Sabbie - this should encourage you ......

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Sabbie, if you become a successful person

I would have done my job

 

I wish you well

 

I cant criticise you because when i was younger I spent more than i earn

now i realised that having to spend without needing to know how much i have is so important

 

learn from other people mistake and NOT from your own

 

have a good week end

 

 

 

 

Safe bets pay off for ad agency boss

 

5 Feb 2012

Straits Times

For six years until recently, Mr Stephen Mangham, 50, was the group chairman of Ogilvy & Mather Singapore, and busy managing 600 people.

 

Today, he runs a 12-man outfit called Mangham Gaxiola, which he started with his former creative partner Robert Gaxiola.

 

Small as it is, so far, it has been 'hugely rewarding and fun', he says, because the business is his and starting his own firm was something that he had thought about on and off over the past 15 years.

 

His firm has got off to a flying start, having secured a founding client in CIMB bank.

 

Mr Mangham graduated with a law degree from Oxford University, but chose to be in advertising.

 

'At university, I edited the uni newspaper, which made me think that I would enjoy working in an industry which is also about the art of persuasion and communication,' he says. 'I have never regretted the decision.'

 

Mr Mangham and his wife Helen have four boys, aged 10, 15, 19 and 21.

 

Q: Are you a spender or saver?

 

I don't like to owe money, so I have always tried to make sure that I spend less than I earn. I try to strike a balance between making sure that we enjoy life now, and putting away enough for our old age.

 

I don't spend much on myself. Most of my monthly income is spent (other than pension savings and mortgage payments), but I have saved all my bonus payments over the years.

 

I spend the most on my family, on my kids' education, their swimming lessons, rugby lessons and so on.

 

Four boys don't come cheap, but I wouldn't have it any other way.

 

Q: How much do you charge to your credit cards every month?

 

Probably about $5,000. I try to use debit cards rather than credit cards.

 

Q: What financial planning have you done for yourself?

 

A good chunk of our money is invested in property. I have a pension fund and some money in shares.

 

And my wife has a trust in her name. But we also keep quite a lot on short-term deposit, just in case we need it, in Singapore and Britain.

 

I'm quite conservative when it comes to investing. I don't like to take risks, and I have an aversion to managed unit trusts where agents take large commissions upfront. I invested in unit trusts which charge a 7 per cent fee and it hardly grew. It was because what little gains there were went to the fees.

 

I have two life insurance policies, which are enough to look after my family should anything unfortunate happen.

 

I have three properties in Europe and none here.

 

First, I invest only in what I know well, which is my business.

 

Second, I like to keep a lot of money in very safe schemes. I believe housing should be long-term investments. If you don't know where you are going to be in the next 10 years, investing in a market that you don't know very well is very risky.

 

I don't believe in taking a blind gamble that prices will rise all the time. I know an expat who bought a property at the peak and was made redundant two months after that.

 

Q: Moneywise, what were your growing-up years like?

 

I am the oldest of three children. I have a brother and sister. My father was an aeronautical engineer and my mother a nurse. I had a comfortable, happy upbringing - a typical lower middle class one.

 

Money was sometimes tight, but I never went without it. I grew up realising that you had to earn money before you could spend it.

 

Q: How did you get interested in investing?

 

My first investment was in an apartment in London when I was 22. It just seemed more sensible to buy my own place rather than pay someone else the rent.

 

The apartment cost