What qualification do i need to have to b a success businessman?

**ramcem** · 28-11-2006, 04:33 PM

Your mum, dad and the government also says, "To be successful,

You need to be a President Scholar with straight "A"s results from either Cambridge, Stamford, Harvard or Oxford.."

If that's the case, professors in these universities must be making billions of dollars every year and they will top the list of Forbes richest men. However, these professors will also be unlikely to be in the Forbes 500 for the next few decades to come.

On the other hand, if using salary as a benchmark, Bill Gates (a famous Harvard dropout by the way..) is not the highest paid in the world. Our Prime Minister probably earn much more than him. Steve Jobs from Apple Computer and former boss of Cisco (forgot the name), paid themselves US$1 in salary every year.

Robert Kiyosaki defines simply the 3 types of income:

i) Earned (Salary);
ii) Portfolio (Paper Assets);
iii) Passive (Business Owners and landlords)

Our schools and society in Singapore emphasis heavily on earned income since day one. That's why our ministers paid themselves million dollar salaries. But please be aware that this is also the highest taxed income of all.

I never truly appreciate the lessons until I have 3 businesses of my own.

Take for example I pay my staff a $1000 salary. I have to top up 13% of his pay to CPF which works out to be $130. This is money I can't pay him direct. He still need to fork out about 20% to contribute to his employee CPF. That's another $200 gone. He is now left with $800. Wait a minute, almost everything he pays for attract GST of 5%.. so that's another $40 gone. He is now left with only $760. Think that's all? How about income tax? Although in Singapore you probably won't have to pay any income tax if your salary is below $1500, let's for simplicity sake, work out the calculations. Assuming that after all the deductions of personal reliefs and GST rebates, he fell into the 10% bracket. He is now left with $684 of true disposable income.

Let's work out the mathematics. I have prepared $1000 + $130 = $1130 to pay his full salary. He has only left with $684 to spent. 39.82% goes either into some form of witholding schemes such as CPF or tax (direct and indirect).

And mind you, Singapore has one of the lowest tax in the world. Some countries charge as much as 45% or more from income tax alone!

Contrast this with I make a $1000 profit from my business. Using legal accounting, I spend it on business travel, dine in high class restaurants, buy comfortable chairs for my office and many creative ways I can think of. I am down to $100 net profit before tax. The corporate tax is now about 24% (coming down soon..). I just pay $24 in tax.

Now you understand why Bill Gates is not the highest paid in the world and why Steve Jobs and ex-Cisco boss pay themselves US$1 a year?

Still want a high salary?

My ultimate aim is to eventually draw S$1 per year in salary. When I have done that, I would be damn rich and successful!

~Ramcem

**ramcem** · 28-11-2006, 04:37 PM

Someone then said, "CPF is not tax.. and CPF account interest higher then bank saving account. And for general population, CPF will be use for paying their house.

The way i see, paying tax is actually a way to make contribution to the public."

_______________
My reply was:

No. CPF is not exactly tax. It is just a scheme set up by the government as a form of forced savings for retirement. Most people simply screw up their financials. Along the way, it can be used to purchase HDB flats, fund your children education and more recently, private properties, insurance and government-approved investment schemes. Although the money will be eventually yours, we got to wait a long long time for it. Even when we hit that age, it's still subject to income tax. That's why Supplementary Retirement Scheme (SRS) was introduced.

The way we can use CPF funds is also limited by the government and any gains shall be put back into CPF... but I think losses cannot be used to offset your taxable income.. I will need to check my tax strategist on this.

My previous post was just illustrating a typical employee and his disposable income. CPF is certainly not "disposable" by my definition. I can't buy a handphone with it.

CPF scheme is also a strategy to lock liquidity for the government to invest. Other ways include issuing bonds and lottery. If everyone of us withdrew our CPFs today, CPF will certainly declare bankrupt. It is through the government's investment that we enjoy a so-called "higher" interest rate than banks now. Back in the late 1990s, this wasn't the case, bank interest pay higher than CPF interest.

Paying tax is a way of life in a civilised society. I have no objections to it. I just don't want to pay more tax than required of me. Since tax laws are written and approved by constitutions for business owners like me to exploit... and the government asks me to exploit them, why not?

