We are celebrating our son’s 2nd birthday this weekend with our families and took tomorrow off to have a long weekend. Nice to take a break from work though I wouldn’t call it much of a rest and recharge. Mostly because we still have to look after our boy and his energy level is going up as he gets older. While our energy is going down as we get older. Not a good combination as we struggle to keep up with him at parks and playground. He has hurt himself a few times simply because we are not fast enough to get to him in time to stop the accident from happening. At the rate we are going, we will never be quick enough and just have to teach him how to look after himself.

I had some time in the afternoon when he was napping to look into my Crypto.com account in more detail. I had opened my StraitsX account previously and linked it to my Crypto.com account to allow for a fiat-crypto transfer. It took me a while to figure out the various functions and decide how best to utilise my Crypto.com account. I noticed the recurring buy function and was sold on it immediately. Recurring buy gives me the ability to apply my Dollar-Cost Averaging (DCA) investment strategy to cryptos. Something that I have been meaning to set up so I don’t have to make manual purchases so often.

DCA investment strategy has always been a cornerstone of my investment portfolio as it lets me build up my positions over time. The DCA amounts are tied to our salary income levels so the drawdown every month is more manageable. I have been applying my DCA investment strategy to equities but not to cryptos. And missing out on the recent bull market because I didn’t invest regularly into cryptos when it was a bear or flat market previously is the price to pay. It’s time to start addressing this issue so I don’t make the same mistake going forward.

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A cash funds transfer from my bank account to StraitsX account is reflected as XSGD (Digital Singapore Dollar) on my Crypto.com account. I used it to purchase USDC (stablecoin) and hold it in my crypto wallet. This part is manual and I will probably do it on our paydays so it’s easier to remember. As long as I have enough USDC in my Crypto.com account, the next part is more important and is automatic as I set up weekly regular buys on Sunday for these 5 cryptos:

1. Chainlink (LINK) – 100 USDC
2. Terra (LUNA) – 90 USDC
3. Polkadot (DOT) – 80 USDC
4. Solana (SOL) – 70 USDC
5. Polygon (MATIC) – 60 USDC

The total comes up to 400 USDC (about S$550) worth of regular crypto purchases every week i.e. about S$2,200 every month. This is about 30% of my total monthly DCA investment strategy that will now go into cryptos while the remaining 70% goes into equities. In addition to my BTC and ETH crypto interest earning on Hodlnaut and DFI staking, liquidity mining and freezing on Cake DeFi, I now have a bigger proportion of my monthly investments going into cryptos. I’m aware that cryptos are at all time highs but so are equities.

The whole point of a DCA investment strategy is to keep myself vested in both cryptos and equities so I don’t miss out on further gains. Even if the cryptos and stock markets tank (not a bad thing to be making purchases at lower prices), I can ride out the storm and wait for the eventual recovery as long as my income source is intact. My DCA investment strategy uses up half of my investable cash every month, which leaves me with the other half to save and keep for spending or bigger manual investments down the road when opportunities arise.

This also means I no longer have to monitor the 24/7 volatile cryptos market as actively. Similar to the equities market, I can take a more passive approach and wait for the big drops to go in. Otherwise, I just do capital injections and let compounding off a large capital base do the work for me. While I focus on protecting and growing my income source to keep the financial system I build to manage our household finances intact. More importantly, I get to free up more of time for myself and my family by not having to worry about how my investments are doing. It’s exhausting to keep worrying about whether we have enough money now or in the future. I’m looking forward to taking my mind off this.

The increased dollar-cost averaging amounts into the stock markets since early Sep 2021 is starting to pay off with the recent rise in equities. Not changing these amounts anytime soon as they are using up quite a bit of our salary income. It stops us from building up too large a cash balance going forward, which will be a problem in an inflationary environment. Yes, I don’t think inflation is transitory globally and you can see the higher inflation rate in many countries now. Made worse by the fact that it may just be starting to climb and possibly accelerate as countries open up further. Even in Singapore with a partial reopening, I find myself paying more for petrol, food, groceries and utilities.

But my salary income is not keeping pace with inflation as I only had a minimal salary increase in early 2020 and none in early 2021. This is why staying in the same job at the same place for a long time is a terrible idea. You end up being underpaid and lose the ability to increase your pay by moving around companies (whether in the same role or otherwise). Because the firm only gives you the minimum salary raise to keep you around to manage their internal employee costs. While they pay external hires higher salary to keep pace with the employment market demand. Understanding this is important because it allows you to extract a better value from the hours you put in at work over time. Don’t be overworked and underpaid for the same work you can be doing elsewhere as you will feel resentful and leave eventually but with a higher risk of burning bridges.

Anyway, I had some spare cash built up over the past 2 months and didn’t know what to do with it. I don’t actively dollar-cost average into cryptos by doing regular automated purchases like what I do with equities. Mostly because I have no idea how to execute and automate this property. However, I recently opened a Crypto.com account and it allows for fixed weekly, fortnight or monthly regular purchases of cryptos. This may be a good way to dollar-cost average into cryptos automatically. I’m still looking into this and learning more about the Crypto.com mobile app interface. May write a post about it when I figure this out.

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My BTC and ETH holdings in Hodlnaut are continuing to earn crypto interest with the payout in BTC and ETH respectively. My USDC holdings in Hodlnaut are earning crypto interest with the payout changed from USDC to ETH recently. I guess you can call this some form of dollar-cost averaging but the amounts are not sufficient to build up my positions significantly. It’s an interest payout after all. The stablecoin holdings in Hodlnaut are also useful for swapping to BTC and ETH when I see dips in their prices. My BTC, ETH, USDC and USDT holdings in Cake DeFi are earning DFI by way of staking, liquidity mining and freezing. DFI price performance has not been good compared to BTC and ETH price performance. But I take a long term view of my DFI holdings and have no issues waiting for the price to go up as its utility increases. This will take time and patience.

BTC and ETH prices have been going up and up causing my Hodlnaut account balance to be quite a bit more than my Cake DeFi account balance. Interesting stuff especially when I started them off at the same account balance a few months ago by letting Hodlnaut and Cake DeFi have 50% each of my crypto holdings. Hence, I decided to transfer the spare cash I had into CoinHako, buy DAI and transfer it into Hodlnaut before swapping the DAI into USDT for the higher crypto interest. I changed my USDT crypto interest payout to BTC to even out the USDC crypto interest payout of ETH. This move ensures I’m building up my crypto holdings along with my stock and ETF holdings. Don’t want to just be focusing on the latter because I’m used to it and forget about the former. Next up is for me to take a closer look at my Crypto.com account to see how I can utilise it.