allocation to use.

What has been your experience and is there a better way you would suggest to bring greater confidence and reduced risks?

Why should some doctors and business owners, wealthy families…

February 16, 2023May 17, 2023
by Gregory Fok

For families who are wealthy, their biggest fear is usually loss of assets taken away from them or their family unjustly, especially if there was a way to have mitigated that risk at the beginning.

Some of these risks include…

🔮1) In laws and potential ones

They will provide for their children, their grandchildren and descendants but they will be concerned if the money falls into the hands of the in-laws and future spouses of these in laws who may remarry as well. This is unfortunately true given the state of marriages today.

🔮2) Unwise taxes that can be mitigated.

If a person did not distribute his assets out appropriately, the children and grandchildren might be burdened with the need to pay buyer stamp duties, additional buyer stamp duties for properties in Singapore and estate duties for US shares and other jurisdiction which can be as high as 25-40% of the value of the assets.

We have seen many cases where these taxes could easily have been minimized or eliminated through proper planning. Every case is different.

🔮3) Business owners liability

Most wealthy families run businesses. If you run a business, you never know when and how you might be hit. And most of the time, it is not even your mistake or fault. But you bear significant risks the moment you set up a business on your own. Let us help you to identify the risks and mitigate them so that you can sleep well.

🔮4) Partnerships with others

If you have gone into business or joint ventures with others, their risks can easily become part of your risks. For example, when 2 persons are running a business, when one party is accidentally made bankrupt, the partner could be potentially implicated, even though the cause of the bankruptcy did not arise from your business.

🔮5) Personal guarantees

Pls avoid signing personal guarantees at all costs, if you can help it. If you really cannot do so, protect your family members from unnecessary risks because personal guarantees can sue all the way to the person’s entire assets, even those in their personal name.

🔮6) All assets and loans being under the same bank!

This is the worst allocation of assets because the bank can very quickly take control of ALL assets and freeze it immediately when circumstances change. We had a case where a doctor received payment from a patient (who unknowingly received from an alternative source) and his bank accounts were frozen in the midst of investigation by the police.

We always try to understand your concerns, situation and explore solutions that best fit. Together, we plan ahead to re-allocate your assets and structure to avoid any unforeseen circumstances, which can be varied dependent from person to person, business to business.

If you want to be able to protect your assets, ask us a question so that you can enjoy your life and view.

Never make an investment decision if you feel rushed!

January 24, 2023January 24, 2023
by Gregory Fok

Our emotions drive our behaviour and our behaviour drives our decisions.

When you are upset and emotionally charged, you cannot think clearly and make unwise decisions.

When you feel joy, you feel secured and you make wise choices.

I thought that I was very calm and knowledgeable, especially given that I speak about this daily with the work I do.

However, during the depths of the market in 2008 and 2009, I remembered that I was rushing to buy and sell KeppelCorp (where my wife was working at) and any news about it brought the feelings of greed and anxiety at the same time. As the investment amount grew larger, the emotional roller coaster got stronger.

In the end, I was left with a bad investment experience and bad outcome.

Those of you who had some experience of trying to trade stocks will know what I am talking about.

There are much better ways to invest and get you to your best life with peace of mind using CORE strategies!

What is it about the value of money that…

July 2, 2022July 2, 2022
by Gregory Fok

Life has been pretty comfortable and they are living the life of a dream, in terms of their home, their car, their lifestyle, their career and their family! Life is good so why should they need to change anything….

This is a couple who are high income earners. Husband is a doctor and wife is a senior director in a MNC in their 40s with 2 young children. They are comfortable with their income earning abilities and are competent in their work. Life has been pretty comfortable and they are living the life of a dream, in terms of their home, their car, their lifestyle, their career and their family! Life is good so why should they need to change anything! If you were looking at them from the outside, you wished you were in their shoes and time stood still. High income earners usually do not think that they have much money management issues to deal with because their income has been great.

Since I work professionally with this target group of high income earners and doctors, I was personally referred to meet with them. As we started to ask them some life questions, I begin to delve deep into some unmet needs they actually are feeling that they are drowning out with.

I asked them a question that is not the typical of a financial advisor, “What is it about the value of money that is most important to them?” The initial answers are the basic replies to provide for family and fund their lifestyle they have. Deeper into the conversation through appropriate questions, the real meaning behind why they were so concerned about having wealth is because the wife grew up in a background where the parents were constantly not around and she wanted to build the wealth quickly and head off to an early retirement and spend more time with the family. She also had the need to “Prove to her extended family and friends” that she was able to succeed in life due to her family upbringing.

Halfway through the conversation, she eventually broke down and shared that she was hurting and struggling internally actually. She was torn between the fact that she was a successful working mum but that meant there was not much time left for the children. So she wished that she does not miss out the growing years of her child especially the important milestones but yet wanted to be assured of the future.

We put things in perspective for them (showing them the financial planning projections by repositioning their existing resources with appropriate core evidence based investment strategies with us) and if she needed to take a more part time work role which meant a significant drop in her income. But she gets to achieve her goal of spending more time with the kids now till the time they turn late teenage years where they became more independent. And she still gets to keep some parts of the good lifestyles she is already having through proper planning and growing their wealth. They were still able to achieve all of their goals financially with confidence and reliability by starting to plan early.