Hope that clear some doubts here.. ;-)

~Ramcem

**ramcem** · 28-11-2006, 04:39 PM

Someone said' "interestin i must say.....care to explain more abt passive n portfolio income"

____________
My reply:

Any idiot who read Robert Kiyosaki's books can tell you that earned income is your salary, portfolio income comes from paper assets such as stocks, unit trusts etc., passive income is income from real estate and from businesses you own.

But it's how the three intercorrelate that produced the complexity of the corporate world.

Rather than just quoting from his books, let me try to explain these concepts using my experience.

To be truly competent in the world of business and investments, you need to be well versed in the three class of assets:

i) Business;
ii) Hard Assets;
iii) Paper Assets

Most of our "qualified" financial planners with big titles like "CFP", "QFP" or "CPF" or whatever they called themselves are only well-versed in only paper assets such as insurance and unit trusts. While they may fool the common uncle and auntie in the streets, they need to be much more qualified to talk to people like me.

i) Business

Building your own business requires you tremendous amount of preparation in terms of education. Notice I used "education" here, not money. Most people have this mentality that all they need start a business is money. Money is important but as I said before, it is the least important of all.

I am also not referring to your NUS or NTU honour degrees. Those certificates merely create visions of security. While they may give you a higher starting salary, their increment goes indirect propertional with age and experience. At some point along the journey, it could even be a liabilty if you happen to lose your job during your peak.

The education I am talking about is "street smart" education. You can either acquire it slowly by learning through your own experience (which can be very costly) or learn from people who had gone through before. But be aware of paying huge fees to attend expensive seminars, most gurus became rich not by their business but by selling tickets to you.

I have created a 10 year plan when I was 19 years old. The plan was to compress what would take a normal man 100 years to achieve in business experience. This bold plan can only be achieved with tremendous leverage and excellerated learnings. I chose MLM as that was the ultimate leverage system in front of me guided by a very good mentor (now a legend in MLM in Singapore). I had no social life for many years.

I started my first business at age 27 after thoroughly preparing myself by studying finance, sales and marketing, psychology, politics and even religion. Though I only achieved about "70" years of experience, the opportunity came on fast and I had to grab it before it's gone. I didn't regret the decision.

I now sit on board of 3 companies within a short year. I began to appreciate the lessons I have learnt better. The powerful advantages of business are found in its tax laws. Also, growth in a business is normally exponential, not linear as in a job. A properly run business is much less risky than a job and the powerful corporate shield acts as a personal fortress against your creditors.

Robert Kiyosaki's strategy is also my strategy. Keep your topmost holding companies private but your bottommost companies public (if possible). Just to reveal a little, Robert Kiyosaki's topmost company in his business empire is called "Pele Corporation". Only those very near him would know about this..

There are too many things to cover in the world of business. So I will just stop here for the moment.

I will cover paper assets and hard assets some other time.. this post might get too long for most.

~Ramcem

**MamaRos** · 28-11-2006, 11:06 PM

You need PEOPLE SKILL, the ability to relate to people from ALL walks of life becos in business, everyone is your customer.

**lynex** · 29-11-2006, 12:50 PM

Thanks Ramcem... agree to some of the points u posted.. hope to read more from you...:biggrin4:

**bigbigbird** · 03-03-2007, 07:05 PM

very intresting, hahahaha

**xueren** · 03-03-2007, 07:09 PM

u need luck, a business acumen ,creativity,risk-taking behavior.for examlple, there are so many fashion boutique.how do u ensure yr shop stands out from the rest...thats when creativity comes in.ppl lke creativity and novelty

**djchris** · 03-03-2007, 08:48 PM

	Quote:
	Your mum, dad and the government also says, "To be successful, you need to be a President Scholar with straight "A"s results from either Cambridge, Stamford, Harvard or Oxford.."

Well Rancem, sometimes, your mum, dad, and the govt could be wrong. And in this case, they truly are.

I've started my own business last year and the experience is truly amazing. I've learnt alot from sales, marketing, financing, accounting, etc.

