This is the 1st week in more than a year that my wife and I are both going into the office for majority of the week. Even though we leave home at 9 plus am to avoid the peak hour traffic, it means that the helper has to look after our boy by herself for longer. Until my wife’s parents can drive over to our place to pick them up to spend the day at their place. We are not used to this level of coordination as we have to sort out the transport and food arrangements for the whole day. Got wiped out by night time especially when some of the things didn’t go well. Just got to keep practising at this.
Anyway, flexible work arrangements have already helped us a lot by allowing us to run errands and work from home (even in weeks that we are supposed to be in the office) when needed. Our managers are not particular about us being in the office as long as we get the work done so it’s still bearable. No idea how working parents used to juggle everything while working full-time in the office and still squeeze out time for their kids. Kudos to them but I hope that kind of struggle stays in the past as we move forward to something better.
Photo by Roberto Nickson on Pexels.com
There was a recent dip in China & technology stocks and cryptos so I took the opportunity to buy into it. I get to use up some of the cash savings from our salary income every month but keep most of it on the sidelines. Not good for our cash position to keep increasing in a time of low interest rates and loose monetary policies. But I still prefer to keep a significant cash position on standby for bigger market falls and better opportunities to buy in. This strategy served me well during the Covid-19 market crash last year but there is a lot of room for improvement on what type of equities and asset classes I should be buying into during such times.
For now, I’m happy to build up my investment portfolio whenever there are dips. I try to average down on existing positions and open new positions based on the stocks, ETFs and cryptos I’m monitoring on my watchlist. I don’t trade any kind of financial assets because I don’t like jumping in and out of the markets. Takes up too much of my time and effort to learn and monitor. I don’t use margin facilities because I don’t like leveraging up on my positions. Especially in times when markets seem to keep going up.
Just look at where we are now. I’m turning 35 this year and my wife just turned 33 (celebrated her birthday a few weeks ago). With a 17 month old boy that’s going to childcare next month, our expenses are going to climb even more. It will get worse if we decide to have another kid. Our lives are going to be busier and our financial position will take a lot of hits in the next several years so we can’t afford big financial losses of any kind. Better to be safe than sorry.
