First World Problems #2

I'm not really in a mood to blog this week so I'll just keep today's article short and sweet just to update everyone on my attempts to hire a domestic helper without a notice of assessment.

a) Wild Goose chase to find out whether my dad already has a fixed deposit account.

The week began with with me finding a fixed deposit statement with my dad's name on this made in 2016 when we hired our previous maid, there would have been a possibility that we already have a fixed deposit account to get our next helper.

So I went to the bank with my mum to make enquiries about my dad's account. Unfortunately, banks have to comply with secrecy laws and even with my mum's marriage certificate, the bank cannot even let us know whether the account would exist. I ended up rushing to the hospital to get my dad on the phone with the banker only to find out that the account was withdrawn some time ago.

b) Sold some stocks to build up the fixed deposit account.

I was prepared to liquidate part of my leveraged account to create the fixed deposit account. Choosing the stocks to let go was not difficult - I got into my account and sold my REITs belonged to the quadrant that paid the lowest dividends and had the highest gearing. The hardest part was saying goodbye to Mapletree Logistics Trust which did very well for me for the past year but no longer gave me compelling yields. (It even went up on Friday. FML )

Upon activation it took the Kim Eng brokers 3 working days for the money to return to my bank account which was reasonable.

c) Fixed Deposit creation was instantaneous

Once you have money in your bank account, creating a fixed deposit account is as simple as using a mobile banking app. Given that I am trying to get rid of this fixed D as soon as I am allowed to do so, I set the duration to 1 month and would get $2.41 (0.05% interest rate) of my trouble next month.

But there was one final obstacle...

d) Getting a fixed deposit statement with my name on it is not straight-forward

As I just created a fixed deposit account, an account summary has not started showing up on my online banking profile yet. The next challenge is getting a physical printout that maps my name, account number and amount in the fixed deposit on the same piece of paper. By now, I was so paranoid about bureaucratic procedures and was more than willing to queue at the banking branch to get this printed. Unfortunately for me, the queue was long on a Saturday so I spent 30 minutes waiting to get this done.

Right now, we have just completed the paperwork to hire our maid from Myanmar and now we have to wait for a week for her to complete her training.

But the journey is not over yet.

I don't have full visibility on how long my money needs to be in this fixed deposit so I would be making some enquiries with MOM this upcoming week, escalating to my MP if possible.

The reason why I'm dying to get out is that having a $50,000 warchest along with my dividend payout may allow me a chance to get into Astrea V bonds ( Likely Tranche B ) in my margin account.