Sunday, January 6, 2008

Disability income insurance

Dear Mr. Tan,
What are your views about disability income insurance?

REPLY:

As a general principle, disability income insurance is useful. If a person is disabled due to illness or accident and is not able to earn an income, the insurance will make a regular payment to replace the lost income.

In practice, the situation is different.

Here are my views, based on my limited knowledge of the market for disability income insurance in Singapore.

1. The market for disability income insurance taken by individuals is quite undeveloped in Singapore.

2. The premium rate tends to be quite high in relation to the actual cost of the risk. You will probably have to pay a high premium for a cover that is worth much less.

3. There is a long waiting period (usually three months), before the disability income starts to pay. The period of payment may also be limited.

4. If you buy disability insurance in a group, for example through an employer, or an association, you are likely to get more competitive premium rates.

5. For individuals, you can insure for temporary disablement caused by accidents through a personal accident policy. The premium rate is quite competitive.

Personal savings for your retirement

Many Singaporeans rely on the Central Provident Fund as their main source of savings for retirement.

Many have found it to be inadequate. In 1999, only one-third of people reaching age 55 had sufficient savings to meet the Minimum Sum of $60,000. The Minimum Sum has now been raised to $99,600. This is only sufficient to meet the very basic cost of living in Singapore.

For a more comfortable standard of living, you need at least two times of this Minimum Sum.

Let me share eight tips with you on how you can get adequate savings for your retirement.

Click here for the full article:
http://www.tankinlian.com/articles/savings.html

Technique to solve Logic Quiz E-1

Here is the technique to solve Logic Quiz E-1 (see below).

Start with clue 11 which fixes the house of the engineer. From there, you can use clues 10, 12 and 20 to fix the houses for the stated characteristics. You can use clue 3 to fix the house of the lawyer.

After you have fixed the house of the engineer and the lawyer, you can use clue 13 to fix the house of the accountant and salesman.

The remaining two occupations are the technician and doctor. If you study the clues 2 and 8, you will be able to find their houses.

It will quite easy to complete the remaining clues. Look for the clues that fit exactly into the blank squares (i.e. only one solution).

If you take step by step, you can complete the whole quiz. It may take you 30 minutes to solve this quiz the first time, but with practice, you can reduce the time down to 10 minutes for a similar quiz.

Logic Quiz E-1

If you want a challenging logic quiz, try the following. Put our name and time taken in this blog. If you can get the answer within 15 minutes, you are very good!

There are six houses with different colours in a row. Each occupant likes a different fruit, drinks a different beverage, drives a different car and speaks a different language.

1. The person who speaks French lives to the left of the person who speaks German.
2. The technician lives to the left of the green house.
3. The person who drinks water is the lawyer.
4. The person who likes melon lives to the left of the person who likes durian.
5. The person who speaks Japanese lives two houses left of the brown house.
6. The person who speaks Italian lives two houses left of the person who drives Hyundai.
7. The person who drives Honda lives two houses left of the person who drives Nissan.
8. The person who likes mango lives two houses left of the doctor.
9. The person who drives BMW lives two houses left of the blue house.
10. The engineer lives two houses left of the person who drinks water.
11. The engineer lives in the third house.
12. The person who likes apple lives to the left of the engineer.
13. The accountant lives to the left of the salesman.
14. The person who likes banana lives two houses left of the person who drinks beer.
15. The person who drives Peugeot lives two houses left of the person who likes strawberry.
16. The person who drinks tea lives two houses left of the yellow house.
17. The person who drinks juice lives to the left of the person who drinks wine.
18. The white house is two houses left of the person who speaks Russian.
19. The person who drives Toyota lives three houses left of the person who drinks milk.
20. The red house is to the left of the person who likes apple.

Question: Who speaks Chinese

Low cost Term Insurance

Dear Mr. Tan,

Where can I buy low cost Term insurance?

REPLY

Read this FAQ:
http://www.tankinlian.com/faq/termd.html

Give a call to 3 companies and ask them to quote the Term insurance for your age and sum assured.

Read this FAQ for the benchmark rates:
http://www.tankinlian.com/faq/term.html