Passive income started coming in as dividends from stock investments made last year.

Hopefully if everything goes well, by this year, I'll be on my way to a business degree.

**gfwanted** · 05-03-2007, 01:01 AM

	Quote:			Originally Posted by ramcem
	Your mum, dad and the government also says, "To be successful, You need to be a President Scholar with straight "A"s results from either Cambridge, Stamford, Harvard or Oxford.." If that's the case, professors in these universities must be making billions of dollars every year and they will top the list of Forbes richest men. However, these professors will also be unlikely to be in the Forbes 500 for the next few decades to come. On the other hand, if using salary as a benchmark, Bill Gates (a famous Harvard dropout by the way..) is not the highest paid in the world. Our Prime Minister probably earn much more than him. Steve Jobs from Apple Computer and former boss of Cisco (forgot the name), paid themselves US$1 in salary every year. Robert Kiyosaki defines simply the 3 types of income: i) Earned (Salary); ii) Portfolio (Paper Assets); iii) Passive (Business Owners and landlords) Our schools and society in Singapore emphasis heavily on earned income since day one. That's why our ministers paid themselves million dollar salaries. But please be aware that this is also the highest taxed income of all. I never truly appreciate the lessons until I have 3 businesses of my own. Take for example I pay my staff a $1000 salary. I have to top up 13% of his pay to CPF which works out to be $130. This is money I can't pay him direct. He still need to fork out about 20% to contribute to his employee CPF. That's another $200 gone. He is now left with $800. Wait a minute, almost everything he pays for attract GST of 5%.. so that's another $40 gone. He is now left with only $760. Think that's all? How about income tax? Although in Singapore you probably won't have to pay any income tax if your salary is below $1500, let's for simplicity sake, work out the calculations. Assuming that after all the deductions of personal reliefs and GST rebates, he fell into the 10% bracket. He is now left with $684 of true disposable income. Let's work out the mathematics. I have prepared $1000 + $130 = $1130 to pay his full salary. He has only left with $684 to spent. 39.82% goes either into some form of witholding schemes such as CPF or tax (direct and indirect). And mind you, Singapore has one of the lowest tax in the world. Some countries charge as much as 45% or more from income tax alone! Contrast this with I make a $1000 profit from my business. Using legal accounting, I spend it on business travel, dine in high class restaurants, buy comfortable chairs for my office and many creative ways I can think of. I am down to $100 net profit before tax. The corporate tax is now about 24% (coming down soon..). I just pay $24 in tax. Now you understand why Bill Gates is not the highest paid in the world and why Steve Jobs and ex-Cisco boss pay themselves US$1 a year? Still want a high salary? My ultimate aim is to eventually draw S$1 per year in salary. When I have done that, I would be damn rich and successful! ~Ramcem

That mean personal expenses or asset all claim put under registered business company, than net profit will become lower and the taxed pay for government also will be less. This is a way to escape income tax and by the way can prevent wealth flow out. But is that got any risk for doing such thing?

Got any way to prevent income tax if salary above 1500 permonth? is that calculate on basic salary or total salary? example if basic SD 2500 + allowance SD 600 + claim SD 400, if taxed imposed also on allowance and claim, it is really not fair lar like that...that why that rich people alway get richer and poor people alway get poorer..
is that got some way to reduce personal tax in singapore? in malaysia, some rebate if you buy insurance, book etc can reduce personal income tax..
--------------------------------------------------------------------

**ramcem** · 05-03-2007, 01:05 PM

Unfortunately, the tax laws are written for the business owners who take risk; not the high paid hard working employees. As an employee, your ways to reduce personal income tax is severly limited.

As you can see from the S'pore tax structure, corporate tax are lower than the highest bracket for personal income tax.

If you earn a very high salary, one of the method is to set up a company and let your salary flow through the company. A fairly competent tax strategist will be able to give you advice.

I've one MLM friend who earns so much money that he pay five digits for his income tax every year. Upon setting up a company, he let his commissions flow through the structure and drastically reduce his personal income tax.

The price to pay for such a strategic tax change is that every cent he earns and spend need to be documented. The big ticket items such as the Mercedes he is driving is not his but the company. But who the heck cares when he is still driving it!

