My 10 Pots of Gold for Financial Independence - Completed 4 Pots!

Back in Aug 2024, I explained my strategy for 8 Pots of Gold for Perpetual Income:

https://financeopti.blogspot.com/2024/08/update-on-my-5-pots-of-gold-for.html

Now that it is 6 months since that post, it is timely to provide my progress on this strategy.

Here is how full each pot is back in of Aug 2024:

As of Aug 2024.

Here is what the pots look like now:

As of 25 Feb 2025

For completeness, I decided to add in my SGP and USA pots too. They simply represent stocks of these countries that I bought and held till now. 

I have made progress on the TLT, S-Reit ETF, ABF Singapore Bond, and SP500 ETF pots. 

In fact, during this low point in S-Reit ETF prices, I topped up quite a bit. I plan to hold for the long-term and collect dividends. Long-term means 20 years or more. 

For the US ETFs pot, you may notice I slashed it by half. This is not because of some smart rebalancing/take profit and run move. Rather it is because I got fed up with my US Brokerage (Robinhood) and decided to pull all money out. For a few days, I was not able to access the account at all! And I called/emailed all the help numbers, all got hit with automated replies, which was ridiculous. If you use this brokerage and you need help at some point, good luck to you. 

The US ETFs pot is something I started in 2017 after reading the classic "A Random Walk down Wall Street". I followed the book's advice and invested in equal proportions of US stock, International stock, and emerging markets. I follow a DCA strategy for this one, but I purchase only once a year. Each year when I purchase, I re-balance the portfolio at the same time. These are the 3 ETFs that make up this fund:

• Vanguard Total Stock Market ETF (VTI)
• Vanguard Total International Stock ETF (VXUS)
• Vanguard FTSE Emerging Markets ETF (VWO)

What is important is each of these pots provides dividends, ie. perpetual income. Further, by allocating across multiple countries and sectors, I believe it is defensive enough. 

One issue is all these ETFs are all listed on US stock exchange and hence subjected to 30% US withholding tax. I plan to switch them to irish-domiciled funds to save on this tax. 

Will update my progress on these 10 pots of gold six months later.