I am a financial consultant in China. I live and work in Shanghai, but regularly travel to other cities in Asia for business. Because expatriates often move from location, I have customers everywhere, from Los Angeles to Shanghai, from London to Hong Kong. Most of my customers are based in Southeast Asia.
I am known for my straightforward Dutch approach in terms of financial advice and also a good eye for the risks associated with investing, and identify the risks of possible investments and insurance. As a financial adviser in China, I sponsor the Dutch Association in Shanghai.
As a financial adviser who is also the proud dad of a two year old I am already planning how I am going to prepare him for the economic practicalities of life by teaching some financial basics from early on. Lesson one: the importance of saving! I definitely don’t want my child to be like…
I wrote a post at the end of 2019, while we were in the midst of a sustained bull market, wondering when it might turn to a bear. It turns out that we didn’t have to wait long! Of course, every decade has witnessed periods of volatility. In the 1980s there was the Black Monday crash, then came the dot.com…
There have been a lot of headlines recently concerning a new ‘army’ of retail investors, opening millions of new trading accounts all over the world, including in the US, Europe, Australia and China. Online and mobile apps including Robinhood, Schwab and E-Trade are bringing trading to the masses, dramatically simplifying the buying and selling of stocks, options and…
Life has a nasty habit of throwing up unexpected expenses. Earlier this week a friend’s car broke down and she needed to have the fuel injector replaced and found herself $400 lighter to get back on the road. A friend of a friend recently had to have an emergency appendectomy and paid 230,000 yuan for…
Expats in China who have children may not be surprised at the results of a 2018 analysis of international school prices by the International Schools Database website. The study reveals that Shanghai and Beijing have the most expensive school fees on the planet, estimating that the average cost of educating one child in an international school…
For a long time, annuities were the investment of choice for many retirees around the world but over the course of the 21st century the retirement landscape has changed considerably and individuals are now much freer to choose different types of investment. Nevertheless, annuities often do still have their place in a retirement financial plan so…
So you already pay health insurance, life insurance, home insurance, car insurance, and travel insurance. Do you really need to spend more of your hard-earned cash on yet another type of insurance, such as critical illness insurance? I get why many people think critical illness is one kind of insurance cover they can live without,…
SMEs in China have become a major driver of economic growth and play an important role in contributing to GDP as well as being an important source of tax revenue. With a population of 1.3billion people it’s safe to say that China has immense human resources which makes it attractive for small and medium sized…
Stock Market has had a turbulent time in 2019 as indicated by the ups and downs on the graph below. Yet, in spite of much pessimism in the media, share prices keep on reaching fresh all-time highs and the lengthy bull market continues. How long this can carry on remains to be seen. Some market…
While we are all quick to insure our cars and homes, we often neglect the most important thing of all that need to be insured: ourselves! Imagine that you were to suffer a heart attack which required you to take a prolonged period off work. How would you manage to maintain your lifestyle and meet…