~~Towards Barista FIRE~~

This is going to be a short post just to share that my aim to rebalance my portfolio has failed.  As shared in previous post , I have planned to rebalance my portfolio to lower the percentage of REITs, and increase the percentage of non-REITs.  That would be done by keeping the amount of REITs I hold in my portfolio unchanged, and adding more non-REITs into my portfolio, namely United Overseas Bank (UOB) and Development Bank of Singapore (DBS).   As shared previously, I hope to add shares of UOB into my portfolio below SGD 29.00 before XD, so I can benefit from the 6% dividend yield.  However, when my cash is ready, the share price has already propelled to above SGD 30.00!  When I consoled myself that I may have another opportunity after XD to add more shares below SGD 29.00, reality slapped me in the face as UOB's share price shot up above SGD 31.00 just two days before XD.  This probably mean that not only did I missed out on more dividends, I am also unable to buy the shares at

Recently in Malaysia, one middle age man was lured into a gold investment scheme, where he was promised an incredulous 10% return every hour!  Without a doubt, it turns out to be a scam and he lost MYR 570K (you can watch the news here ).  This is a huge sum of money for the average person on the street, and losing it is definitely impactful to one's livelihood, especially if one is near retirement years.  So why did such scams succeed?  Short answer: greed. As the saying goes, when something is too good to be true, it probably is.  So why are there still pockets of individuals falling into such scams, especially when the returns sound so ridiculously high, which is probably a red flag?  This could probably due to the recent rocketing prices of commodities like gold, bitcoin and cocoa.  For gold, the price has risen by about 12.7% (in SGD terms), and cocoa prices has rocketed by 34.2% in the past one month! Personally, I did buy physical gold at the start of this year and I shared

Recently in a Telegram group, I come across a debate between Kyith from Investment Moats and a reader, where the reader claims that as long as his portfolio is made up dividend stocks with good dividend growth through the years, he can just live off the dividends with the total capital left intact, while Kyith on the other hand, supports the idea of Safe Withdrawal Rate (SWR).  The reader claims that he would not want to sell any part of his portfolio, and just having to live off the dividends makes dividend investing superior to the withdrawal method, while Kyith explains that the reader's perspectives show a lack of understanding of how the SWR method actually works. After reading the long string of exchanges in the telegram group, I decided to pen this post.  Personally, I am definitely a supporter of the dividend investing group, and I also believe, and strives towards just living off dividend income upon FIRE.  From a dividend income investor perspective, the idealistic scenar

In the latest CPI report by Singapore Department of Statistics, core inflation rose by 3.6% year-on-year, and 0.5% month-on-month.  For a more visually appealing statistics to see what affect individuals most, we can refer to the diagram below released by Singapore Department of Statistics: For singles like me, I would like to think my expenses are relatively low, because I do not own a car, I do not take grabs or taxis in Singapore, only travel via bus, MRT and walking.  My main expenses lies with dining, utilities, mortgage, household items replacement and healthcare.  However, with the recent increase in GST, it is clearly making everything a tad more pricey.  The price of many food items have risen by approximately 10-20%, and even bus and MRT fares, have risen by 10%.  In a bid to deal with inflation, I checked with ChatGBT to find out how a Malaysian (SPR) like me staying in Singapore can find alternatives and ways to deal with inflation. The following is what ChatBGT has answere

This month marks the end of the 1st quarter of 2024.  Thus it's definitely a good time for me to record the performance of my portfolio to track how it has been. To recap, I started my SG Dividends Portfolio in late 2017, and I began tracking the dividends and all reinvestment done starting 2018.  To date, my SG Dividends Portfolio consist of banks, REITs and defense technology.  On the other hand, I only started the US Growth Portfolio in late December 2021.  Currently, my US Growth Portfolio consist of mainly big tech names, bank and exchange traded funds (ETFs). Being a relatively conservative investor, I prefer to dollar cost average (DCA) into the market to slowly build up my portfolio.  The advantages of using Interactive Brokers to buy the US shares via DCA are undoubtedly the low fees and ability to buy fractional shares of mega-cap technology shares like Alphabet and Tesla.  The latest FED meeting in early March helped to calm the markets as Jerome Powell reiterated that

Back in September 2023, I wrote a post pondering whether it is time for me to start including physical gold and silver into my portfolio after watching the Channel News Asia documentary on the Singapore Reserves.  At that time, I think I should follow the footsteps of the smart monies, especially the Singapore reserves, to allocate a small percentage of my portfolio into physical gold and silver.  Initially, I was looking at adding 50 grams of gold into my portfolio per year, but later in January 2024 , I changed my mind and decided to lower the allocation to buy 1 troy ounce (31.1 grams) of gold into my portfolio per year instead.   In Singapore, there are many online and physical stores where physical gold can be purchased.  Personally I prefer to collect physical gold over paper gold.  There are many platforms where physical gold can be purchased, through United Overseas Bank (UOB), or through private dealers like Silver Bullion Singapore, GoldSilver Central and BullionStar.  For m

