Shifting priorities

Plans to do another 70.3 has been shelved, so my remaining races for the year will be TriFactor OD next month and StanChart 42k in Dec.

I had never worried excessively about my finances until Ryan was born.
Becoming a dad and husband means the extra responsibility of making sure that I provide enough for my family, which will become increasingly challenging as the kids grow up.

Though I have started to invest a bit in the last 2 years, but it has been more of simple buying for dividend payouts rather than fully understanding what I invested it. To put it in simple terms, it is almost equivalent to gambling but on a much lesser level.

Attended a short free class a couple of weeks ago, and decided to invest in getting myself educated and signed up for a short course to learn how to trade and invest better. It may save me lots of headache and heartache that may result from bad investments in the future.

Learning to better manage my finances will be important.
Apart from trying to increase my income, the other aspect of controlling expenses and money outflow will be critical.
After exhausting the child tax relief within 2 years and racking up high income tax again, I have started to take tax reduction planning more seriously.
Been reading up a bit on voluntary contributions to CPF and depositing into SRS, which are good means to reduce/defer taxation.

Despite the fact that I may not fully support or agree with some of the CPF policies, there is no escaping from the fact that everyone has to meet the Minimum Sum. So instead of grousing against the policy, it will be better to make it work for me.

CPF SA cash contribution
Benefits:

• Up to $7000 tax relief can be derived from cash contribution
• Good 5% interest rate on the first $40,000 in SA, and 4% for sums above $40,000
• Counts towards Minimum Sum

Disadvantages:

Locked up till retirement and become annuity (uncontrollable factor so no point fighting against this)

Coming to think of it, this is a really good scheme for retirement planning.
Now I kick myself for not looking into this years ago when I broke the higher income tax bracket and paid so much tax to the gov for a "Thank you for your contribution towards Nation building"
I'll make sure that I won't make the same mistake again this year come Dec when it is time to make the final changes towards my income tax relief.

CPF SRS 
Benefits:

• Tax deferment up to $12750 per year
• Can be used for investment purposes (except for property)
• Only 50% is taxable on withdrawal
• Enforced savings in a sense since I won't be able to spend this pool of money
• Flexible contribution compared to an endowment fund where I have to contribute at a fixed rate

Disadvantages:

• Early withdrawal penalty of 5% (except Death, Medical or bankruptcy issues)
• Locked in till retirement
• Possibly of higher taxation rates if my income falls in a higher tax bracket (not a big issue since I don't expect to work forever so my active income at 62 is probably much lower than compared to my prime)
• Possibility of higher tax rates than current levels when I'm 62 (uncontrollable factor and there is no certainty that this will happen so no point worrying about this)
• Investing is necessary. Cash deposit interest rate at 0.05% PA is horrendous and one will just be losing money to inflation this way.

A combination of these 2 will be able to help to substantially reduce the tax that I have to pay every year.
At least the money is still mine even though I can't touch it for the next 30 years.
Better than letting the government squander it away on Brompton bikes (that is more expensive than my racing bike!)


Instead of hoarding lots of cash through worrying about not having enough capital on hand when I eventually start my own business, it will be better to put these cash to good use instead of just wasting them away in cash savings accounts with extremely poor returns.

My 2014 To Do list included 2 sets of 70.3 races.
Since I'm not going to do another 70.3 this year, learning to better manage my finances will be a good replacement.
Anyway it is best to start proper finance management and investments early, so that compounding over time will works it's magic.

I had been procrastinating for years on better managing my finances. It is high time I look seriously into this.
Another good case of facing up to my fears (or rather short-comings in this case) rather than just running away or pretending not to see them :)

Happy weekend and Ryan is 2 years old!

Celebrated Ryan's 2th birthday with a simple home buffet party at MIL's place during the previous Sunday.
Kept it relatively simple and low key this time with just relatives.
Ryan was still recovering from his fever so he probably didn't enjoy it as much as he should.

Celebrations in his child care center was done on Tuesday afternoon.
Pretty nice to see Ryan do the handing out of the goodie bags to his classmates, even though he didn't really look too excited when doing so.

Guess his behaviour takes after me when I was at his age; not that excited or super sociable when with huge crowds.

Ryan subsequently recovered and we managed to bring him out for some quality family time after a month-long disruption with him, dear and me taking turns to fall sick.

He was significantly happier when we brought him out to visit Marina Sq, Suntec, Marina barrage. It was a long time since he was smiling throughout the day and being super cooperative.

Sunday was a simple cycling affair at ECP but guess he didn't enjoy it as much as dear could not cycle with us. Ryan prefers to have daddy and mummy spending time together with him!

More happy weekends for Ryan ahead!



And, I still miss my Ah Di.
He will have turned 17 years old last Friday.
I know he will be watching over the family spiritually.

有影无？

70% OF NSMEN FAIL THEIR ANNUAL IPPT WHEN IN THEIR 30S

Seriously, 70%????
I don't think I see so many people failing when I take my IPPT.
Guess I should be even more proud that I'm way ahead of the bell curve and take good care of myself as I age?

