We celebrated Mother’s Day yesterday night with dinner ordered in. We are going to have cake later in the afternoon to finish the celebration. Did the same celebration last month for my wife’s birthday. The mood wasn’t as fun this time round as the effects of 5 weeks of circuit breaker measures start to bite. We still have a few more weeks to go so we are just doing what we can to keep ourselves going.
Anyway, I’m late on writing this because I only just remembered it. In the last week of Apr, DBS did the 1st rebalancing of my wife’s Asia and Global DigiPortfolios. They took profit on some of the equity ETFs positions and entered into new positions on India and bond ETFs. Seems to be a more conservative approach to investing in this crisis. Which works for my wife because she’s already taking an aggressive approach with the other parts of her portfolio.
At this time, there is still no way to set up automated funds transfers into my wife’s DBS Asia and Global DigiPortfolios. And we haven’t been as disciplined with our manual funds transfers. We keep waiting for the ETFs prices to drop more before investing and the rebounding markets made this difficult for us. So we are reverting to what works for us. Set up calendar reminders on the same dates every month where we will manually transfer funds into the portfolios. Small amounts to keep increasing our positions.
I like how our portfolios are made up of different ETFs held in various ways. US-listed ETFs in StashAway, UK-listed ETFs and SG-listed ETFs in DBS DigiPortfolio and our manual portfolio, SG-listed ETFs with banks’ monthly investment plans. They offer a good combined exposure to local, regional and global economic growth. Even if the growth is uneven across the world, we are still in a position to benefit from it. Time works in our favour the longer we stay vested this way.
As we get ready for another week of working from home, we are also planning to run a few errands. Sending the baby to the doctor for vaccination, shopping for groceries and thinking about when to order food for lunch so we can try different cuisine to what we have been cooking at home. At work, we have been asked to and provided feedback on what our preferred work from home and work from office arrangements are like after the end of circuit breaker measures.
The feedback seems to be consistent with all of our colleagues that have kids – A mix of both work from home and work from office during the week. Most importantly, being able to choose what days to do which on a weekly basis since the demands of having kids of different ages vary widely. Given that our banks have incurred significant costs setting up remote working capability and access, senior management seems to be serious about making the most out of it now.
Maybe even save costs on real estate space in the city when the bank has less people working in the office, which can be expensive. Unbelievably, it took a pandemic for Singapore employers to take this leap forward towards flexible working arrangements for corporate employees in the office. The timing works for us with a 6 month old baby and my wife still adjusting to being a working mum at home.
To be honest, both of us are looking forward to going back to the office, just not 5 days a week. It would be nice to hang out with our colleagues separately at and outside of work again. Gives us space individually to get away from the baby and let our parents spend more time with him. There’s such a thing as too much family time as we are spending all day together now every day of every week. Good to be away from each other too and spend time with other people. Or even just alone by ourselves.
In the end, we have to admit there’s not much for us to complain about. My wife’s job got saved by the bank delaying its restructuring plans and the Government’s wage subsidies for local employees. She could work from home on the 1st day of her return from 5 months of maternity and annual leave i.e. got to spend more time with the baby. We are probably going to work from home a lot more going forward. Our asset allocation is healthier with a more even distribution between cash, investments and retirement funds. We were too overweight on cash before the market crash in Mar 2020 but we are now better positioned for whatever comes next.
We take what is offered and give back to society where & when we can. That’s how we have always approached life. Keep focused and striving forward to improve ourselves. Because it’s not a race with other people but our own journey to be better. No point getting distracted by things we cannot control. And we often find ourselves waiting for the effort and work we have put in to take effect. Be patient with everything and we will get there. That’s what we keep reminding ourselves of.