~Ramcem

28-11-2006, 04:33 PM	#1 (permalink)
ramcem VIXer Join Date: Nov 2006 Posts: 63 iTrader: (0) Gender: Zodiac Sign: Country: Location: Western Long Mountain SGC$: 156.20 Bank: 0.00 Total SGC$: 156.20	What qualification do i need to have to b a success businessman? Your mum, dad and the government also says, "To be successful, You need to be a President Scholar with straight "A"s results from either Cambridge, Stamford, Harvard or Oxford.." If that's the case, professors in these universities must be making billions of dollars every year and they will top the list of Forbes richest men. However, these professors will also be unlikely to be in the Forbes 500 for the next few decades to come. On the other hand, if using salary as a benchmark, Bill Gates (a famous Harvard dropout by the way..) is not the highest paid in the world. Our Prime Minister probably earn much more than him. Steve Jobs from Apple Computer and former boss of Cisco (forgot the name), paid themselves US$1 in salary every year. Robert Kiyosaki defines simply the 3 types of income: i) Earned (Salary); ii) Portfolio (Paper Assets); iii) Passive (Business Owners and landlords) Our schools and society in Singapore emphasis heavily on earned income since day one. That's why our ministers paid themselves million dollar salaries. But please be aware that this is also the highest taxed income of all. I never truly appreciate the lessons until I have 3 businesses of my own. Take for example I pay my staff a $1000 salary. I have to top up 13% of his pay to CPF which works out to be $130. This is money I can't pay him direct. He still need to fork out about 20% to contribute to his employee CPF. That's another $200 gone. He is now left with $800. Wait a minute, almost everything he pays for attract GST of 5%.. so that's another $40 gone. He is now left with only $760. Think that's all? How about income tax? Although in Singapore you probably won't have to pay any income tax if your salary is below $1500, let's for simplicity sake, work out the calculations. Assuming that after all the deductions of personal reliefs and GST rebates, he fell into the 10% bracket. He is now left with $684 of true disposable income. Let's work out the mathematics. I have prepared $1000 + $130 = $1130 to pay his full salary. He has only left with $684 to spent. 39.82% goes either into some form of witholding schemes such as CPF or tax (direct and indirect). And mind you, Singapore has one of the lowest tax in the world. Some countries charge as much as 45% or more from income tax alone! Contrast this with I make a $1000 profit from my business. Using legal accounting, I spend it on business travel, dine in high class restaurants, buy comfortable chairs for my office and many creative ways I can think of. I am down to $100 net profit before tax. The corporate tax is now about 24% (coming down soon..). I just pay $24 in tax. Now you understand why Bill Gates is not the highest paid in the world and why Steve Jobs and ex-Cisco boss pay themselves US$1 a year? Still want a high salary? My ultimate aim is to eventually draw S$1 per year in salary. When I have done that, I would be damn rich and successful! ~Ramcem "The reasonable person accepts the world it is. The unreasonable person insists on changing the world to suit his own requirements. This is why all progress depends upon the unreasonable person." ~Anonymous "To be able to stand in the midst of darkness and live as though all about you is light, is the final test of the human spirit." "The soul of man is immortal, and its future is the future of a thing whose growth and splendour have no limit."

