Investing in yourself with Skillsfuture funds

I was supposed to post this last week but I was keep busy by some stuff *cough* hideo *cough* kojima *cough* mgsv *cough*

There's this recent hype about Skillsfuture Credits, been looking at them pretty long (searching for courses courses courses to use my leave other than for AGMs/business matters).

Thought to myself why not just use the money and "invest" in myself for my career, business and investing? My objective is to make money and these 3 do provide cashflow into my wallet.

I applied for two courses recently for my Skillsfuture fund (pretty much used up all), namely:

• Practical Business Finance for non-Financial Executives
• Got into the course because I don't have much knowledge of accounting (I tried using the SAF ePrep Credits to buy an accounting course but to this day the lecture notes from the online course is collecting dust on my shelf, figured I need to sit down and learn in a class)
• Hope it helps me with investing to better read the financial statements of annual reports (main purpose I guess)
• Also, as I am trying my hand at running a little side business, might help me with running the accounts too!

• Develop Personal Effectiveness at Operations Level (don't deny that this course was chosen because I didn't have much left after applying for the above one, will probably look like 7 habits courses or 6 sigma, etc in the future)
  
• My career switch has changed from research with more freedom and slow paced to fast moving manufacturing lines
• I wanted to see if I missed out anything to better myself for my career
• It won't directly contribute to promotions definitely (to say yes would be lying), but instead to achieve higher effectiveness at work which might lead to promotions
• Else at bare minimum, just take it as fun learning and chatting with people I guess :)

For the future SkillsFuture credit topups, might alternate between personal effectiveness for career, learning for my side business, some fun courses like photoshop or cooking and maybe app programming as well.

I aim to take a course every year from next year onwards.

That being said, one can accumulate the remaining balances to pay for a better course afterwards (I prefer a few days course, easier to get leave ^^").

What would you do with your SkillsFuture Credits?

EDIT (04 Apr 2016): I figured that I should put the link to the course directory here.

You can visit them at (either one will do):

http://www.skillsfuture.sg/credit
https://portal.wda.gov.sg/content/wda/course-search-directory.html?CourseTitle=

Also, I have done a claim for my 2nd course above, and it was quite seamless, just that you have to go down to present your NRIC to make a direct claim from your Skillsfuture (no need pay cash).
Paperwork was mostly done for me :)
My only tiny annoyance was that the $10.70 registration fee couldn't be claimed from Skillsfuture credits =\

But let not $10 stop us from learning more! Enjoy! :)

EDIT (17 May 2016): I have applied for a claim for the first course above by NTU. There's no registration fee nor required to go down to the school to do it. Quite simple.

The guide to claiming is here: http://www.skillsfuture.sg/credit/submit-a-claim

EDIT 19 Jun 2016: I wrote a mini review for Practical Business Finance for Non-Financial Executives here. :)