Having a thought provoking conversation like that can be challenging and maybe painful at times, but if taken with a good intention to improve your lives for the better, you can come out of it more inspired about your future. Our strength is to integrate the life conversations and goals, to connect them to the financial planning side of things so that you live your best life forward.

So, what is it about the value of money that is important to you? Are you ready for the deeper conversation? Reach out and start to live your dream today!

How low can the markets go?

May 17, 2022May 17, 2022
by Gregory Fok

With the background of the markets where uncertainty is starting to increase, there are many questions at the back of people’s mind. One of the biggest question is “How low can it go”?

Just about close to the end of last year, I had a friend who believed so much in the Faang (Facebook, Apple, Amazon, Netflix, Google) stocks and had been stocking up a huge concentration into those few companies, because of the historical large returns in the recent times. And many investors continued to expect that to continue for those few companies, which based on evidence over decades shows not be true. Reality struck when the similar stocks are down roughly about 37% from the beginning of this year.

If you are investing into a single company like Zoom or Netflix or even worse, into cryptocurrency like Luna, it would have fallen by about 70%-99% and in some instances, it would have wiped out the entire value. This could be an instance of catching a falling knife where the company you keep buying into eventually disappears, as it can and will happen from time to time. Some companies can suddenly go into a situation when competition is stiff or the industry becomes obsolete and changes can happen fast.

Smart learning lessons

On the other hand, if you had invested into evidence-based strategies widely diversified on a global scale across profitable companies, total of 14,000 all across the world, you would still experience the fall (due to emotions of the investors), but the fallout would be much less significant due to diversification. In fact, the drop is only about one fifth of the drop as compared to the Faang stocks, which means it is still holding up very well, due to the right strategies in place.

If you were to be smart about it, based on historical investments over the past multi decades of history, with some allocations to bonds to it, the worst case scenario of the lowest would have been about 30-40% drop, depending on your allocation to bonds.

When diversified, the drop is temporary

The drops are in fact temporary on a globally diversified portfolio scale as there will still be companies that did not make it eventually, but there will always be new companies to add to the pool that are more profitable and reasonably valued. And with 14,000 companies on hand, there is no fear of companies going from profitable to bankrupt, except maybe on a small number of them. Depending on the personal objective of the goal and the kind of drop you can accept, we can fit the right allocation for you so that you can sleep well at night and expect the temporary drops.

When the recovery comes

After the period of temporary drops occur and investors have realized that the sell off is too absurd, investors will come back in again and that is when the recovery of the market occurs. And this can happen very quickly and sharply, sometimes within days. Returns catch up and will quickly match closely to the long term average market returns again. This is also based on evidence studied over a very long period of time that goes back to almost a hundred years of data.

Missing the best days

Missing the best 10 days of the best recovery days can significantly impact the overall returns of the markets by almost half the returns over a period of time. So it is best to stay invested for the longer term, turn off the noise on the news and happily go on a shopping spree and buy on a discount when markets are temporary lower for what is needed for the future.

What you can do

If you would like to find out more about the details above and are looking to journey with a financial advisor to take the financial stress away from you through education, we can always have an initial chat to see if there is a fit.

1+1 = 3 (Only we can do that!)

April 21, 2022April 21, 2022
by Gregory Fok

We all know the formula of “1+1 = 2”. And that is correct mathematically.

But in financial planning, we can have “1+1 = 3”! How is that even possible?

To begin with, in financial planning, there are many strategies we can adopt to be creative in the way we reallocate assets to be smart about it and give yourself and your family a peace of mind to be able to sleep well at night. The above is just one of the many ways we can do it for the families we work with.

It starts with a conversation of what is most important to you, because getting to know you and your dreams and goals are most important to us, to be able to find a solution for you. All families are different and these concepts do not apply to everybody. It only applies for the right types of persons at the right time, with the right priorities.

Intention and goal

We were having a conversation with a family recently and their children have just started working and most of their large financial obligations are over. They started to ask, what can they do better with the wealth that they have accumulated over the years. They know in their mind, that they want to live well in retirement. At the same time, they want to be able to leave a legacy for their children as a token for them to be remembered by.

Current resources

They had a specific bank account of $1mil in cash that was earmarked for their children to be left behind as an inheritance. This was also a backup resource in case they ran out of money many many years down the road. So they do not plan to touch this money as they want it to be protected.

Smart strategies

If that was their intention, I told them that they could reposition half of it out so that when they are not around, there will be a guaranteed $1mil given to the children, on the very next day. With the other half of it, they could either spend more for themselves during their retirement or they could invest it and grow it even further if they do not intend to use it anyway. And if they reach a very very ripe old age and they are still around and might have run out money, they can utilize these money repositioned which would have grown much more than the bank account as well.

And that is how we can have “1+1 = 3”!

The catch

Like I mentioned before, this idea is not for everyone. These smart strategies are generally designed by the wealthy, for the wealthy and for the families to continue to be wealthy. And a person must be generally in good health for this to work.

Enhanced strategy

Rather than just giving this out to the children as a lump sum, you can have this to be a “Family Bank” for the on going needs of the children and even grandchildren when help might be needed. And once again, these assets can continue to have the chance to grow well progressively through proper financial planning. In such scenarios, it could be “1+1=4”!

If you would like to find out more and explore how this can help, we will be happy to have an initial chat to see if there is a fit.