I just updated our assets, liabilities and net worth figures for Oct 2018. It has been a bad month in terms of stock markets performance but we still managed to squeeze out positive percentage increases in every financial indicator category:
- Cash Funds
- Investment Portfolio
- Retirement Funds
- Total Assets
- Net Worth
- Savings Rate
More importantly, I was making manual SG & Global ETFs investments and transferring cash funds into our Smartly and StashAway robo-advisor accounts throughout the month (especially in the last week). I was trying to buy in on the market dips without over-utilising our cash balances. Including our automatic monthly investments, we probably invested about S$8,000 in the month of Oct 2018.
I have also been adjusting our various automatic monthly investment amounts upwards, just to ensure we are buying more ETFs at such lower stock markets pricing levels. This has certainly been an exciting month in terms of investing actions taken. I’m happy to wait it out if the stock markets stabilise. Otherwise, I’m fine to take more investing actions in the next few month if stock markets continue to drop. Nothing fancy – just more manual investments, cash transfers and upwards adjustments of automatic investments.
Work has continued to be challenging. While the banking sector is still doing alright for now, job conditions will keep deteriorating as banks cut costs to maintain profits. After all, there’s not a lot of new areas of revenue growth going forward. It’s an interesting situation to be in. When I discuss this with my wife, it feels like we are at a tipping point. Perhaps one of the last few generations to enjoy the perks of somewhat decent banking jobs before the landscape gets altered forever.
I don’t envy the position where fresh graduates find themselves in nowadays. Permanent structural changes to the economy tend to happen once every decade and it’s about time this occurred. Which makes it more difficult for them to gain work experience, much less protect themselves from recessions without sufficient income and assets. Then again, they have little financial liabilities. It might actually be the experienced workers around my generation that will suffer more when we find ourselves out of jobs with heavy financial liabilities.
As I buy into market dips, I realise it’s not the size of my investment portfolio that gives me assurance. It’s my cash inflow and balances that gives me confidence to make the investments. That objectivity comes from knowing my cash position is strong enough to withstand any negative outcomes. But that means I’m always going to be underweight in equities. Would I ever take the risk and make that big investment when the chips are down?