It’s a rest day for me today. We went out the entire day yesterday and had a dinner gathering at our friend’s place. Enjoyed the home-cooked dinner, wine and the board game we played together after that. It was different from the usual board games we played where we competed against each other to be the winner. This time round, we had to cooperate to defeat the game itself and it was fun working together for a change.
Anyway, it’s pay day tomorrow and I’m relieved that my bank account balance will get topped up. I just paid off the credit card bills from our wedding anniversary, Christmas and NYE celebratory spending. It was more than my salary income for the month and I’m glad my wife’s pay day is the week after next. Could do with another top up so we don’t get a zero cash on hand month again after clearing all the expenses. Next month is also looking bad based on the projected spending of the ski trip to Austria.
During the first week of Jan 2018, we received our Central Provident Fund (CPF) interest for the 2017 year. It’s increasing every year and I can already see the compounding effect happening. The earlier I build my CPF balance to a significant amount, the more time it has to compound. This is the main reason why I only pay a third of my monthly housing loan instalment with CPF. I pay the remaining two third with cash. I like watching the CPF balance grow steadily because it means we are still employed. Being jobless for either one of us is going to negatively impact us in so many ways it’s not even funny.
This made me look forward to something else that is happening next week. The CPF contributions from my wife’s annual performance bonus and our usual monthly CPF contributions are about to be credited. When I recently estimated that we are likely to hit our S$1 million total asset goal by Mar 2018, I might have underestimated the total injection into our CPF balance for Jan 2018. Chances are I either miscalculated the amount of CPF interest or CPF contributions from my wife’s annual performance bonus.
Because there’s a good chance we might achieve that target by the end of this month Jan 2018 instead. I cannot believe it is our CPF balance that can generate sufficient growth from contributions and interest to tip us over. For us, CPF contributions is a significant benefit of having full-time jobs in Singapore as salaried employees. I can only hope this continues to be the case for us and we don’t get screwed.
Hi FS
Congrats on achieving your $1m faster by 2 Months. It’s definitely not an easy feat.
Same like you, I am looking forward to the contributions this month as it includes the AW from the AWS last month. Compounding meanwhile will continue to work their socks off!
Hi Brian,
Thanks! It was a lot of work and we just kept plugging away at it until we got close enough for the annual performance bonus and additional CPF contributions & interest to make a difference.
Haha, yes. That’s a nice thing to look forward to!
Congrats on hitting S$1 million total asset goal!
Thanks! I’m only going to achieve it by next week after the CPF contributions and my wife’s salary have been credited. It’s been a long road and I’m hoping compounding accelerates the wealth-building process because I’m getting tired!