I have started work at my new job and it’s been keeping me busy. Won’t be writing long posts anytime soon but will try to provide financial/portfolio updates when I can.
This only serves to reinforce my belief in automated index investing. Even though my new job is essentially a parallel shift in roles, the learning curve is steep since I have never worked in the financial services industry before. I also have to adjust to interacting with new colleagues and bosses.
It takes a while and a lot of effort to settle in, perform, improve etc. This is on top of making sure I continue to spend time with my wife, our families and friends. All of which reduces my focus on monitoring and research & analysis of the equity markets. It starts becoming a lower priority item.
I imagine my life as a series of changes and phases. Each one more significant than the one before. You can see the draw of automated index investing to me, even at higher costs. Build a big enough base of index ETF investments by being consistent every month and even less than market average dividend yields & rate of returns can be sufficient.
-
Made ETF and Share investments
-
Standard monthly cash savings
-
Monthly reduction in housing loan principal
-
Normal CPF contributions
ETF Portfolio – $51,126 (+$3,185 and + 6.64%)
-
Bought Philip SGX APAC Dividend Leaders REIT ETF S$ (BYJ)
- Auto-purchase SPDR Straits Times Index ETF (ES3) [Maybank Kim Eng MIP]
- Auto-purchase Nikko AM Singapore STI ETF (G3B) and ABF Singapore Bond Index Fund (A35) [POSB Invest-Saver]
-
Averaged down on M1 (B2F)
-
Was able to allocate monthly savings as investment cash (standard increase)
-
Was able to allocate the rest of monthly savings as cash on hand (standard increase)
Average monthly passive income ($1,039) still above $1,000. Most of the dividend income was received from Vanguard ETFs. Higher than normal interest income due to a corporate bond coupon.
Spending multiple increases to 4.95x but savings rate drops below 40%. Decent growth in assets and travel spending resulted in this.
Your net worth increased by $18k in a single month?! You must both be high income earners.
We are above average income earners but the increase in net worth is not solely due to our salaries. Sometimes, I tap into our Australian investment cash savings that are not shown on the blog to make purchases of ETFs and shares overseas. I try to show what I can in the net worth figure but won't be disclosing our Australian funds in the portfolio balances on this blog.
Cheers,
TFS