Smartly Singapore responded to our query emails and sent us the sign-up notification email with the referral code. Good job with this and appreciate the follow-up! Previously, I mentioned that I will be setting up the Smartly robo-advisor account since my wife set up the StashAway Singapore robo-advisor account. But I changed my mind after realizing the bulk of the Monthly Investment Plans (MIPs) with the various banks is in my name. It’s essential that my wife holds more investments in her own name and we decided to let her set up the Smartly account as well.

The Smartly onboarding process was smooth and the interface was simple & easy to use. The current 4 x S$100 transfers in a month for my wife’s StashAway account are on the 1st, 8th, 15th and 25th of every month. For July 2017, S$200 has already been transferred into her StashAway account: one-time transfer of S$100 and regular transfer of S$100 on 25 July 2017. To mirror the setup for my wife’s Smartly account, we are doing 2 x one-time transfer of S$100 (i.e. total of S$200) into the account by this week. We also set up 4 x S$100 transfers in a month for my wife’s Smartly account on the 4th, 11th, 18th and 28th of every month.

The direct competition between StashAway and Smartly is on! They both have similar starting funds and funds transfer dates & amounts. If possible, we intend to support both robo-advisors in the long-term and have no problem parking even more funds with them. This should be the case even if one outperforms the other because the ETFs they invest in for the portfolios my wife have seem to be somewhat different. These are the holdings of her Smartly account:

1. Emerging market bonds
2. US small cap value stocks
3. US total stock market
4. US large cap value stocks
5. Gold
6. Inflation protected bonds

What I like about both robo-advisors is that their ETF holdings don’t overlap much with our own manual ETF holdings. This diversification would allow us to build our manual ETF holdings and increase our exposure to other equity markets. Without worrying about what we are also doing with our robo-advisor accounts.

With the last piece of the puzzle in place, this is our monthly automated investments setup:

1. POSB Invest-Saver: S$200
2. Maybank MIP: S$200
3. OCBC BCIP: S$1,500
4. StashAway: S$400
5. Smartly: S$400

The total monthly cash funds invested automatically is S$2,700, which works in the current bull market environment. It’s also important to identify the points of increase in a bear market environment i.e. which MIP or robo-advisor to increase the monthly investment amount and by how much.

This is our intended action plan in a minor bear market:

1. Increase monthly OCBC BCIP investment from S$1,500 to S$1,700
2. Increase monthly StashAway investment from S$400 to S$600
3. Increase monthly Smartly investment from S$400 to S$600

Total monthly invested amount goes up by S$600 to S$3,300.

This is our intended action plan in a major bear market:

1. Increase monthly OCBC BCIP investment from S$1,500 to S$2,000
2. Increase monthly StashAway investment from S$400 to S$800
3. Increase monthly Smartly investment from S$400 to S$800

Total monthly invested amount goes up by S$1,300 to S$4,000.

These steps will be taken on top of our own manual ETF investments during mini and major bear markets. No point planning to make big increases because it would be difficult enough to make those small increases. By staggering the small increases, we are more likely to stick to the action plan in a tough market environment. Otherwise, we will be too afraid to make any significant changes to our automated monthly investments. Besides, nobody knows when and how the next crisis will happen that causes the bear market, much less the severity of it.

Our asset portfolio is finally up and running with the triggers and plans in place. More importantly, it’s growing every month with regular cash injections into our savings and ETF portfolios. Of course, this is contingent on us not losing our jobs. But we can now focus better on addressing the higher retrenchment risk without having to worry much about our savings and investments. We can also look to reduce our high expenses but still spend on fun items such as travel, dining and entertainment. Limit the number of focus areas & decision-making points and we just might achieve better results.

It’s been a few days since my wife set up her StashAway Singapore robo-advisor account. As I have mentioned previously, we went with a very aggressive General Investing portfolio. It has a 69% growth ETFs vs 31% protective ETFs split. These ETFs are listed on the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE), which is why any SGD funds that we transfer into the account has to be converted to USD before being used to purchase the ETFs.

I like the USD currency diversification since I don’t like the fact that most of our investment holdings continue to be in SGD. Anyway, it takes about 3 days for the SGD funds to be converted to USD and used to buy the ETFs according to the portfolio allocation percentages. It has a good mix of ETFs to the point where we consider the account to be a standalone portfolio on it’s own. Meaning we don’t have to integrate it with the rest of our assets and worry about how all of the allocations are changing.

We just have to keep transferring funds into the account to grow it with minimal monitoring. A good way to soak up our excess liquidity since we have a tendency to let our cash idle due to us not monitoring the markets sufficiently to identify buying opportunities. After the one-time funds transfer of S$100 into the account, we decided it was time to set up regular funds transfer as well. Specifically 4 x monthly transfer of S$100 each. Picking the four dates was just a case of spreading them out within a month. We went with 1st, 8th, 15th and 25th of every month, meaning the next transfer is 25 July 2017 and the ones after that are on 1 August 2017, 8 August 2017 and 15 August 2017 before repeating themselves.