28-11-2006, 04:37 PM	#2 (permalink)
ramcem VIXer Join Date: Nov 2006 Posts: 63 iTrader: (0) Gender: Zodiac Sign: Country: Location: Western Long Mountain SGC$: 156.20 Bank: 0.00 Total SGC$: 156.20	Someone then said, "CPF is not tax.. and CPF account interest higher then bank saving account. And for general population, CPF will be use for paying their house. The way i see, paying tax is actually a way to make contribution to the public." _______________ My reply was: No. CPF is not exactly tax. It is just a scheme set up by the government as a form of forced savings for retirement. Most people simply screw up their financials. Along the way, it can be used to purchase HDB flats, fund your children education and more recently, private properties, insurance and government-approved investment schemes. Although the money will be eventually yours, we got to wait a long long time for it. Even when we hit that age, it's still subject to income tax. That's why Supplementary Retirement Scheme (SRS) was introduced. The way we can use CPF funds is also limited by the government and any gains shall be put back into CPF... but I think losses cannot be used to offset your taxable income.. I will need to check my tax strategist on this. My previous post was just illustrating a typical employee and his disposable income. CPF is certainly not "disposable" by my definition. I can't buy a handphone with it. CPF scheme is also a strategy to lock liquidity for the government to invest. Other ways include issuing bonds and lottery. If everyone of us withdrew our CPFs today, CPF will certainly declare bankrupt. It is through the government's investment that we enjoy a so-called "higher" interest rate than banks now. Back in the late 1990s, this wasn't the case, bank interest pay higher than CPF interest. Paying tax is a way of life in a civilised society. I have no objections to it. I just don't want to pay more tax than required of me. Since tax laws are written and approved by constitutions for business owners like me to exploit... and the government asks me to exploit them, why not? Hope that clear some doubts here.. ;-) ~Ramcem "The reasonable person accepts the world it is. The unreasonable person insists on changing the world to suit his own requirements. This is why all progress depends upon the unreasonable person." ~Anonymous "To be able to stand in the midst of darkness and live as though all about you is light, is the final test of the human spirit." "The soul of man is immortal, and its future is the future of a thing whose growth and splendour have no limit."

28-11-2006, 04:39 PM	#3 (permalink)
ramcem VIXer Join Date: Nov 2006 Posts: 63 iTrader: (0) Gender: Zodiac Sign: Country: Location: Western Long Mountain SGC$: 156.20 Bank: 0.00 Total SGC$: 156.20	Someone said' "interestin i must say.....care to explain more abt passive n portfolio income" ____________ My reply: Any idiot who read Robert Kiyosaki's books can tell you that earned income is your salary, portfolio income comes from paper assets such as stocks, unit trusts etc., passive income is income from real estate and from businesses you own. But it's how the three intercorrelate that produced the complexity of the corporate world. Rather than just quoting from his books, let me try to explain these concepts using my experience. To be truly competent in the world of business and investments, you need to be well versed in the three class of assets: i) Business; ii) Hard Assets; iii) Paper Assets Most of our "qualified" financial planners with big titles like "CFP", "QFP" or "CPF" or whatever they called themselves are only well-versed in only paper assets such as insurance and unit trusts. While they may fool the common uncle and auntie in the streets, they need to be much more qualified to talk to people like me. i) Business Building your own business requires you tremendous amount of preparation in terms of education. Notice I used "education" here, not money. Most people have this mentality that all they need start a business is money. Money is important but as I said before, it is the least important of all. I am also not referring to your NUS or NTU honour degrees. Those certificates merely create visions of security. While they may give you a higher starting salary, their increment goes indirect propertional with age and experience. At some point along the journey, it could even be a liabilty if you happen to lose your job during your peak. The education I am talking about is "street smart" education. You can either acquire it slowly by learning through your own experience (which can be very costly) or learn from people who had gone through before. But be aware of paying huge fees to attend expensive seminars, most gurus became rich not by their business but by selling tickets to you. I have created a 10 year plan when I was 19 years old. The plan was to compress what would take a normal man 100 years to achieve in business experience. This bold plan can only be achieved with tremendous leverage and excellerated learnings. I chose MLM as that was the ultimate leverage system in front of me guided by a very good mentor (now a legend in MLM in Singapore). I had no social life for many years. I started my first business at age 27 after thoroughly preparing myself by studying finance, sales and marketing, psychology, politics and even religion. Though I only achieved about "70" years of experience, the opportunity came on fast and I had to grab it before it's gone. I didn't regret the decision. I now sit on board of 3 companies within a short year. I began to appreciate the lessons I have learnt better. The powerful advantages of business are found in its tax laws. Also, growth in a business is normally exponential, not linear as in a job. A properly run business is much less risky than a job and the powerful corporate shield acts as a personal fortress against your creditors. Robert Kiyosaki's strategy is also my strategy. Keep your topmost holding companies private but your bottommost companies public (if possible). Just to reveal a little, Robert Kiyosaki's topmost company in his business empire is called "Pele Corporation". Only those very near him would know about this.. There are too many things to cover in the world of business. So I will just stop here for the moment. I will cover paper assets and hard assets some other time.. this post might get too long for most. ~Ramcem "The reasonable person accepts the world it is. The unreasonable person insists on changing the world to suit his own requirements. This is why all progress depends upon the unreasonable person." ~Anonymous "To be able to stand in the midst of darkness and live as though all about you is light, is the final test of the human spirit." "The soul of man is immortal, and its future is the future of a thing whose growth and splendour have no limit."

