Increase POSB Invest-Saver to S$400

The weekend is over. It was a great one but I now have to go through another week of work to get to the next weekend. Fascinating how time seems to slow to a crawl when you are sitting at your desk in the office on Mon morning looking at your laptop screen. Anyway, I have been thinking about my previous posts on how we index invest every month and relevant FinTech startups for us. As much as I would like to integrate the Smartly robo-advisor platform into my ETF portfolio, it still has not been launched to date.

I understand it’s a regulatory compliance issue and the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) really should be moving faster on this. All that talk by the Singapore Government about encouraging the FinTech industry but regulations seem to be the main cause of delays again and again. It’s frustrating as an investor in Singapore not to have access to a robo-advisor platform when it has been proven to be such a fantastic wealth-building tool in US and Canada. Even worse when there is actually a product ready-for-launch and you are just waiting to access it. Can’t imagine what it’s like for the Smartly team.

However, I realised I have to be more efficient at deploying our investment cash. It’s one thing to let our cash on hand build up as a buffer for emergencies & expenses but another to do that with our investment cash. Unless I am predicting a market crash in the near term (which I am not), that’s just poor asset allocation on my part. Hence, I have decided to increase the monthly investment amount of our POSB Invest-Saver in the Nikko AM Singapore STI ETF (G3B) from S$300 to S$400. In addition to the S$100 monthly investment in the ABF Singapore Bond Index Fund (A35), the total amount of S$500 is the most cost effective level before I have to start exploring other regular savings plan options.

There’s a useful MoneySmart article that compares the various regular savings plan options (POSB vs OCBC vs POEMS vs Maybank Kim Eng). Have a read and you can understand why I’m reluctant to invest more than S$500 in the POSB Invest-Saver when there are cheaper regular savings plan options. I know the increase of S$100 is not much but it will help to soak up some of the investment cash. Instead of starting another regular savings plan, I have allocated a monthly investment amount of S$500 for the Smartly robo-advisor platform.

The POSB Invest-Saver as a regular savings plan that offer exposure to the Singapore equity and bond markets will suffice. My objective is to set up the Smartly robo-advisor platform as a regular savings plan that offer equivalent exposure to the global equity and bond markets. I hope the Smartly product is launched soon. As my wife and I get busier with work, especially after my job change, I would like to automate more of our investment processes.

FYI, we have been spending time with our friends and their kids over some weekends. It’s been a good experience and precursor to what it would be like when we have kids of our own. But I have also noticed how little time the parents have to themselves in each day. It’s more important to spend that time with each other to continue developing the relationship than on investment research and analysis. Going forward, It will definitely help to have more of our investment processes automated so less actions are required on our part. Time to wait and see how this works out.