If we’re talking about basic financial planning, it comprises of making income, spending, money-saving, and investment. A challenge we normally find in people who fail to manage their personal finances is to spend all income until no money is left for savings and investment. 

Suppose that you enjoy going to the flea market once a week and spend 500 baht on each shopping. That means you spend 2,000 baht a month and 24,400 baht a year at a flea market. On the other hand, if you’re financially disciplined and have concerns about a shrinking economy in the long term, you may quit shopping there so that you’ll have 2,000 baht left.

Apart from saving your money, you need a vision of the future by investing your savings to get good returns. For example; you invest 2,000 baht each month for 10 consecutive years (120 months), and receive the average of 5% compensation so you may turn your savings about 200,000 baht to approximately 300,000 baht. 

However, investment methods may vary by knowledge, ability, and time of each individual. Investment beginners may use a set of auspicious numbers 5, 12, and 10 to start creating their financial planning as a journey to retirement financial plan.

#5 represents the average compensation per year (%) as expected (if you can find an investment channel and gain more compensation than 5, you may change it to 6%, 8% or 10%, etc.)

#12 represents the number of months that should be invested in 1 year.

#10 represents the investment period, such as 10 years to allow money to grow.

After receiving a set of auspicious numbers, you can make use of them through investment in several assets according to the risk level and your investment style.

Mutual Funds

There are plenty of Mutual Funds to invest, such as low-risk investment instruments which provide low returns, and high-risk investment instruments with high returns. Mutual Fund that generates over 5% returns are mostly moderate-risk asset instruments, such as Stock Fund which was invested in the large Thai stocks for 10 years (2010 – 2020) and generated an average of 6-8% returns per year, while Mixed Funds generate the average 5-6% returns per year (Source: Morningstar).

Property Fund, REITs, and Infrastructure Fund
 

These 3 funds are asset investments full of potential or consistently create income for investors. That means all those funds can generate compensation to investors accordingly. We found that from 2009 – 2020, Property Fund and REITs registered in The Stock Exchange of Thailand could offer an average return of 5% per year (Source: The Stock Exchange of Thailand).

Individual Shares

If you want to invest in Individual Shares and need 5% and over of compensation, you should look for Shares that provide consistent dividends. Therefore, you’d better invest in 1-2 dividend stocks. The past statistics showed that there were at least 50 Thai stocks that paid dividends for 5 consecutive years (2016 – 2020), and offered 5% and over dividends (Source: The Stock Exchange of Thailand as of June 1, 2021).

Gold

Thais have been familiar with gold investment for a long time. The value of gold in 1965 was 416 baht per one baht of gold weight, and the price hit 30,000 baht per one baht in 2020. Even though the gold price gradually dropped to about 24,000 baht in March 2021; however, gold has created an average benefit of 7.60% per year from 1965 to March 2021 (Source: Gold Traders Association).

If you want to invest within 5 years, you may change a set of auspicious numbers to 5/12/5; the first #5 still represents the average percentage of compensation per year, #12 is the number of months (1 year), and the latter #5 is investment period for 5 years (2016 – 2020). Statistics show that 5-year investment in assets can create an average return of over 5% per year, such as Total Return Index of The Stock Exchange of Thailand (SET TRI) offers an average return of 5.60% per year, Gold Bar generates the average return of 8.50% per year, and Total Return Index of S&P 500 (S&P 500 TRI) generates the average return of 17.50% per year.

Procrastination is a cause of delaying or postponing to do something until the last minute which may eventually be “too late”. Even if it’s about saving money or an investment, some people start doing those things when it’s nearly the last minute because they spend all the salary extravagantly. If they find their own auspicious numbers like 5/12/10 or 5/12/5 and commit themselves to save money regularly, they will undoubtedly achieve financial freedom sooner or later.