Simple Budget, Simple Life

I had insomnia on and off since forever. Yesterday's sleepless night sparked me to write my thoughts down - yeah, my brain was drafting out what I should write today. I dislike how my overactive brain works. While this is not a financial post, it is my personal reflection post and outlet. These have been recurrent issues I face. I hope by writing all these down, I can get rid of my negative and worrisome thoughts. After all, the new year is coming, and I want a good start to it. Work I attribute yesterday's insomnia to insecurity at my workplace. Although I am rather senior in the team, I feel like an imposter. And I feel that staff are judging me.  I feel extremely inferior when I compare myself with my team. My team is made up of elites - academic elites from overseas top universities and top JCs and a handful are social elites with rich family background - whereas I come from local university and mid-tier schools. Despite having stronger  experiences, I feel that my staff d...

Back in 2021, I opened my SRS account to lock-in my withdrawal age at 62 and as another avenue to reduce my income tax. Blogged about it below: I finally set-up my SRS account and then DBS screws up Maximising my $10,001 SRS top-up with Endowus Best time to lock in your 62 yo withdrawal age is now - Endowus $40 referral bonus (usual - $20) till 31 Dec 2021With the  2022 SRS Game Plan via Endowus Now that it's 2022, I needed to start my SRS purchase again. This time, I will be pumping in the max of $15,300 cash to squeeze the max income tax relief. I had initially thought to delay this pump till later this year, as I wanted my cash to generate higher returns first, and then channel it to SRS. However, I decided to be more robotic about my SRS investment and DCA in. This means that I will Buy SRS at 5 different tranches, at $3060 each For the past weeks, the stock and crypto market has been dipping while awaiting the actual plan from the US Fed. Just last night, US Fed has released t...

I never thought I would face this issue. After accumulating $300k cash, and feeling that I've kept too much dirty fiat with me, I've been investing aggressively. Aggressive may not mean smart. In fact, I am feeling stupid because my investments have been doing badly 🙃 As a quick summary, this is what I've been doing over the past year: Buying more REITS, just to name a few - Keppel dc, Ascendas, Capland China Buying more US stocks, just to name a few - Tesla, Roblox, Sea Converting SGD to USD for crypto Just on crypto alone, in midst of the recent drop, I've pumped in $15k SGD to buy BTC and ETH 🙃embodying BTFD in my blood very literally, within a week.  Am I worried? Of course! Each time I open my Tiger Broker + crypto apps, I see a blood of red. My limit orders on Gemini just keep setting off hahah. I've been doing what people call DCA, but man, the amount of transactions I made is quite crazy. I've also just started Anchor Protocol for it's lucrative ...

Back in 2020, I blogged about my 8 sources of passive income generating $600-$1,500 per month . It's not a consistent amount since a few of the sources were on-off like selling on Carousell. So, here's a refreshed version of my 2021 sources of passive income, the $ that comes with it and.... crypto joining the ranks. Here goes: 1. Stock Dividends - $4,962.3 Same as 2020, this remain one of the key sources of passive income given my REITS portfolio. I was heavy on REITS a year ago. But boy, how much things changed in a year. Currently, I am still very heavy on dividend generating stocks ~70%. CDP SG stocks: $2,510 for 2021 (portfolio value: ~$78k. Sitting on 12% paper loss) Tiger SG stocks: $995.10 for 2021 (portfolio value: ~$63k. Sitting on 2% paper gain) HK stocks: $1,445.2 for 2021 (portfolio value: ~$70k. Sitting on 8% paper loss) US stocks: $12 for 2021 (portfolio value: ~$34k. Sitting on 31% paper gains) Total Dividend: $4,962.30 on $245k portfolio. That's rather path...

Detailing my yearly CPF top-up here.  This is my 7th year of top-up. However, there will be changes to my CPF top-up strategy d ue to the changes in CPF tax relief . 1. Top-up $3k to Medisave via Paynow As I have hit MA ceiling of $63k in 2021, I will be topping up $3k cash to my MA today to reach the MA ceiling of $66k in 2022. I am doing this today before my Jan 2022 salary comes in, as it will reduce the amount of MA cash-top up and therefore, reduce my tax relief. I've completed my Paynow transaction, which is instantaneous. Look at my CPF MA changes within seconds: Done the same for my husband as well. 2. Top up $5k to SA For the past 6 years, I've been topping up $7k to my and my mum's SA to max the tax relief. That's $84k cash lock-up in my and her CPF. This time round, due to the tax relief capped at $8k for both MA and SA top-up, I will only be topping up $5k to my SA.  However, contrary to the past where I top-up at the start of the year, I have decided to hol...

Standard start of year post. My best way of welcoming the new year is to count the new inflow of $ and here's my CPF interest for 2021: Unfortunately, the extra $8,728.48 interest still hasn't allowed me to cross the $700k net worth mark. Will work towards $850k net worth by end of the year :) Have you check your CPF interest yet?