REIT Distributions 2012 3Q

Summary of REIT DPU of 3Q 2012:
** only contains REITs I am tracking

REIT	3Q 2012	2Q 2012	Ex-date	Date payable	Remarks
AIMS industrial REIT	0.025	0.025	2 Nov	20 Dec	-
FraserComm	0.03448	0.32423	1 Nov	29 Nov	half-yearly (For period Apr to Sept). To change to quarterly distributions
FrasersCT	0.0271	0.026	31 Oct	29 Nov	-
First REIT	0.0168	0.0193	31 Oct	29 Nov	End of additional distributions from Adam Road property sale
MapleLog	0.0171	0.017	24 Oct	29 Nov	-
Maple Industrial Trust	0.0229	0.0226	30 Oct	29 Nov	-
SabanaREIT	0.0234	0.0227	24 Oct	28 Nov	-
Starhill	0.011	0.0108	2 Nov	28 Nov	-
Suntec REIT	0.0235	0.02361	1 Nov	29 Nov	-
-	-	-	-	-	-
-	-	-	-	-	-

CPF contribution rates from Sep 2012

Earlier in Feb this year, I posted on some changes in CPF contribution rates for the elderly. The new rates are effective from 1st September 2012.

The updated rates are as follows:

 

Even though the rates may not be affecting you now, but you should have an idea of how 

1) CPF contribution amount drops as you age

Do not assume the employer + employee CPF contibution will always stay the same. From the table above, the contribution amount will start dropping after the age of 50. At an age of above 65, the CPF contribution rates are less than 1/3 than one who is of age below 50.

2) CPF allocation to Ordinary Account (OA), Special Account (SA) and Medisave Account (MA) changes as you age.

CPF OA, SA, MA allocation changes as you age. This is important as you need to take the changes in allocations into consideration when buying a HDB. Most couples take up 30 year loans to finance their HDB flats. If the couple gets married at the age of 30, the loan needs to be repaid till the age of 60. How many couples are even aware that only 3.5% of their wages goes to the OA at the age of 60? If there is insufficient balances in the CPF OA for loan repayment, the couple will need to fork out cash for that. All these needs to be planned and accounted for.

Even though the contribution rates and their allocation are likely to change again in the future, the current figures can help us to have an idea of how the much additional savings you need to set aside. When the figures are changed again, one should relook at their finances to assess if they are still on track to their loan repayments and retirement.

Related Post:

Budget: CPF contribution rates for older workers to be raised

Courts Asia IPO balloting ratio

For those who are interested, the balloting ratio for Courts Asia IPO are as follows:

The IPO was still quite well subscribed. A usual, there is a group of rich investors who applied for more than 1000 lots.

Side Note:
I did not apply for this IPO. The dividend yield was somewhat low (~2 to 3% per year). A previous listing of Courts Singapore was subsequently delisted a few years ago. This is likely to cause a shadow on some investors.


Other info:
IPO price: $0.77
Listing date: 15 Oct 2012

Income group breakdown for year of assessment 2011

The financial report for IRAS was released some time last week. One of the more interesting statistics to me was the breakdown of the various income groups..

Source: http://www.iras.gov.sg/irasHome/page.aspx?id=13986

A few things to note on the statistics above.
1) It seems that residents from Singapore are earning much more than we think. For example, there are more than 100k of tax residents earning between the $100k to $150k bracket. Each of them have an average assessable income of $121k. They pay an average of $5371 in taxes.

2) The highest band of more than a million in assessable income consists of 3870 individuals. Each of them have an average assessable income of  $1.925M. They pay an average of $356k in taxes.

3) Most tax payers actually fall under the $30k to $40k bracket. These tax payers have an average of $34847 of assessable income. They pay an average of $214 in taxes.


Other thoughts
So which band are you currently in? How far are you in moving on to the next band? How many tax payers are ahead of you in terms of income? We can ask ourselves so many questions when looking at the statistics above.

Another thing to note is that the richer folks probably earn more as they are able to invest more. At the very least, capital gains and dividends are not taxable in Singapore. Such "passive income" will not be reflected in the table above. The cost of living has grown so high that we can hardly just rely on our active source of income. We need to relook at our own portfolios and assess how we can make our money work harder.

Interra resources: rights issue update

Previously, I mentioned that I was applying the interra resource rights issue. The rights issue results are as follows:

 

It seems that many people are going for a quick buck in this rights issue. We see a 193.4% applying for the rights issue. After all, each excess lot allocated would mean an extra $200 pocket money. The rights shares last traded at $0.23 before it stop trading.

As usual, there are some who did not apply at all. The 6.2% who did not apply made up about 9 million units. I always wonder who are these people who give up on the rights issue without even selling the rights shares. Perhaps there may be some POSB/DBS unit holders who did not have a UOB or OCBC bank account to make the application.

The rights issue has concluded and the newly converted units started trading today. In the last few week, interra resources also went up by quite a bit. Looks like I will be taking profit on this one soon. =)

Related posts:
Lessons learnt from the recent interra resources rights issue