Portfolio Allocation - Jun 2017

I have been reading "A random walk down wall street", and it is recommended that portfolio be as such for late thirties to early forties:


Stocks 65%(1/2 US, 1/4 developed international markets, 1/4 emerging international markets), Bonds 20%, Real estate 10% (REITs), Cash 5%

I decided to tweak this a bit to suit my taste:


Stocks + REITs 75%(3/6 or 36% Singapore, 1/6 or 13% US, 1/6 or 13% developed international markets, 1/6 or 13% emerging international markets), Bonds 20%, Cash 5%


Here's what I have so far:

Year	Stocks + REITs - Singapore	Stocks + REITs - US	Stocks + REITs - Developed	Stocks + REITs - Emerging	Bonds	Cash
2017	43%	3.23%	1.56%	1.54%	7.6%	42%

Overweight on Stocks + REITs - Singapore, and too much cash.

Will slowly tune this, and update every year in June.

Retirement Calculator Snapshot

Decided to do an annual snapshot of my retirement calculator. Below 'Years till FI' shows the number of years it will take till I reach financial independence. This is based on the retirement calculator from Mad Fientist. Will update end of Jan every year.

Breakeven without dividends!

Today I finally breakeven even without dividends! Meaning if I sold all my stocks today, and even if I collected 0 dividends from all my stocks over all these years, I would have made $529!

Financial Snapshot - 2016

This is a snapshot of my finances at end of 2016.

Naturally, I do not want to disclose too much details or my net worth, amount I have in banks etc. so I will just share the following:

Year ending	Stocks	Bonds	Cash for investment	Net cash input
2015	52451.71	20872	8335.63	0
2016	105461.92	20905	5839.25	25900

Not included in the above are bank savings, insurance policies, CPF, SRS etc. The above are just the amount of stocks and cash in my 2 stock brokerage accounts, the stocks in my BCIP and SRS account, and the bonds I am holding at the moment.

Portfolio Snapshot - Passive Income

Will be sharing my passive income (dividends, bond coupons, bank deposit interest, fixed deposit interest, MMF interest) around this time every year.

As shown above, my monthly passive income is $563.93. Once I increase this to my monthly expenditure amount, I can retire!

mysurvey.com.sg is a SCAM!

Completed a few surveys on mysurvey.com.sg and never got a single cent. Emailed them and their reply is published in full below. Writing this post to warn others of this scam!

##- Please type your reply above this line -##

Your request has been solved. To reopen this request, reply to this email.

Support Team (MySurvey) Nov 7, 09:42 GMT Dear panellist, Thank you for your message. Unfortunately, according to my database, it appears you were screened out in which case you are rewarded entries but not points. For some surveys we ask a few screener questions to start with to be sure that we ask certain questions to the right panel member in a target group. It is possible we were not looking for a profile like yours in this particular survey, in which case you will not have to complete the survey. In rare cases, these questions might also be asked further into the questionnaire. I hope this has answered your questions and if you have any other questions, please do not hesitate to get in touch with me again.

Nxxxxxn Oct 26, 14:22 BST 25-10-2016 0 Survey Completed PG08104 10041658086 22-10-2016 0 Survey Completed PG08125 10041591841 22-10-2016 0 Survey Completed PG08119 10041587885 21-10-2016 0 Survey Completed MG70181 10041575108 Hi, I have finished the above surveys but my points have not been credited. I sent a similar message about this earlier and you said you will credit the points but to date  it has not been credited. Please check and revert.

Best regards,
Elaine Yeo
MySurvey Singapore
www.mysurvey.com.sg

Financial Independence with Mad Fientist

A while back I came across this really cool post:

http://www.madfientist.com/financial-independence-spreadsheet/

This post provides a spreadsheet to calculate how many years you need to work until you achieve financial independence (FI).

I took his spreadsheet, adapted it a bit to the Singapore context, and it shows me I need 4.12 more years till FI! This assumes an inflation-adjusted growth rate of 4% and a withdrawal rate of 3%.

One thing I'm not quite sure is that in the computation of the withdrawal rate, the spreadsheet assumes you can withdraw from your net worth. And your net worth calculation takes into account the price of your house - mortgage. Can we grow our housing at 4% p.a. in Singapore?