For my wife - just in case something happens to me.. Choy choy!

So I was talking to my wife about how to manage my portfolio if in the event I do get into an accident or pass away suddenly (touch wood). She was not very interested to listen as usual as she's not interested to know how to manage finances and stuff.

But I was telling her that she should at least know how to manage it so that in the event something does happen to me, she can at least devote her time to our son (and other children if any) with the insurance payout that she would receive rather than still spend her time worrying about money and work.

So, instead of listening to me nag, she said:

Aiya then you post it on your blog la, if ever needed I will go to your blog and see how you manage our money - you see I so good give you inspiration for your blog

Thus, post today courtesy of my wife.

So dear wife (or kid/s), long story short, if I ever were to pass on, please use take the insurance money and pump it into the following investments:

30% into Vanguard FTSE All-World UCITS ETF (VWRD) on the London/Ireland Stock Exchange
30% into SPDR Straits Times Index ETF (ES3.SI)
40% into ABF Singapore Bond Index Fund (A35)

Once you have done the above, make sure that you re-balance the portfolio annually, meaning look at the value of all 3 funds and make the percentages into 30/30/40 again. 

In the event you really have no clue about how to do the above, please pump your money into Autowealth. Not preferred since it will most/all be in USD, but I guess it's better than not doing anything with the money. 

Once money is pumped into the investments, you can spend 4% of the total amount per year and this should last you sufficiently for the rest of your life. Of course, please be prudent and be flexible with the money if markets were to go down, to be safe I would say just use 3% of the total value per year. 

For example, if you were to get $1.5 million from insurance, you can use $60,000 per year if you use 4% and $45,000 if you just take 3%. 

I'm not currently doing exactly as I say above, but this is because we are still in the accumulation stage. If you do get my insurance money, then just go ahead and do the above yea? 

I hope you don't ever have to refer back to this post cause we always said I will need to be healthier than you and be the one to go later. But, we never know right? 

I love you! :) 

Networth Update - March 2018

I'll be doing the update on my networth on a monthly basis and will be starting with the latest update based on my end March 2018 value.

Personally, I choose not to take into consideration my housing loan and my HDB value when calculating this, as I don't want to inflate the numbers with the property values. Not looking at the loan amount as well since the value of my house is almost double the the amount of loan plus the buffer in my CPF is sufficient for me to clear 1 years plus of installments if I stop working thus the decision not to include these items.

I'm mainly looking at funds where I have invested or can put to work immediately when I want. These funds are also the ones that will work for me when I 'retire' - another reason I'm not including the house value. No other debts other than the property loan as well.

I don't do stock picking and all of my investments are in Index Funds/Robo-advisors. It's not that I don't believe in stock picking but it's just.. I have no idea how to do it at this point and I've tried learning about it a few times but my interest somehow doesn't last (too complicated for my simple brain) - thus Indexing is the way for me.

Many prominent FIRE blogs in the US seem to dismiss the idea of stock picking but I do believe that if you research and have a system in place, it could work very well - maybe one day I'll be able to learn more and understand stock picking/trading.

But I believe even if I do it, the main bulk of my funds will still remain with Indexes and perhaps 10-20% of my portfolio will then be used to experiment on the stocks..

Any patient Shifus wanna teach me stock picking/trading? :P

Anyway, enough blabbering.. so for those interested...
Our total Networth as of 31 March 2018 is .................$118,737! 
Side note - this is joint between myself and my wife (some accounts are only under my name and she's very scared I run away one day, so need to declare publicly.. haha!) 

Robo-Advisors - $19,687

I'm a bit of a mess here and I'm quite sure if there are people reading this they will be shaking their heads when they see this.
I utilise not 1...not 2...but 3 different Robo-Advisors (I think that's all there is in SG at this point?) 

I use Autowealth, Smartly and Stashaway at this point and every month I deposit 1688, 588 and 388 to each of these accounts respectively. (I am very pantang as you can see since all the numbers I transfer end with 88, they are also either transferred on the 8 or 18 of the month, haha!) 

Autowealth's allocation is much easier to understand as compared to the other 2 thus the bigger allocation for me (and also because of the flat 0.5% fee + platform fee, no matter the amount) but I thought perhaps I should just try all three..

Index Funds - $58,959

I use Standard Chartered to purchase the index funds as it seems to be the cheapest in the SG market right now (if there are cheaper ones please let me know!). I purchase mainly the Vanguard funds VWRD, VUSD on the SC account which I buy on a quarterly basis. Turtle Investor has a few articles which are really helpful and I read them a lot when I was starting my portfolio, you can read one of his articles here and you might see why I chose VWRD.

I have a stash now which I want to put into 'work' however the market recently seems to be wobbly... I know I shouldn't be timing the market but emotions really do come into play I realised.. So to make myself feel better I just buy quarterly (1 quarter VWRD 1 Quarter VUSD) with my stash at this point to dollar cost average. I also don't buy bonds at this moment as I let the Robo-advisors handle that aspect for me.. So my allocation is actually quite skewed towards stocks, maybe about 90-95%.. Not really balanced but I'm following jlcollins' method whereby if you are sure you will hold for more than a certain period.. to go 100% in stocks..

Anyway, I intend to stop using the Robo-Advisors once my funds reach the amount which makes me eligible to become SC's Priority/Private Banking customer.. Once I stop using the Robo-Advisors then I'll likely add to the bonds directly.. The reason for using the Robo-Advisors now is also because I don't want to incur the minimum fees when I reinvest the dividends (it would be a huge percentage!) or do the rebalancing... Becoming a priority banking customer in SC will eliminate the minimum fee requirement (hopefully they dont change their terms/fees by then like they did 1-2 years back)

About 28% of the value here is also in Nikko STI ETF which I purchased with the OCBC BCIP previously.. I bought this monthly at 1700 however now I changed my monthly contribution to Autowealth.

Stash - $40,091

Amount that is ready to be put to work anytime! This is also money only in our joint account, we do have some personal/emergency funds in our personal accounts I'm not taking into consideration.