Financial tasks to do before year end

In less than 2 months, we will come to a closure for 2013. There are couple of financial tasks I thought one should try and do before the year ends.

Investment checkup. Review your stock investment and understand on those investment decisions that have not performed well or in a loss, what were the reasons. Was it due to insufficient understanding of the FA, was it due to timing, etc. Only when you understand your weakness and learn from others their strength continuously, then you can keep future losses to the minimal.

Portfolio realignment. For those who has embarked on the permanent portfolio(PP), it is probably time to rebalance your portfolio. There have been many surprises in the last 2 years where market such as Europe has gone up at least 30% despite the fact that they were having so much issues. Dow Jones have also keep hitting new highs. This also reminds us not to invest based on news but to adhere to the strict mechanics of the PP.

SRS. Isn't it cool to be a Singaporean. Apart from the America 401(k) tax saving scheme, in this region, we are probably the only country that have the similar scheme. Since the government has provided that channel, we should make full use of it. On surfing the web, I found these links which may be useful to you if you are interested.

1.  ecitizen.gov.sg - this portal has got all the information that you need for SRS, from who is eligible, what is the max amount, which are the banks, what can you do with SRS, etc.
2. ocbc.com - Just to highlight here, I am not OCBC employee, neither am I promoting anything here. I just like the SRS page which is very graphical and easy for laymen to understand. And besides, you get $30 Robinson vouchers, as part of their promotion now. I mean why not, free things is always nice :).

Charities. The fact that we are talking about the above means that we have done well in life, then shouldn't we give something back to the society especially to the less fortunate ones. With online portal, it is much easier to donate now, one can even charge to credit card.