Had a good CNY break and it’s been relatively quiet at work this week due to people taking leave on top of the public holiday on Mon. Not a bad thing to have a lull for this week as work is going to pick up next week. Anyway, another month has gone by and it’s time for another net worth and portfolio update for the month of Jan 2017.
Net Worth – S$200,090 (+S$13,514 and +7.24%)
Nice monthly increase in net worth of more than S$10,000 even though we were still clearing the high credit card spending from Christmas and NYE 2016. Not forgotting the hongbaos we gave out during CNY 2017. We can attribute this healthy increase to:
- Growth in ETF and share investments from rising Global and Singapore stock markets
- Cash injections and purchases for ETF, share and other portfolios
- CPF contributions from salary income and performance bonus as retirement monies
- Reduction in mortgage principal from housing loan payment
Let’s have a look at the breakdown of the portfolio numbers on the Net Worth page.
ETF Portfolio – S$60,196 (+S$3,115 and +5.46%)
You can refer to my previous post on investment transactions for Jan 2017 to see how automated purchases of the Singapore ETFs are made using various monthly investment plans. The stock markets have also been trending upwards since the purchases, which contributed to the increase. Automated ETF investing forms the cornerstone of my wife’s portfolio and you can see its components on the Portfolio page. I also finally figured out how to share our SGXCafe Singapore portfolios on the blog so you can view them in even more detail now. Exciting stuff!
Share Portfolio – S$137,519 (+S$4,808 and +3.62%)
I did not make any individual stock purchases in Jan 2017. This increase is solely due to the rising stock markets. Nothing to shout about. Just unrealised gains that I’m not planning to realise anytime soon. Besides, I’m still in an overall loss position for my share portfolio. Which makes sense since I only started to build the portfolio in 2015. This was when share prices were significantly higher than where they are now, especially for certain sectors that I have exposure in. And the recovery has been slow.
Other Portfolio – S$162,100 (+S$1,000 and +0.62%)
Increase in investment cash since we put away S$1,000 every month for the purposes of investing during market dips and crashes.
Assets – S$541,537 (+S$23,044 and +4.44%)
We also save a separate S$1,000 every month as cash on hand. Less than half of the increase came from the growth in portfolios above. The remaining portion is due to the higher CPF contributions received in Jan 2017 from my wife’s performance bonus received in Dec 2016. Just a timing difference.
If you are sharp enough, you will notice there was no big jump in our portfolio values last month despite the performance bonus. You will also observe this month’s uptick in total assets didn’t translate to a similar increase in net worth. This is because I have been reducing the value of our owner-occupied apartment for the past year. These reductions in value can be small or large depending on our financial performance for that month.
One reason is to reflect the weakening property market in Singapore. Another reason is to eventually exclude the value of our owner-occupied apartment from our net worth calculations. This is consistent with our long-term approach to only include values of rental apartments (if any) but exclude values of owner-occupied apartments. Puts us in a more realistic financial position to consider real estate investing when we have sufficient liquid assets.
Personal and work updates
That’s it for the financial update. Thought I will include some updates on the personal and work fronts. We booked our flights and accommodation for a short trip with a set of good couple friends and their kid to Bali in Mar 2017. Looking forward to great company, food and drinks then! We also booked our flights to West Coast USA for a long trip in May 2017 just for the two of us. But we are still in the process of working out the accommodation and internal flight/transport arrangements.
We have been gradually reducing our discretionary expenses but still allocate a large chunk of our spending for travel. In fact, we were planning another long trip to Europe in the second half of the year when stuff came up in our work schedules. As it turns out, we will both be busy for the next half of the year due to new project timelines and changes to our job scopes. Might have to do two short trips instead. Maybe an overdue visit to Melbourne/Sydney and another ski holiday to Japan. 2017 is already shaping up to be a difficult year at work. So it’s important for us to have such holidays to look forward to and keep ourselves motivated!