29-11-2006, 12:50 PM	#5 (permalink)
lynex Addicted SGClubber Join Date: Nov 2006 Posts: 547 iTrader: (0) Gender: Zodiac Sign: Country: Location: BBatok SGC$: 316.60 Bank: 0.00 Total SGC$: 316.60	Thanks Ramcem... agree to some of the points u posted.. hope to read more from you...:biggrin4: To view links or images in signatures your post count must be 10 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.

03-03-2007, 07:05 PM	#6 (permalink)
bigbigbird Cool SGClubber Join Date: Feb 2007 Posts: 38 iTrader: (0) Gender: Zodiac Sign: Country: Location: owen road SGC$: 55.40 Bank: 0.00 Total SGC$: 55.40	Re: What qualification do i need to have to b a success businessman? very intresting, hahahaha

28-11-2006, 11:06 PM	#4 (permalink)
MamaRos Piak piak Join Date: Oct 2006 Posts: 2,886 iTrader: (0) Gender: Zodiac Sign: Country: Location: Bedok Reservoir SGC$: 0.00 Bank: 0.00 Total SGC$: 0	You need PEOPLE SKILL, the ability to relate to people from ALL walks of life becos in business, everyone is your customer.

03-03-2007, 07:09 PM	#7 (permalink)
xueren romantic sharon^xueren Join Date: Jan 2007 Posts: 729 iTrader: (0) Gender: Zodiac Sign: Country: Location: Thomson SGC$: 121.57 Bank: 0.00 Total SGC$: 121.57	Re: What qualification do i need to have to b a success businessman? u need luck, a business acumen ,creativity,risk-taking behavior.for examlple, there are so many fashion boutique.how do u ensure yr shop stands out from the rest...thats when creativity comes in.ppl lke creativity and novelty

05-03-2007, 01:05 PM	#10 (permalink)
ramcem VIXer Join Date: Nov 2006 Posts: 63 iTrader: (0) Gender: Zodiac Sign: Country: Location: Western Long Mountain SGC$: 156.20 Bank: 0.00 Total SGC$: 156.20	Re: What qualification do i need to have to b a success businessman? Unfortunately, the tax laws are written for the business owners who take risk; not the high paid hard working employees. As an employee, your ways to reduce personal income tax is severly limited. As you can see from the S'pore tax structure, corporate tax are lower than the highest bracket for personal income tax. If you earn a very high salary, one of the method is to set up a company and let your salary flow through the company. A fairly competent tax strategist will be able to give you advice. I've one MLM friend who earns so much money that he pay five digits for his income tax every year. Upon setting up a company, he let his commissions flow through the structure and drastically reduce his personal income tax. The price to pay for such a strategic tax change is that every cent he earns and spend need to be documented. The big ticket items such as the Mercedes he is driving is not his but the company. But who the heck cares when he is still driving it! ~Ramcem "The reasonable person accepts the world it is. The unreasonable person insists on changing the world to suit his own requirements. This is why all progress depends upon the unreasonable person." ~Anonymous "To be able to stand in the midst of darkness and live as though all about you is light, is the final test of the human spirit." "The soul of man is immortal, and its future is the future of a thing whose growth and splendour have no limit."

Currently Active Users Viewing This Thread: 1 (0 members and 1 guests)

Thread Tools
Show Printable Version Email this Page
Display Modes
Linear Mode Switch to Hybrid Mode Switch to Threaded Mode

Similar Threads
Thread	Thread Starter	Forum	Replies	Last Post
Wealth, Success, and Love	HUIXIAN	Love & Relationships	13	31-10-2006 01:34 PM