Simple Budget, Simple Life

As someone who held massive cash (in proportion to my networth) previously, it feels scary to see that I'm running out of cash. For context, just 1 year ago back in Aug 2020, I talked about having $300k CASH before reaching 30 and the breakdown is here. Few days after I posted, I came upon Tiger Brokers (see my guide and referral here)  and have invested heavily since. I grew my Tiger Brokers portfolio from $0 to $28k (one month later)  to $70k (five months later)  to $95k (eight months later)  to $136k (eleven months later)  to $170k now (1 year 3 mths later). And unfortunately, I am sitting on paper losses amounting to close to $9,000 now 🙃as a bulk of my portfolio is in HK/China stocks 🙃🙃🙃🙃🙃I'm the donkey. I've depleted more than half of my CASH warchest just on stocks alone. I also started my crypto journey in Feb this year.  From $0 to close to $30k capital pumped. Though the good news is I'm seeing gains of around 20-30%. Not an amazing f...

Ever since WFH, I haven't been suffering from Monday blues as much. I guess I only hate Mondays because I need to step into the office. Anyway, happy news to share. Firstly, congrats to those who signed up for crypto.com account when I posted about it (search my blog for crypto.com tags). Back then, I shared about their amazing sign-up promotion where you'd get SGD$100 CRO coins back with SGD$100 deposited.  If you've signed up when I spoked about them in Part 1-Part 4 of my posts, you'd have seen good % increase on your CRO token! Personally, my CRO coins have now > doubled! As of writing, the price has reached ATH. However, because these are staked, I can't cash any profits out, but it feels good to see the price appreciation!😬 Secondly, belated news but I've gotten my Crypto.com Ruby Metal Card! This is actually my 2nd metal card, the first being SCB X card that I signed 2 years back. As of now, I've only used my card for transport to get back 2% cas...

<pic from google images> I just dug deeper into the crypto rabbit hole. I started the journey just in Feb this year, starting off with Ge mini where I earned free US$10 in BTC lol. It took me 6 months to pump in more money in Aug and decided to generate interest on my coins via Hodlnaut and received a US$20 signup bonus. Thereafter, within the month, I set up another staking account with Celsius where I gained 8.88% APY on stablecoins and received US$50 BTC reward on US$400 staked. In the same month, I signed up for Cakedefi because I was lured by the 88.9% APY.  In Sep, I registered for the Crypto.com account given it's attractive promotion of SGD100 in CRO coins . Psst, it's recent run-up has been giving me quite a good % gain 😊 Now in Nov, within just these few days, I ventured beyond buying coins from the CEXs. I transferred, swapped/bought new coins sitting in my crypto wallet. I gambled and got my first meme coin. I participated in my first liquidit...

In my previous post, I blogged that I've finally set up my SRS....with DBS.  While there was a hiccup i.e my SRS account was missing from ibanking page and app, it was resolved after a few days. No apologies from DBS - they just told me to rest assure that my $10k is intact. It better be. Anyway, now that the issue is resolved and I finally have access to my SRS account number, I needed to maximise my SRS money. As explained by this Seedly post,  " you’ll  need to invest your SRS funds  in order to minimally beat inflation and grow that fund for your retirement." Their table also shows the list where you can park your funds.  I'm not keen to use my SRS on bonds, ETF, FDs, REITS, shares as I already have these investments using my cash. I wanted my SRS to take a separate investment route and decided that robo-advisor was my best choice. As such, I decided to sign up an account with Endowus. Why Endowus I shan't explain who/what Endowus is as you can google it....

The title is not a clickbait.  In all honesty, I am going to become a millionaire for sure in my lifetime (assuming I don't die young, choy!). I am very sure I'd become a millionaire, at least through CPF. Yup, 1M65, 1M48A is going to be a reality for me. Based on my CPF projection, these are what I realised: Next year, my OA + SA will reach FRS  At 35, my SA alone will reach FRS (which means I can't do RSTU and get tax relief) At 42, my SA alone will reach ERS  At 47, my OA + SA + MA will reach $1m combined But I am still not satisfied. I don't think this is something worth shouting at. Millionaires decades ago vs today are vastly different in riches - what's more millionaires decades down the road. It's like me cracking lame joke in Indonesia that I'm a rupiah millionaire. By the time I reach 50-60, I am sure there'd be many fellow millionaires. Everyone is so financially savvy these days. Heck, even students are multi-millionaires . And by then, being...

It has been 10 months since I last talked about Tiq. Back then, they were advertising for a 1.68% 3-year endowment plan  which I got for my mum. This time, they are rolling out a 1.62% 3-year endowment plan with a minimum saving of $10k. If you have extra cash lying around and wants a low risk avenue to park your $ (instead of dumping to crypto or REITS with volatility), you can consider this plan to diversify your money. I believe for those who jump into the crypto rabbit hole, these 1+% interests looks darn pathetic. I feel you. But crypto ultimately holds some risks as there's no strong regulation backing; even stablecoins. So I'm considering placing $10k of my cash here. Also, this beats my DBS Multiplier interest of 1.60% and I had to jump through hoops ok.  Registration What I love about tiq is their fuss-free and simple sign-up. You can refer to my past posts where I blogged about my "investment" into them. I treat these as an alternative savings plan with add...

I've finally set up my SRS account. In the past, I didn't feel the need to do so and these were my thoughts: no need for additional tax savings since I'm doing annual CPF top-up no clue what to invest using SRS funds  don't want my $ to be stuck in an account till age 62. That's another 30 years (and I've only just passed thirty years on earth!) However, circumstances have changed. As my income grew, I needed more avenues to reduce my tax. Not that I'm earning a lot, but the intent was the same as me doing my annual CPF top-up i.e I'd rather save the tax monies and channel to my mum and I, than doing nothing to my tax relief and paying 100% to the govt - likewise, topping up to my SRS would work the same way. The chart from DBS web below would serve as a good example of the potential tax savings we could save.  More importantly, the call to lock-in my retirement age at 62 has pushed me to take action because 2021 is the last year/chance before the statut...