You would think that having worked in an office environment for a number of years, I should be more responsive to emails and invitations to networking events. For some reason, I am terrible at the personal ones that relate to my blog. On one hand, I am interested in connecting with the wider Singapore finance bloggers community. But I find myself hesitating to follow through and show up for such gatherings.

I used to think it has to do with not wanting to reveal my identity but that has become less of an issue the more I write. Besides, it’s not like I’m making a public announcement on who I am. Plus I did say I will put in more effort to engage with fellow bloggers this year. Not that I have made much progress in this aspect.

I was supposed to have a catch-up session with Michele Ferrario (CEO of StashAway) and scheduling conflicts (in addition to my lack of response and follow up) have resulted in that not happening yet. But I was recently informed that a gathering of the wider Singapore finance writers community organised by StashAway that was supposed to be held in Oct 2017 (when I was away in France) was rescheduled to Nov 2017.

I have decided to attend this event. It’s about time I made more of an effort since I have been lazy for far too long. Besides, both my wife and I have StashAway accounts. It makes sense for me to find out more about our robo-advisor investments and the people behind them. Looking forward to meeting the StashAway team and other Singapore finance writers there!

I made a sell transaction on Thurs 26 Oct 2017. As I have mentioned before on the blog, I am in the process of restructuring our investment portfolio to make it simpler. There was no particular reason other than a recent price run-up and it’s after the ex-dividend date. Which means I can still receive the latest distributions.

Name: Keppel REIT

Number of shares sold: 4,100 (Entire amount)

Sale price: S$1.185

Net proceeds: S$4,845

Realised profit excluding dividends collected: S$450 or 9%

Realised profit including dividends collected: S$900 or 18%

It’s a decent profit and beats the unrealised profit performance on our ETF portfolio. As I start to sell some of our shares to realise the profits, I get stuck with our remaining shares with unrealised losses. Especially our big loss-making positions in the telecommunications and oil & gas industries. Terrible moves by me and I’m hoping I can recover some of these losses over time.

The cash injection from the sale proceeds should get re-invested next month into our ETF portfolio and robo-advisor accounts. I just realised how evenly we have been hedging against the economy moving in either direction. We auto-save S$3,000 into the DBS PAYE bank account and auto-invest S$3,000 into ETFs and robo-advisors every month. That’s probably why our asset portfolio allocations haven’t been changing as much despite increasing our monthly investment level.

Anyway, I have recently split out a sum of money that used to be held in 1 bank account into 3 cash buckets held in 3 separate bank accounts. Interest income to be received will go down slightly from this new arrangement. But I figured it was better to have more segregation between the cash holdings so I know specifically which groups to draw on depending on the need. Whether it’s for spending, investing or emergency.

I have always wondered what we would have done during the big market crash in 2008 due to the Global Financial Crisis if we had the same current asset portfolio then. It’s a thought experiment because it’s easy to run through the logical sequence of actions when you are not under pressure. Much tougher to execute when you are actually in that environment. So we can only imagine what it would have been like and how we would have reacted.

In 2008, we were in our 2nd year of university with little savings, no full-time jobs, no investing experience and not vested in the markets. We felt the impact of the subsequent economic recession though as it was a challenge finding entry-level jobs after graduating. I don’t consider it a missed opportunity because we were never in the position to take advantage of it. I used to think that if I was working with income and savings, I would have gone in aggressively then and profited from the market recovery.

The benefit of having friends and colleagues older than you is that it teaches you a thing or two about humility. They were in that situation 10 years ago and the lesson I keep learning from them is that nothing ever goes as planned. A combination of unfortunate events (when everything goes wrong at the same time) can derail even the best laid plans. And the window of opportunity only lasted for less than 1 year. Which means it’s easy to miss since time can pass much quicker than you think when you are caught up with everything else.

Those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it. Sound financial advice that I don’t practice often enough because I admit that I’m not a big fan of learning from history. I’m aware of these historical financial events and what caused them but I try not to look beyond them. The causal factors might be useful in predicting the next big market crash but that’s not what I’m interested in.

The thing that fascinates me is how differently people reacted to the same event, especially couples that would have been our age then with similar financial circumstances. When faced with what should have been a great wealth-building opportunity (in hindsight) in their lifetime and probably for the first time for such couples, most of them turned to safety and moved out of the markets. Some never got back in while others have become more conservative. In short, it totally changed their outlook on saving and investing even though it was a decade ago.

Which makes me wonder what are the factors that allowed the minority to be brave enough to be aggressive with their portfolio allocations during the same period of time to take advantage and make big profits. It’s probably a combination of the following:

• Did not get retrenched
• No significant liabilities such as high housing and credit card debt
• Low monthly expenses
• Not over-invested with significant cash funds on standby
• Understand which asset type (e.g. shares, ETFs, properties) to be aggressive on given the amount of cash on hand
• No emergencies
• Suitable investment mindset

The odds of me being in that minority decrease as each of the above turns against me. I know I’m not ready for the next big market crash and I hope it doesn’t come anytime soon. I get better each month as my asset portfolio allocations improve while I chip away at that large mortgage over time. It’s painstakingly slow work and I keep reminding ourselves to be patient.

Our current approach of balancing spending, savings and investing relative to our income and derived utility/satisfaction level is getting the job done. Sometimes, I feel like speeding it up but I know this can be costly. It’s already quite delicate and tipping the scales to one side at the expense of another can have disastrous consequences. So we take it one step and one month at a time while doing what we can to enjoy the process.