My FI status after 17 months of FI [Financial Independence]

I have achieved FI status in Mar 2023:

https://financeopti.blogspot.com/2023/03/breaking-free-i-have-achieved-financial.html

Now it is timely to re-evaluate whether I am still FI.

I did my spreadsheets and arrived at the following:

                            

As long as the cell in the red box is negative, I am FI. 

I will do this analysis at the beginning of every quarter. 

So watch out for a similar post at the beginning of 2025 Q1!

From the above, it seems I am still FI. 

I have also attached a chart showing the % change in my total investable assets over the years.

                       

It is fortunate that most of the data points are positive, which means I am still able to grow my assets.

Portfolio Returns for Oct 2024 - New All-Time Highs Again!

I felt it would be good to track the returns regularly since they fluctuate occasionally depending on the stock market.

Here are the movements for this month. Most of my funds reached all-time highs after the Fed lowered interest rates by 50 basis points to the range of 4.75%-5% in September 2024.

                                

Same graph as above but converted to column chart.

For the Robo-Advisors, it did go up but the gains were not as significant as my pure stocks portfolios. What is relieving is that Syfe Reit+ fund is finally positive (for a 2nd month). 

                                

Same graph as above but converted to column chart.

                                  

Additionally, I think it will be interesting to see the breakdown of my portfolios in percentages (below). There is a component 'X' which I do not want to disclose for now. The concentration of 'X' is now 12.1% but is still too high. 

                                

Market events over the last month: 

The headline for this article says it all:

Dow, S&P 500 close at record highs and mark the year’s longest winning streak

SP500 is at all-time high of 5864.67.

Some analysts are suggesting SP500 may reach 6,000 by end of 2024:

https://www.marketwatch.com/story/why-s-p-500-rising-to-6-000-is-hardly-a-stretch-as-stocks-attempt-new-record-45172729

Let's see about this. Anyway I am invested.

Meanwhile, war on the 3 fronts are not letting up:

* Ukraine - Russia

* Israel - Gaza

* Israel - Lebanon (just started)

Hope the situation can get better soon. 

Onwards! 

 

Dividends for Sep 2024 - Towards 5000 a month

The dividends I collected for Aug 2024 were the biggest ever.

Here are my dividends for Aug 2024:

                                    

So I collected $2,369 in dividends for this month.

 
In case you are wondering, some stocks are repeated because I have 2 brokerage accounts.

Here are my monthly dividends over the last 6 years:

                                 

Sep's harvest has dropped a bit from the Aug harvest.

Here are the dividends I collected every year until the current day

                            

I have already surpassed my total yearly dividends in the previous year of 2023. 

For the year 2024, my average monthly dividends per month is now $2,712.03. 

Here is the progress of my average monthly dividends over the years:

                         

I plan to first receive $2500, then finally $5000 in dividends every month on average.

Additionally, I share the interest I received from the various banks for the deposits in this month:

                                        

Oops, I only collected $254.30 in interest payments this month. This was because I missed the required $500 spend on card to unlock the bonus interest. I missed it by a few cents!! The mistake was I assumed the transactions that count towards the card spend are based on calendar date of transaction, whereas it is actually based on POSTED date. The POSTED date can be as late as 5 days after transaction date! E.g. transaction date is 26 Sep, but POSTED date is only 1 Oct! This means then that transaction is only counted towards the card spend of OCT. 

This is a mistake that cost me a few hundred dollars and should NOT be repeated. 

Onwards!   

 

 

Wrapping up my 16th month of Financial Independence

I just finished my 16th month of FI (Financial Independence) in Sep 2024.

Below is what I ate and did for fun, and a record of my expenses.

Eating

Some restaurant in Malacca.

Some restaurant in Malacca.

Avocado, Egg with Pita Bread.

Egg with Pita Bread.

Avocado Egg with Pita Bread again!

Egg Mayo with Pita Bread.

Fun

September school holidays! Went with the kids to Malacca. 

Malacca river.

Kuala Lumpur.

Mid-autumn display at Gardens by the Bay.

Gardens by the Bay.

Went for a weekday jog at Gardens by the Bay one morning.

Expenses

In terms of expenses, did OK this month. 

 

Eating Out Target: $650

Eating Out Actual: $719.77 (Sep school holidays, had to feast a bit)

Household Target: $600

Household Actual: $269.85

Travel Target: $100

Travel Actual: $108.03

Entertainment Target: $50

Entertainment Actual: $45.23 

Personal Target: $250

Personal Actual: $52.41

Onwards to the next month of FI!

Returns of my One-Fourth Fund after 10 Years

Ten years ago (22-Sep-2014 to be exact), I started my One-Fourth fund. 