Anyway this is something that I really want to inculcate in Ryan when he grows up.
Stick to a healthy and fit lifestyle, it will be good for the body and mind.

IPPT Gold again!

It gets more difficult as I get older, but I still managed to score IPPT Gold again to prove that it was not a flash in the pan last year!

Halted all cycling and swimming training to focus on speed runs in the last few weeks.
It ain't easy, facing one of my deep-set fears about the discomfort in speed training.

Even though I managed to do a sub-10 and beat the 10:14 timing by a good margin, I still feel that my fitness is still not fully calibrated for short burst runs like this.
It's the mental strength that saw me through rather than physical fitness.

Kept running these phrases in my head when I did the run:
"Tonight we dine in hell"
"There is no tomorrow"
My ironman pride was at stake, so I had to make sure that I score Gold in one sitting.

Perhaps I should keep speed training as a part of my maintenance training rather than just focusing purely on endurance training when training for 70.3, so that I'll be better prepared when my next IPPT window opens.

This IPPT Gold will be my golden ticket to the next 70.3 challenge!
Which one should it be?....

Score IPPT Gold if I want to do another 70.3 this year

This will be a challenge for myself.
I still have one month to clear my IPPT for this window.

If I manage to score IPPT Gold again, I'll go for another 70.3 within the year
If I can't get my Gold, no 70.3 for me.

A Half-Ironman should be scoring Gold for IPPT!

Cutie Ryan

It just gets better.

It was a moment of cuteness overload and sweetness this morning.

After changing into his school uniform, he just ran in and out of the bedroom, and at one point, hid behind the wall from our view, only showing his hand and saying "No More".

Ryan was learning how to play hide and seek with us.

So sweet......

Training for IPPT

When I was much younger, IPPT was an annual $400 affair without much fuss.
I was young, fit, and much lighter at around 62kg then.
I'm now much older, at 70kg

Though the requirements for IPPT was gradually reduced as one gets older, the dynamics of the body aging and fitness decling faster than the IPPT standards meant that it will get tougher to score gold as one ages.

There was a period when my fitness had dropped below the Gold standards for a good few years

I always had the assumption that I was fit and could finish full marathons, so it is a taken that I should score Gold for my IPPTs.
Well, this did work all the way till 2009, and was eventually broken in 2010.

When I met my first Silver, I was in a state of denial.
"Perhaps it's just a bad day. I can still finish 42km runs"

My 2nd Silver in 2011 was due to me putting on too much weight, and I could not finish the 9th chin up for the Gold standard. Subsequently didn't put in too much effort to clock <10:14 br="" nbsp="">

The 3rd Silver in 2012 was a rude wake up call.
My 2.4km run is now officially non-Gold standard after 3 tries in 3 years.
"A bad day in office" is no longer a valid reason for not scoring Gold anymore.

2013 was a good year.
I started challenging for the half Ironman in late 2012, and had to take the IPPT during my ICT. Did surprisingly well and managed to clock 9:47 for the run, and regained the Gold standard.

Now, the window for clearing my IPPT for 2014 is almost over, and I have to face the challenge of trying for  the $400 in Gold.

Facing my fears
I had always avoided facing my fears for training specifically for the 2.4km IPPT run.
Speedwork training run has always extremely uncomfortable.
Doing the Long Slow Distance (LSD) run is a much easier training in comparison, and incidentally, I always chose to do the LSD for most of my trainings to avoid doing Speedwork.
This, in fact, is me running away from the reality that I needed to do Speedwork to properly train for a Gold 2.4km run.
The way that I trained in the past, is to keep clocking LSD runs, and pray hard that I can accidentally do a Gold 2.4km run during the test.

WRONG METHODOLOGY!!!

Training for specific requirements means a proper training has to be adopted.

Training for 2.4km by using the training plan for a 42km race is not the correct way to prepare.

This is especially pronounced as I got older, and it gets tougher to translate one class of physical fitness into another class.

Drawing on confidence

Things changed for me when I started participating in Triathlons.

It gave me a different challenge and impetus to change my overly simplistic training methods which I had been using for years for marathon trainings, which is just simply "No pain No gain, run more gain more"

This may have been working for me in my younger years, but my physique changes as I age so and I have to adapt.

What gave me really good confidence was from my swim.

Before I started doing Tris, I could barely swim 100m in freestyle without busting my lungs, so swimming was the discipline which I feared the most then.

Taking on my fears, putting in the efforts, has enabled me to improve my swim tremendously, to the point that today I'm equally confident in my swim and run.

If I can do it for my swim, where freestyle sprints are still lung bursting but already accepted as a norm in my trainings, I should be able do it for my sprint runs as well. 

The mantra of "No pain No gain, run more gain more" still holds true, but now I will have to add a "Train smart Train right" to complete the mantra.

I have managed to clock a 10:07 in my own 2.4km test run this week, so putting in more sessions should place me in good stead to score Gold again this year.

Inspirational video

Stacks of tomorrows become stacks of yesterday - that's when u keep saying let's do it tomorrow.
Hmmmm

Am I losing the way that I had originally wanted to take?
Food for thoughts