Hi there. We're now halfway to the end of 2017. Time flies isn't it?
I remembered (actually I didn't, only realised when I looked through my blog posts), blogging about my "achievements" in 2016 at the start of the year. For the past half year, things was rather smooth-sailing. Work was ok, I had a 10% increase in my salary, bonus was decent considering the market outlook now, and I've also added in a few stocks to my portfolio....of which only Keppel Reits earned me some money. The rest were disappointing but thank god I won't lose my sleep or sanity over the losses.
Truth be told, I haven't been monitoring my finances. I've been lazy keying in my daily expenses. Previously, I was diligently clocking what I spent and monitoring my budget because of my eagerness to hit $100k. Now that that's fulfilled, my next goal is to hit $200k in cash savings by 28. I seem to have lesser motivation to keep track of my monies now. But here's a breakdown of my inflows and outflows based on what I managed to track:
Outflows
Over the past half year, my total spends stood at around $17000. That seems a lot considering I'm a single lady living with my parents. The breakdown is as follows:
- Food expenses: around $2k
- Shopping expenses: around $12k
- Allowances to parents: $3k
Inflows
My earnings stood at slightly less than $4k. Earnings include money gained from interests, dividends, I counted money my bf owed me for our joint acct here as well and...ang bao money :)
Overall
Now here's a rough overview of my current finances:
In terms of insurance coverage, these are what I have:
I remembered (actually I didn't, only realised when I looked through my blog posts), blogging about my "achievements" in 2016 at the start of the year. For the past half year, things was rather smooth-sailing. Work was ok, I had a 10% increase in my salary, bonus was decent considering the market outlook now, and I've also added in a few stocks to my portfolio....of which only Keppel Reits earned me some money. The rest were disappointing but thank god I won't lose my sleep or sanity over the losses.
Truth be told, I haven't been monitoring my finances. I've been lazy keying in my daily expenses. Previously, I was diligently clocking what I spent and monitoring my budget because of my eagerness to hit $100k. Now that that's fulfilled, my next goal is to hit $200k in cash savings by 28. I seem to have lesser motivation to keep track of my monies now. But here's a breakdown of my inflows and outflows based on what I managed to track:
Outflows
Over the past half year, my total spends stood at around $17000. That seems a lot considering I'm a single lady living with my parents. The breakdown is as follows:
- Food expenses: around $2k
(I've been paying a lot of the meals with my credit card to get cashback but there are times when I don't hit the minimum spendings)
- Shopping expenses: around $12k
bkk air tix and 1 jb hotel stay
online shopping - may have to curb my spendings a bit, but I swear I've been buying useful and value-for-money items!
- Allowances to parents: $3k
Inflows
My earnings stood at slightly less than $4k. Earnings include money gained from interests, dividends, I counted money my bf owed me for our joint acct here as well and...ang bao money :)
Overall
Now here's a rough overview of my current finances:
In terms of insurance coverage, these are what I have:
- Hospitalisation plan: NTUC Income Enhanced Incomeshield Preferred with Plus Rider
- Death - $200k
- C.I - $100k
- Early C.I - $100k
- Death - $200k
- C.I - $100k
- Early C.I - $100k
Total net worth stands at $256k. I've no benchmark so I'm not sure how I fare, but I'm pretty glad for my sizeable liquid fund.
Till then!
Well done on your net worth progress! That's a decent amount of cash savings at your age. Just be prepared for future cash drains like having a wedding, buying a property and moving out, etc. It might have a negative impact on your net worth but I'm sure you will recover in no time!:)
ReplyDeleteThank you! I'm trying to make my money work even harder but so far, I'm just parking them into FDs as much as I can. Not very high interest rates, but better than parking in other savings account :)
DeleteYup, my glory will last until I have a house and get married hahah!!
Congrats on the milestone and keep up the good work in your road to achieving financial freedom!
ReplyDeleteNoticed you mentioned that you don't hit the required minimum spending for the credit card, maybe one of the following might help even though the returns might not be tangible :|
i) Using the Standard Chartered Unlimited Cashback or HSBC Advance Credit Card due to no min spending requirement, can even take advantage of the promotional cashback if eligible
ii) Making use of ez-reload and link to your credit card since transport is likely recurring monthly (some banks don't count them towards spending but I think BOC still accepts)
iii) Paying phone/cable tv bills online. Instead of using Giro or IB, you can choose to make online credit card payments to Singtel & Starhub. Coupled with your parents' or boyfriend's bills, you can more easily accumulate the required amounts!
As Finance Smiths pointed out, do remember to 未雨绸缪 as marriage now very ex...even saying "I do" also subject to inflation... :\
Looking forward to the future post on your next milestone, Cheers! =)
Thank you! Yes, I've signed up for SC unlimited cashback but have not utilised it. I'm trying to hit my spendings in BOC cc to get my interest, but sometimes, I dont hit $500 spendings via card.
DeleteThanks for your kind sharing!!
Great work in building up your net worth at a young age! *impressed*
ReplyDeleteYou should consider parking your spare cash in SG Government saving bonds to make your money work harder than fixed deposits. My humble thoughts =)
Thank you :) I've no benchmark so I don't know if I'm saving a lot more than others. But I will say that I'm quite proud of my savings, at least I've a decent emergency fund to dig into.
DeleteI've parked some money in the saving bonds but not much as I prefer the liquidity 1 year FDs have :)
I wasn't able to achieve 100K cash on hand before 28, which you did so it is impressive lah!
DeleteMy emergency fund is lesser than yours as I keep it to the minimum (6 months salary) plus excess cash on hand to spend and pay bills.
SG saving bonds are more liquid with no withdrawal penalty within 5 days (similar to withdrawal of SGX-listed equities processing time). If you want the money to work harder for you in medium term (10 years max), the cumulative half-yearly bond coupon payouts are still better than FDs though your point on FDs' 1 year liquidity is correct.
Let us continue the journey towards being financially savvy here, Cherry!
SSB also help you to reduce your effort to hunt for FD. And you can do partial redeem. So more time for you to hunt for other rebates.
Delete