Musings of the Mystery Men: Unus, KB Kok
Thursday, November 01, 2007
By KB KokBrother KB Kok, a mystery clinical year student, believes we shouldn't let other people handle our $$$ while we're in medical school.
Most medical students know nuts about economics and finance. I must admit that I'm one of them too. How “appropriate” it must seem then, that we should be saddled with a debt of $17,520 every year till we faithfully complete our medical studies.
This, I'm sure you're aware my friends, has been thanks to the repeated fee hikes from slightly over $1,000 in the mid-80s. So much so that there is talk that a greater proportion of medical students nowadays are from more well to do families who can afford to absorb the hike.
If that is true, maybe that makes the people who proposed the fee hikes feel better. But its like professors turning a blind eye to students struggling at the bottom of the bell curve, justifying the difficulty of tests using the stellar grades of people who spoiled the market.
Fact is, we still have a sizeable number of medical students in the current batches that are working to pay off school fees now and their study debts quickly on or after graduation. But being full-tim students, the amount of time we can devote and money we can make is limited.
So recently, a friend told me I should approach a financial planner.
“Eh KB, why you save your money in the bank? Now the interest rate how low lah! Make better use of it, go get some financial planning advice!”
Ignoring the fact that I have no really regular or sizeable income to speak of, or that I have no idea what a financial planner does (aside from maybe being a commission kia), I decide that it might be a good idea. Surely, its also high-time I should find out what all this hype is about. So I gamely make an appointment to see a Financial Consultant (FC) from XX bank.
At XX bank, I meet my FC (who actually turns out to be a rather attractive lady).
“Hi Mr.Kok, how may I help you?”
“Oh, I've got a study loan, from your bank actually, and I'm looking to pay off quickly. I was wondering if you could recommend anything to help me?”
FC looks unimpressed and proceeds to lose me with her alien tongue about the same time as I got lost in her hazelnut eyes… But anyway, I shall attempt to translate our rough conversation:
FC: How much you want to get?
Me: How much do you have now?
FC: I would like to grow my savings more than what it would be if I just saved them this 3 years.
Me: Would you need any of this money?
FC: Hopefully not.
Me: How much are you willing to risk? I don't want to lose any money.
FC then explains the various plans to me but I get slightly perturbed when FC starts to guarantee returns without much substantiation on what some of the plans are actually investing in. I start to think that FC is like a real estate agent except that her client's house is somewhere in the US and she can only show me photos of it.
Being more cautious than greedy, (and having kept my dopamine, norepinehprine and serotinin levels in check), I walk out without committing any money.
Having now found out what a financial planner does, I decide to find out how all these structured deposits actually work. But in any case, the Government has been encouraging Singaporeans to shift our savings to deposits right, so whatever it is, cant be that bad right?
Economic textbooks, however, were worse to read than any patho, microB and pharmaco book put together. Like with FC, I was totally lost in their jungle of jargon. So when I heard through one of my grapevines that some bankers of interest frequented a certain pub, I jumped on the chance (my maiden visit to a pub… it helps they're now smoke-free)
Not to be disappointed, I spent the entire evening eavesdropping on almost all the conversations in the pub (sadly, I didn't get any good pick-up lines). But just as I was about to give up and try my hand at picking up a cute girl (in retrospect, I do regret), I happened to come across a lone figure sitting at a corner in the pub and decided to talk to him since I had nothing much to lose.
He turned out to be a senior staff member at a certain Singapore branch of a big investment bank. Probably a little high from the drinks he had, he acceded to my request to explain how he thought all these deposits actually work. Let me draw it out based on what I understand:
If the sketch is true, its no wonder the income gap is widening both within countries and between countries. Those buggers in the investment banks like Goldman Sachs are pocketing obscenely unfair proportions of the profits they make off money from commonfolk on the street! And yet, like the recent Bear Stearns subprime funds fiasco shows, its also going to be frigging hard to sue them even when they lose the investors' money. To be fair though, the smaller funds do collapse, but that's even worse for us!
To end all this off, the other day, I met a friend who had put his money in a certain structured deposit for 3 years already. He laments that he's been losing money all these 3 years and probably just expects to get back his principal deposit at the end of 5 years. Although he'd prefer to draw out the money now, the bank had shortened the penalty-free time for early redemption a while back.
Therefore, I believe we shouldn't let financial planners handle our money while we're still in medical school because:
• We don't have much more money to make anyway
• They don't really know how the money is going to be handled
But then again, KB Kok still does know nuts about economics. If you would like to correct what I have written here, please do feel free to respond below or liase with my pULSE friends to send your own article to rebut me. (Pulse.magazine@gmail.com)