We are likely to take a similar approach when I set up my Smartly Singapore robo-advisor account. A one-time funds transfer of S$100 followed by regular 2 x monthly transfer of S$100 each. We might go with 4th and 11th of every month, just to vary the dates a little. My monthly funds transfer is less than my wife since we plan to build her account up at a faster rate than mine. This means our monthly automatic investment amount will increase from S$1,900 to S$2,500 once everything is up and running. Which is suitable for a bull market environment we are in now. It should rise further in a bear market environment as we adjust the amount upward to take advantage of market dips and crashes.

Even though we have been together for a number of years, our philosophy is not to combine our finances until we have kids. We should pull our own weight and not rely on each other financially. This hasn’t changed after we got married. Bank accounts and investments remain separate. We are also responsible for managing our own careers, income and expenses. We rely on each other for emotional support but the above approach has ensured we grew up into independent and financially responsible adults. If we have kids, we might start to combine our finances but we are likely to be in a stronger financial position by then. This is why we put in a lot of effort to grow both our savings and investments separately but still ensure it’s a common strategy that works for the both of us.

Let’s have a look at the growth and protective NYSE-listed ETFs in my wife’s StashAway Singapore robe-advisor account:

1. Technology Select Sector SPDR ETF (XLK)
2. SPDR Bloomberg Barclays Convertible Securities ETF (CWB)
3. iShares MSCI All Country Asia ex Japan ETF(AAXJ)
4. Consumer Staples Select Sector SPDR ETF (XLP)
5. Consumer Discretionary Select Sector SPDR ETF (XLY)
6. iShares TIPS Bond ETF (TIP)
7. iShares 20+ Year Treasury Bond ETF (TLT)
8. SPDR Gold Shares (GLD)

I won’t reveal the percentage allocations of these ETFs but would say that the 69% growth vs 31% protective split results in a higher percentage of growth ETFs in my wife’s portfolio. After taking a quick look at the holdings of the ETFs, we like how little they are overlapping with our existing ETFs holdings. The rebalancing and re-optimisation features of the portfolio are useful in automatic management of the asset allocations without any manual interventions. This is critical given our long-term investment horizon.

I might include our robo-advisor portfolio values on the blog so you can monitor their performance. Not sure whether there’s an easy way to import the data into the blog. Maybe I will just cut out a relevant snippet of the account online and paste it as a picture. Or I will write in the end of month values and manually track the growth. Still undecided for now but should have something ready after the end of this month. Let me know what works better for you too as the reader.

Things have been quiet lately on my blog because there hasn’t been any major updates. I have recovered from my recent bout of illness, which took longer than I thought and was not a pleasant experience. I’m trying to make changes to our living habits by sleeping, resting, exercising more and improving our diets by eating healthier and home-cooked food. Let’s hope this pays off and I recover faster the next time.

Anyway, it’s time for some exciting news. My wife received the sign-up notification email from StashAway Singapore that she can now set up her robo-advisor account with them. The main reason for my wife going with StashAway Singapore instead of Smartly Singapore is due to the lower fees as the investment amounts increase to significant levels. We should be building up her robo-advisor account more quickly than mine since most of our current Monthly Investment Plans (MIPs) are using my bank accounts. Hence, it’s critical that the fees she pay are lower for large investment amounts.

I know the portfolio/asset allocation framework is different between StashAway Singapore and Smartly Singapore. Since we can’t accurately compare the returns from these different portfolio/asset allocation frameworks at this stage, we have to go with the pricing structure as the main point of consideration. After all, the plan is for my wife to go with one robo-advisor (StashAway Singapore) and for me to go with the other robo-advisor (Smartly Singapore). As we work out which portfolio/asset allocation framework is superior over time or if the pricing structures change, we might amend our funds allocation accordingly.

Since I am still waiting for my sign-up notification email from Smartly Singapore, I might write about my wife’s experience setting up her robo-advisor account with StashAway Singapore. The onboarding process was smooth and we found the additional questions on our income, expenses, net worth and investment aims useful in the goal-setting and risk allocation of the portfolio. For my wife’s account, she went with a very aggressive General Investing portfolio. It has a higher proportion of growth Exchange Traded Funds (ETFs) compared to protective ETFs.

The asset allocations of this very aggressive General Investing portfolio in relation to the various growth and protective ETFs are interesting, especially those listed on the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE). Given that the holdings of our current foreign ETFs listed on the London Stock Exchange (LSE) do not overlap much with that in the robo-advisor account with StashAway Singapore, it’s a good start.

We have taken a conservative approach and only made a one-time funds transfer of S$100 into the account. Just to test out when and how this cash amount is invested. After we gain a better understanding of the logistics, we should commence monthly funds transfers into the account to automate the investment process. Will provide more updates as we get more advanced in our knowledge of the account.