As per the previous post , the 32% decline in dividends from Hong Leong Finance triggered me to relook the stability of the annual dividends.  Thus I decided to divest a part of the shares in my holding and include more dividend powerhouses into my portfolio to reduce the weightage of dividends from individual shares.  As mentioned, I have decided to include the two remaining Singapore banks into my portfolio, namely United Overseas Bank (UOB) and Development Bank of Singapore (DBS).  However, due to the limitations of capital, I will do this in stages.  In stage one, before the XD date, I will slowly nibble some UOB shares, so that I will be eligible to receive the half-yearly dividends.  In stage two, I will buy into DBS shares after XD (hopefully the price decline is more than the dividends and bonus shares payout- no guarantees on that). So what exactly am I doing and why? The shares that I am partially divesting is Singapore Technologies Engineering (STE).  Surprise surprise, I di

Early this year, I had the privilege to sponsor my mum, aunt and myself to a short trip to Bangkok.  This is possible because of the 25% growth in dividends collected in 2023 compared to 2022 from my SG Dividend Portfolio, and due to the slight increase in tutoring income in 2023 after pushing myself to work 7 days a week for the second half of the year.  As such, I think it is time to take a break and pamper myself a little, and also take this opportunity to bring my mum and aunt together to my favourite future retirement destination.  This is their first trip to Bangkok (they had been to Chiang Mai, Phuket and Hat Yai), so I have to do the planning upfront to bring them to do some sight-seeing and enjoy some great food not to be missed, while keeping in mind to minimize walking during the trip. It was a 4 day 3 night trip, and we arrived at Don Mueang International Airport in the early afternoon.  We took a grab ride to our hotel, Trinity Silom Hotel, close to Chong Nonsi BTS and Lal

As a dividend investor, I have been slowly accumulating shares in REITs and dividend shares to grow the annual dividend income since late 2017.  I am blessed and contented with the performance thus far, as the total dividends received annually continues to grow, despite hiccups along the way.  First major hiccup along the way is in 2020, where the strike of the pandemic and the circuit breaker hit businesses and some REITs in a huge way, resulting in cuts in dividends.  The second major hiccup recently will be in 2022 where the FED suddenly hike interest rates at rocket speed, and that created financial stress on REITs, which inevitably resulted in the drop in distributions by most REITs to varying degree.  Thankfully, with the slight diversification into other dividend-paying shares, they helped to mitigate the decline, and allowed my portfolio to experience dividend growth year-on-year. This year, on 23rd February 2024, Hong Leong Finance (HLF) reported their earnings for 2H2023 and

This will be a relatively short post, just to update on the transactions for the month. For the month of February, it is a rather stagnant month.  The first half of the month is relatively positive, but after the release of the January CPI numbers, which came in slightly below expectations with CPI still hovering at 3.1% instead of the expected 2.9% (which is a major milestone being below 3%), the market experienced a significant pullback.  This was exacerbated later in that week by the hotter than expected PPI numbers as well.  This may be both a correction and profit taking, as the Magnificent Seven (with the exception of Tesla) or the AI Fives have had a long bull run.  So it may be time for them to take a breather.  Overall, I view CPI numbers with slight positivity, because although it remains above 3%, it has been in the downtrend and that is good news.  The worrying sign probably comes from core CPI, where it remains flat month on month.  Nonetheless, this news dampened the mar

On 15th February 2024, Keppel Pacific Oak REIT (KORE) spooked the market by announcing that they will suspend dividend payments for 2 years till 2026, due to the tough operating environment in US Commercial Real Estate currently and hence a possible further decline in valuation in the upcoming quarters.  For readers who are interested to know the details of this event, you can watch this video by Dr Wealth.  Nonetheless, this caused the share price of KORE to plunge by 40% in a single day, and the undesirable effects rippled through all US Commercial REITs, bringing Prime US REIT down by 32% and Manulife US REIT (MUST) down by almost 7% (previously Manulife REIT's troubles had caused it to plunge by 67% from July 2023 to 15th February 2024).  Even United Hampshire US REIT, whose properties deal with groceries, necessities and self-storage were impacted, falling by 4%. Prior to this issue by KORE and MUST in July 2023, another most impactful event was the suspension of Eagle Hospit

Back in January 2023, the interest rates reached 4.25-4.50%.  Since then, interest rates continue to gradually climb till 5.25-5.50% in July 2023, where it held constant till today.  As such, it is a good time to review how the crazy climb in interest rates in 2022 impact the performances of REITs, which are highly leveraged and more sensitive to interest rates compared to other listed companies.  In the comparison below, I only focused on the REITs and Trust I hold in my portfolio. 1)     CapitaLand Ascott Trust (CLAST)   " CLAST's properties saw strong demand as international travel continued to recover.  CLAST’s revenue per available unit (REVPAU) in 2H 2023 reached 103% of pre-pandemic levels in 2H 2019 on a pro forma basis, increasing by 10% y-o-y to S$157.  REVPAU also rose 23% y-o-y to S$148 for FY 2023.  In 4Q 2023, majority of CLAST’s key markets such as China, Japan, United States of America (USA) and Vietnam also registered y-o-y REVPAU growth.  CLAST’s gross profit