The One-Fourth fund was started after the big hoo-ha about the 10 million population planning figure for Singapore by 2030. This was back in 2014. 

https://www.straitstimes.com/politics/ge2020-10-million-population-not-a-goal-but-a-planning-parameter-says-liu-thai-ker

After the news came out, a lot of people were upset by the number. However, some investment articles suggested stocks to buy given the supposed huge influx of people. Since there are more people, the investment article suggested stocks in the following industries:

• Telco
• Transport
• Bank
• Finance

After all, when people move into Singapore. They will need these essential services, right?

Based on the above, I selected the below 4 stocks based on Sharpe Ratio:

• Starhub
• ComfortDelGro
• UOB
• SGX

The 4 combinations above gave the highest Sharpe Ratio, which means the highest returns divided by volatility. The plan was that I will dollar-cost average into these stocks twice a year, and I will rebalance the stocks each time such that all 4 stocks hold equal value. 

This fund took a lot of hits along the way, and it was negative for most of the time. For Starhub, it was in overall decline throughout the years. For ComfortDelGro, ride-hailing services like Grab came to prominence, which led to a gradual decline in ComefortDelGro stocks.

I dollar-cost averaged from 2014 till 2020. It is only recently I recouped my losses with the stellar run in STI.

I recently crunched the numbers and found that the CAGR of this fund is 3.50% (see above). Simple returns are 26.46%. Again, this is after 10 years. 

Nothing to shout about, but I just want to share to show that some stocks (ie. blue-chip stocks) are worth holding, just need time to recover. 

Portfolio Returns for Sep 2024 - new All-Time Highs!

I felt it would be good to track the returns regularly since they fluctuate occasionally depending on the stock market.

Here are the movements for this month. Most of my funds reached all-time highs. This is because in the month September, the Fed lowered the interest rates (finally!) by 50 basis points to the range of 4.75%-5%.

                                

For the Robo-Advisors, it did go up but the gains were not as significant as my pure stocks portfolios. What is relieving is that Syfe Reit+ fund is finally positive. 

                                

Additionally, I think it will be interesting to see the breakdown of my portfolios in percentages (below). There is a component 'X' which I do not want to disclose for now. The concentration of 'X' is now 12.4% but is still too high. 

                                            

Market events over the last month: 

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cz04md0zdrno

The Fed lowered interest rates by 50 basis points to 4.75%-5%. This is the first rate cut in 4 years. With this rate cut, Reits and Bonds are expected to rise. However, bank stocks will fall. How much each segment will rise or fall is unclear though, as some say the interest rates will not go to zero.

https://www.businesstimes.com.sg/companies-markets/singapore-stocks-rise-2007-level-highs-cheered-us-rate-cut-sti-1-1

On the home front, SG stocks rose to 2007 highs. This is after a whooping 17 years!

https://www.businesstimes.com.sg/companies-markets/mas-ready-make-bold-changes-revitalise-equities-market-chee-hong-tat

The authorities finally seem willing to do something to revitalize the SGX laggard. 

Examples include building Singapore as a leading real estate investment trusts (Reits) hub by identifying a market need and creating a supportive regulatory ecosystem for such growth. The Republic today holds the largest Reits market in Asia ex-Japan, Chee highlighted.

This is following a barrage of opinion pieces in the media suggesting the authorities to do something to revitalize the stock market, such as this one:

https://www.channelnewsasia.com/commentary/singapore-exchange-sgx-stock-market-mas-review-group-company-list-ipo-4585451 

Onwards! 

Dividends for Aug 2024 - Biggest Harvest Ever!

The dividends I collected for Aug 2024 were the biggest ever.

Here are my dividends for Aug 2024:

                                    

So I collected $4,605.22 in dividends for this month.

 
In case you are wondering, some stocks are repeated because I have 2 brokerage accounts.

Here are my monthly dividends over the last 6 years:

                                 

August has always been the month when I reap the most bountiful harvest. 

Here are the dividends I collected every year until the current day

                            

I have already surpassed my total yearly dividends in the previous year of 2023. 

For the year 2024, my average monthly dividends per month is now $2,754.91. 

Here is the progress of my average monthly dividends over the years:

                         

I plan to first receive $2500, then finally $5000 in dividends every month on average.

Additionally, I share the interest I received from the various banks for the deposits in this month:

                                        

So I collected $1,399.40 in interest payments this month. This is the largest interest I have received thus far. 

All in, I received $6,004.62 passive income this month!

You can see the largest interest was obtained from UOB, where I received both bonus interest as well as Nation of Savers promotion interest of $700. The Nation of Savers promo seemed basic enough, but there were devils in the details, which will require a separate post.  

Onwards!